The 'gum deposition' habit is like smokers with their butts. There are some smokers who have so habitualised the movements involved in throwing a finished cigarette butt away that they don't actually realise they've done it. A friend of mine was giving a lecture to some campers at a festival about keeping things tidy and not throwing butts away. And, as she's talking, one of the smokers just flicks his but down on the ground and squashes it out with his toe. Despite my friend and several witnesses, he competely refused to believe that that was his butt and insisted it must have been left by someone else.

I think the root cause of all the problems in this thread is that there's a 'public space' mentality that says that mess gets cleaned up by someone else. We pay people to clean up after other people. I've even heard people justify leaving their junk lying around at McDonalds because "well, they pay someone to clean up, I'm giving them something to do". This 'public space' mentality ignores the fact that cleaning jobs are crappy, low-paid work that I personally think is hugely demeaning. And since there is no penalty - no social punishment (like being ostracised) or personal suffering (like living in your own filth) - these grots just keep on fouling up everything for everyone.

My personal advice to everyone here is two fold:

Firstly, find out what harm you create to other people's living and working environments. You might complain about the people leaving nose goblins on the wall, and not wash your hands... (And don't get me started about talking to people with smoker's breath.)

Secondly, clean up. I was annoyed when I nearly ran out of toilet paper at work once and there was no spare roll on the door. So from then on I made a point of putting a new spare roll in whenever I noticed there wasn't one. It might be a bit more work, but I never have to worry about being caught with no paper again. And I might have made some other people's lives much happier.

Think globally, act locally...

Paul