It's getting hot in here

To hot desk or not to hot desk - that is the question:

Is the free range office a marvel of modern ingenuity or an evil scourge leading to seething undercurrents of resentment and barely suppressed homicidal impulses?

We humans are by nature creatures of habit.  We like to have a place to call home.  Give a person a desk and they will instantly begin to colonise ever available centimetre.

Just ask any harassed IT worker who has had to fight their way through a cluster of spouse/baby/pet photos, three coffee mugs (two used), five years of novelty Secret Santa gifts, a slew of cuddly toys and a copy of
"Hot-desking for Dummies" in order to locate the "turn it off and back on again" switch.

It is hardly surprising that being forced to hot desk brings out the worst in the majority of us.

The office becomes a thinly veiled battle ground, every man, woman and Salesperson for themselves as homeless workers roam the halls and stairwells clutching open laptops and swearing like sailors as they search for unoccupied pods.  All the while shooting looks of burning resentment at the clueless visitors from the Hawkes Bay who flew in at at the crack of dawn and are now occupying whatever prime pieces of real estate the "regulars" had begun to think of as their own due to having managed to secure a few days worth of uninterrupted occupation prior to the arrival of the interlopers. 

More astute desk hunters have been known to coerce early rising colleagues into saving “their” desks for them.  This practice usually consists of someone placing a company issue notebook in the middle of the desk with a pen on top of it to imply that the occupant has simply stepped away for a moment.  

As all office workers know this is the equivalent of reserving a pool lounger at 5.00 am using a hotel issue beach towel and a 30 year old Jilly Cooper paperback from the hotel “library”.    It is not cricket and if you do it on the regular your co-workers will hate both you and the person that you have lured into your evil scheme.

After 40 minutes of wandering like Jesus in the wilderness, one of the lost tribe identifies a vacant space.  This space is most likely located directly beneath a single flickering fluorescent bulb sitting with the team that everyone in the office refers to as “those weird dudes who smell like tuna”.

Once a desk has been discovered a veritable maelstrom of activity ensues.  Used coffee cups are returned to the kitchen, monitor height and angles are adjusted, laptop display settings are re-set, the  "ergonomically personalised chair" which was ergonomically personalised two days previously, at great expense, for someone who sat there for two days, is repeatedly wound up and down and the backrest is readjusted.   These activities inevitably resulting in chair ending up roughly five centimetres from the ground with the seat at an angle that is perfectly ergonomically suited to a giraffe astronaut.

Nigel often wondered if the Careers Adviser had misheard him when he said that he wanted to work with Astroturf

All of this takes place to the accompaniment of muffled cursing and occasional outbursts of “FFS why can’t people learn to CLEAN UP AFTER THEMSELVES” followed by the furious banging of keyboard on desk in an attempt to dislodge a month’s worth of dining al desko toast crumbs.

Depending upon the level of OCD next steps may involve theatrical stomping to the stationery cupboard to retrieve the office’s single container of “dehydrated to the point of utter uselessness because some bastard left the lid open" sanitising wipes.  Much ostentatious swiping of all exposed surfaces ensues . 

The truly committed have been known to accessorise in the equivalent of a full hazmat suit prior carrying out these tasks. 

When they are finally satisfied that the desk meets their rigorous hygiene standards they sit down, open their laptop, and start typing…………an email to the entire office complaining about the state in which they found “their” desk in this morning and how “people really need to stop being such disgusting *Pigs”. 

It is now 9.45 am.

So there you have it, hot desks, improving efficiency and increasing productivity since,......whenever some complete idiot who couldn't find their usual desk invented it by accident.

*NB For obvious reasons “Pig” also belongs on the list of non-office friendly animals – see previous post.