OK, every evening before I pack up to go home, I try my darndest to make my desk presentable for all those who happen to lay eyes upon it (and they usually only happen to lay eyes upon it when they are giving me something to do, which I always do efficiently and accurately).
I am sick of these neat freak types piling on the paperwork with one hand (the part I don’t mind, since I like to think I’m getting paid to be useful) and chastising my piles of paper on the other. There is a method to the “madness”. I have loads of desk space and you want me to just waste all that potential surface space? Those piles just so happen to be excellent visual reminders.
You want people to walk into the office and think that I have nothing to do? Why don’t you go waste another 10 minutes clearing off your desk instead of doing your actual job and let me get back to mine?! —Someone who can look past the “surface”
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2010.
actually… wasn’t there an article written recently stating clutter is a good sign, because the people don’t always obsess (and waste time) with everything being perfect and tidy and in the correct spot every single day……. they just stick with getting done what they need to do?
I swear I read it… and thought it interesting.
yes zZz there was such an article. my desk to home and at the shop are very messy…and well that’s that
just goes to show, how fucking picky you must be.
what is it with people these days and the assumed right to critique anything work related these days; I’m thinking this is the reason behind alot of “postage” 🙂
Used syringes? – Check. German Schiesse porn video? – Check. Stacks of U.S. currency and recently renewed passport ? – Check. Dorling-Kindersley chart of major human blood vessels sitting next to opened straight razor? – Check
Okay, I’m ready to start the workday.
I’m the cluttered type too, but my office has to have a clean desk policy (can’t have client files laying around for just anyone to see) so I have no choice to be neat and tidy. If I need to look up a mortgage deed, I’ve gotta get it from a file, and as soon as I’m done with it, back in the file.
If you’re dealing with any sort of personal information, you should have a clean desk. If not, well, maybe not.
Also, there are lots of cases where a colleague might be trying to locate a file that is living on your desk in one of your piles. If they don’t understand your system, how are they supposed so find it if, say, you’re out sick.
Jennier has a point — I got in MEGA shit during one of my internships because I had saved a file in two places and only updated the one in my “my files” and not the one on my desktop. When I was sick the next day, my boss looked through my computer and only saw the file on my desktop and accused me of planning a “sick day” (an unpaid one at that — *and* the sick day was on payday where we had to get cheques…yeah, I planned an unpaid sick day on pay day so i could sit at home and do work *eyeroll*) to finish work I was supposed to finish that day. All because I was stupid and forgot to attach the file to the email.
Boss was a dick, regardless, but still. I could’ve saved myself a whole lot of trouble (and a meeting with my faculty advisor ffs) if I had’ve cleaned up the files on my desktop and made the rest of my files more accessible to others.
my desks are covered in dirty coffee cups, pens, newspapers, hairclips, catalouges and dust bunnies
is it all dark and scary like night of the dust lepus?
that would be utterly horrifying!
THE HORROR
I should have put ‘dust’ in parenthesis … so people would get the movie reference….
since I’m assuming I’m likely one of the scant few who’ve actually seen it.
Early 70’s , Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh and, wait for it – DeForrest Kelley. “Damn it Jim, I’m a doctor not a veterinarian. Oh, yeah, that is a kind of doctor”
Cry havoc and let slip the coneys of war.
from the novel “the year of the angry rabbit” man i love bad movies
Now, if you want a really good movie about rabbits going to war, you can’t beat “Watership Down”. The animation’s a bit dated now, but cast of Masterpiece Theatre voices cannot be beat.
I second this bitch. I always thought I was organized until I started working at an office, and my desk is so messy, but it works for me and since I’m the only one working here, that is all that should matter. People need to keep their stupid judgments to themselves.
great book, good movie…the boys are talking me pa down to the ships on sunday
Nicely put. I read it my first year at Kings when I should have been reading The Divine Comedy. 3 guesses which one stays with me all these years later.
We’re going to try to hit some ships Sunday as well. Be nice to see the Ark again and I want to do USS Wasp, but really, it’s all good.
yeah the wasp is high on their visitation list. i am partial to the tall ships, but it’s all grey’t
Big things that move. It’s all hella kule. The former warehouse foreman at the gulag used to always go see the US Coast Guard training ship Eagle because his father served on it when it was the German Kreigsmarine training ship Horst Wessel. Neat guy with some very interesting stories.