tangentalizingly delicious

Tuesday March 7, 2006

One of the things I hate about my current office is that there’s no ownership of space. It’s something that I think private offices contribute to, that sense of ownership.

If I had a private office, I could put up a poster, say, or listen to the radio (or cds or mp3s or a string quartet I built a small stage for in the corner, whatever) at a reasonable volume (as Milton might say).

If I had a private office I could close the door, and turn on a fan if it got too hot, or hang a sweater on a hook for when it got too cold. In a private office I could have a place to store reference material, if I actually had any reference material to store.

My current workspace feels very transitional. This is in large part my own doing, but in part it is because it is the first workspace one sees upon entering the office, and therefore (as I was told in my first week of employ after leaving a pad of paper out overnight), it is important that it be kept presentable and free of clutter.

Therefore I haven’t made it my own, because pretty much by definition something that is mine is a little bit beat up and very likely cluttered. It’s my aesthetic: frumpy, and I rather enjoy it.

I think though that a small piece of ownership in a piece of an office (in the larger more generic sense of office, that which contains all the private offices as well as the common space. the place you say “I’m going to the office” about) helps engender ownership in the larger sense, too.

I’m one of those probably irritating people who think that if you drink the last cup of coffee, you should put a new pot on. Or in the case of an office like mine, if you use up the last of the water in the single-serving coffee maker’s repository, you should add some more into it.

If you throw something out, and the garbage bag is pretty full, you should tie up the bag and put it in the garbage area, and put a fresh bag into the bin.

I know that PastRob probably wouldn’t have thought about these sorts of things, and I think that office kitchen spaces are a realm of hot contention most of the time. I consider myself lucky though that one of my previous employers had pretty straight-forward rules, and that new hires were instructed as part of the orientation.

And when I say orientation, I mean simple stuff, not a day-long event filled with training movies, but just as part of the tour. “Here’s the kitchen. If you put something into the dishwasher and there’s no more space, turn it on. If you need a cup from the dishwasher, empty the entire thing. If you drink the last of the coffee and it’s before 2 o’clock, make a new pot.”

While I might think these sorts of behaviours are The Way Things Should Be, there’s absolutely no guarantee anyone else does. There are people who cling strongly to their job descriptions and if “occasionally take out trash” isn’t on there, they will hotly contest any argument that they should.

I like to think of my office as somewhere I want to go. Not my current one, mind, but my notional ideal office with a job that I’m engaged in and like and am challenged by (hey, it’s happened before!). An office really should be a decent place to go. Ownership in something, and I don’t really mean equity here, just the sense that you’re a part of it and that you contribute and that you’ve commited some degree of yourself to the thing, really helps influence that.