The office suite I share with my colleagues across our division has desks, cubicles, two conference rooms, and a break room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our team was the last to move – our offices needed to be vacated first – and the rest of the division had already staked out their claims.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was\u2026a mess. Every surface was cluttered with old print samples, office supplies, and surplus computer equipment. For every cluttered and junky looking surface there were two empty cabinets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It bothered me for a while and was a little embarrassing to have people come to my office in the back corner past all the clutter and junk. Didn\u2019t seem, to me, to reflect a professional environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward to this year – yes, it\u2019s been like this for years – and my mental health is not doing so great. On a Saturday, I decided to come into the office and tidy things up – fighting back against the chaos with a little order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I took a couple trashbags with me, turned on all the lights so I could see what I was working with, and set to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I gathered and broke down all the empty cardboard boxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gathered all the surplus computer equipment in one area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Organized all the office supplies and paper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cleared off all the desks and the counters in the break room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And set up a nicer workspace for one of the student assistants in a cubicle with a lamp.\u00a0 Everyone deserves a nice place to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Took me about 2 hours and while I worked I was supportive and encouraging to myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNice work on breaking down those boxes, Anthony!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou found the perfect place for those supplies,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou are doing such a good job with those desks!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When I was done, I took out the trash and turned out the lights as I left. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I assumed that my colleagues either wouldn\u2019t notice or wouldn\u2019t care.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter too much since I did it to try and help my own head. And it was very cheap therapy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We were all remote on Monday, but on Tuesday one of my colleagues asked if I knew who cleaned up the office. I told him it was me and he was surprised – but thanked me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the middle of the day, though, things turned slightly sour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Empty cardboard boxes appeared on top of a shelf that I had just cleared. I didn\u2019t know who put them there or if they were intended to be saved or just left as clutter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And an extra monitor – that I recall seeing on the floor of a colleague\u2019s office – got moved to a desk in the common area that I had cleared. Rather than clutter up their office, it now added to the clutter of the common area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had expected a slow slide towards chaos – it is the way of things since order takes work – but I didn\u2019t expect it to happen quite so fast.\u00a0 Not even a day\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know that I shouldn’t feel bad about it or feel anything about it. This is an office suite shared by 20 people and I don\u2019t get to impose my own ethos on the space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But it would have been nice if it had lasted just a little<\/em> bit longer\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The office suite I share with my colleagues across our division has desks, cubicles, two conference rooms, and a break room. Our team was the last to move – our offices needed to be vacated first – and the rest of the division had already staked out their claims.\u00a0\u00a0 And it was\u2026a mess. Every surface […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3205,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3204\/revisions\/3205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}