the torn-down sign, the committed decorator, and other stories of shared work space gone awry

by Alison Green on March 5, 2025

Last week we talked about shared space / hot-desking horror stories and here are 10 of my favorites that you shared.

1. The torn-down sign

We have a bank of shared desks which aren’t actually general-use hot desks, but hot desks specific to our team. However, as we’re often out and about supporting other colleagues or delivering training out in the field, we’re usually only in one day a week. People realized this and started using our desks as hot desks, and all our equipment gradually failed/vanished, and when we DID come in, there wouldn’t be any desks available. So we put up signs.

One of the other people came in when a colleague and I were in a meeting elsewhere on site but set up at our desks, and about half an hour after the signs went up. When we got out of the meeting, he’d torn the sign down that was at the desk where he was sat, put it face down on the desk, then outright denied it when questioned. No one believed his lie, but our manager had a word with him and put up additional signage. He still sits at the desks apart from one day when the signs state are only for our team, but he refuses to speak to any of us.

2. The phone calls

I am currently living through a desk sharing situation where we both need to work some of the same hours. This requires us to sit on opposite sides of the same desk with laptops. No one can use the monitors for fear of it being “unfair.” That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. Not my setup luckily, but nearby, multiple times per day a neighboring coworker will make or answer very private personal calls literally sitting at a desk a foot from their desk mate. Topics have been: child support (that wasn’t paid), screaming at people she believes to be stealing from her, and some very NSFW inappropriate comments thrown in (loudly). Meanwhile, her desk mate is attempting to be on work calls. My coworker (her desk mate) has requested a move but is currently stuck there with her two days a week.

3. The tickets

I have an assigned desk, but I only work in the office one day a week. The other four days, I work from home. That means my desk is available four days week for use as a hot desk for folks who don’t have an assigned desk.

One gentleman (“E”) who knows my schedule uses my desk as a hot desk frequently. And apparently runs into just an unfathomable number of technical issues. I have lost track of the number of help desk tickets E has opened for the equipment at my desk. But since it is my equipment, I am the one who has to field the help desk techs when they attempt to troubleshoot. Help desk techs often drop by on while I’m in the office to troubleshoot the technical issue du jour. We are, strangely, never able to replicate the issues E claims to experience.

Often times, when I close the help desk ticket, nothing else ever comes of it. Occasionally, he’ll re-open the ticket. Once, a help desk tech wrote down very detailed instructions on how to resolve the USER-CAUSED issue E was experiencing at my desk. I left them on the keyboard for E to read the next day. E sent me an IM on Friday telling me he’d thrown the instructions in the trash (???).

With all the issues he seems to experience using my desk, I’ve often wondered why he doesn’t just hot desk in one of the five other open desks in my cube share. The world may never know.

4. The photos

Coworker #1 shared a desk with Coworker #2, who was going through a drawn out break-up with Coworker #3. We were never quite sure if the relationship was officially over. One day Coworker #1 found multiple photos cut up into little pieces in the desk (our building had a photobooth that printed physical photos). Coworker #1 realized they were all photos that included Coworker #3. That wasn’t the official end of their break-up, but it did add to the lore as they continued to go off and on for years.

5. The committed decorator

I used to work at a place where there was a morning shift and a night shift, so everyone shared a desk with one other person. I brought in a little 8×10 picture and hung it up on one half of the little area because I needed something to look at (no windows), but didn’t want to overwhelm my desk mate.

The night shift guy across from me had no such consideration. The three little walls of his desk area were absolutely COVERED in stuff – photos, a framed Nickelodeon Magazine with Larissa Oleynik on the cover (when she was a child on Alex Mack), the slipcover of an X-Files DVD box set, the sticker they put on the corner of a television set to tell you its screen size … just the most bizarre stuff.

His deskmate finally complained and he was told he could only decorate one half of the space. So when I came in the next morning, he had meticulously measured the space so he was taking up exactly half. At Christmas, he brought in a family photo album and left it open to a different page every day. Then he brought in one child-size dress-up Cinderella high heel. This plus many, many, MANY other things led to him eventually being fired.

6. The pile

When I was hired on at a small social enterprise, my desk was pushed up against my boss’s desk, back-to-back. It meant that we sat directly facing each other all day. I’m a tidy person and never have clutter on my desk, while my boss was a borderline hoarder. She had multiple towers of loose papers, at least 15 tchotchkes, and an extensive nature collection that included feathers, skulls, and a dried bear poop that she liked because it had seeds in it. There was almost no visible desk surface.

Within a day, her clutter had crept over the border and onto my desk. I ignored it, but the flow was unstoppable. By day 3, the slow-moving landslide of junk had taken over the back third of my desk. Since she wasn’t in that day to talk to her, I took all her junk off my desk and neatly piled it back on hers. The next morning she profusely apologized and said she would be more mindful, while commenting on how tidy and sterile my desk was.

This became a pattern: throughout the workday, a paper stack would be nudged onto my desk, or an animal bone would fall from an overflowing basket onto my printer. I started propping up items to create a fence on the border, à la Dwight Schrute. Several times I politely talked to her about needing my desk to be free of clutter. Nothing worked. Every afternoon after she left, I would remove her items and neatly stack them back on her desk. Every morning she would apologize and continue the pattern. I could see her shame growing. About a year later we moved into a new “office” that she had built which was a log cabin with no indoor plumbing, heating, or cooling. There was an outhouse with no running water. I quit a few months later.

7. The unauthorized plant

I was a “rover” at a bank where I was sent to new branches every day to cover for absences — basically a substitute bank teller and banker. One branch had a plant care service where these people would come in and tend to the plants which were, I guess, part of a contracted service. They’d water them, trim leaves, polish leaves, etc. They silently entered offices to avoid bothering the bankers.

I was sitting in a lady’s office working when a plant lady stormed in pointing to a plant and demanding to know where it came from and that it wasn’t their plant and they don’t care for unauthorized plants. I shrugged and told her this isn’t my office nor is this my branch. I’m just sitting here for now. She came back at least twice more to actually reprimand me, essentially her company’s client, and demand answers. It was the strangest thing to happen to me up to that point. I left a note for the plant owner that she had better watch her back with these plant ladies.

8. The log-ins

Years ago, I worked at an office where most of us were in the field all day, and we shared two desktop computers for data entry, payroll, and other admin tasks. One of my coworkers was zealous about cyber security, so he updated the desktops to set very secure passwords (long strings of letters, numbers, and special characters).

Unfortunately that meant that none of us could remember the passwords, so they were written on post-it notes taped to the desks (very secure!). The real trouble began when he transferred to another office and one of the post-its was lost. I don’t know if anyone was ever able to log into the data entry computer again.

9. The desk walk

After I finished my masters, I considered moving from SmallState University to Bigwig University for a Ph.D. (my advisor was retiring and there was nobody else in my area to work with) when I visited the campus, the grad student who was showing me around brought me to the grad student office – a room filled with so many desks that he had to walk over one person’s desk to get to his. I changed my research focus and stayed SmallStateU, where I had a three person office and a couch.

10. The Pop Tarts

I was an expensive consultant back in the dot.com days, brought into a medium sized company that was creating early internet shopping software. They had the full dot.com culture, including lots of free food. What they did not have was a lot of space.

My desk was a laptop sitting on top of a giant case of brown-sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts in the middle of the breakroom.

I’m the adaptable sort – at the rate they were paying me, I had to be – so this was fine. The only challenge was that whenever someone wanted a Pop Tart, I had to lift my laptop and let them into the cardboard case so they could grab some. This generally happened about seven times per day.

On the other hand, I ended up with a 13% raise from that assignment, and I got all the Pop Tarts I could ever want, so I guess it was worth it.

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{ 185 comments }

{ 185 comments… read them below }

  1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    My only comment for #5 is the GIF of Homer Simpson backing into a hedge.

      1. HayHayHay*

        Stalking a coworker and staying in the office all weekend to watch movies on the company’s wifi were the two big ones.

        Personally, he backed me into a corner one day when I had brought in cupcakes for the morning crew because he was upset I didn’t bring enough for the night crew as well. At the company Christmas party he poked my ex-husband in the stomach and said, “I see someone likes all those cupcakes she makes!”

      2. AnotherOne*

        I don’t want to know what happened to the other child-size dress-up Cinderella high heel.

        Like that is surprisingly disturbing.

        1. Coffee*

          In my head canon he is a family man who’s kid gave it to him to take to work “so he won’t be lonely and miss her” – or whatever kid logic reasoning

          1. Wolf*

            Yeah, I was thinking he has a little daughter who likes princess dressup and gave him a shoe so he could have some fairytale magic at work.

    6. raincoaster*

      That guy in #5 will eventually be played by Crispin Glover in the tv adaptation.

  2. anonprofit*

    #6 had me really baffled until I remembered some of the things I’ve heard from my wildlife biologist relatives…

    1. LifeisaDream*

      I’m old enough now that if I don’t have a working toilet and hot and cold running water as a bare minimum, I’m not working. Snakes in the outhouse. Racoons staring intot the windows at night. Porcupines refusing to get off the road. My days of living off the grid are over and out.

      1. Will "scifantasy" Frank*

        I think I was that old at 16. Even when I worked as a camp counselor it wasn’t that kind of camp.

      2. Ally McBeal*

        My office had an issue a few years back with the ladies toilets – they would just decide to stop flushing every once in a while. Without fail, every time we got the notification from the office admin that the toilets were out of order (so we could use the auxiliary bathroom on another floor) I packed up my stuff and went home to WFH for the rest of the day. The other floor was creepy (attic/basement vibes and the heating/cooling system was always out of whack) so I was not about to stick around for a full day of that.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      I mean, I could do this, but I’m not gonna do it as an all-day, five-days-a-week office setup.

    5. nnn*

      The interesting thing about #6 is they never specifically state that the organization is nature-related. It’s just described as “a small social enterprise.”

      Their field could be, like, housing or literacy or food security or any number of things entirely unrelated to bear poop.

      1. RLC*

        The last time I heard bear poop referenced in a workplace discussion it was part of a prank one colleague played on another (ongoing prankster antics between two very willing participants) as payback for a prank involving a dead fish taped to the underside of a desk drawer. (We all worked in natural resources.)

        1. Stoney Lonesome*

          I hid a headless dead snake I found in the woods in my coworker’s desk. My husband was horrified when I told him. My coworker, on the other hand, was delighted! I also work in natural resources

  3. Zona the Great*

    If this were the “tell me something petty you’ve done at the office” thread, I would suggest #6 wait until it really piled up and ‘accidently’ scoot your desk away exclaiming a spider scared you or something. But since this is the real world, I like the cut of #6’s jib.

    1. Antilles*

      Another alternative would be to come in super early one morning and move her desk an inch or backwards so there’s barely a gap between your desks. Not enough to be instantly noticeable, but enough that her piles of paper fall to the floor.
      Or get a couple of those vertical paper holders to put on the back end of your desk, to basically build a fence.

      1. Person from the Resume*

        I would put something up like a poster board or cardboard so her stuff couldn’t creep into my desktop.

  4. A Simple Narwhal*

    #6 I want to know more about this hand-built log cabin office! What? How? Why?

    1. Longtime Lurker*

      Same! Especially because it sounds like they were moving there from a traditional office (unless I’m misreading). What on earth could have led to that switch?

      1. Grizzled*

        The first office was a trailer she leased from the municipality. It had so many issues that the municipality condemned it so we had to find another place.

    2. Grizzled*

      OP 6 here, I’m not kidding or exaggerating about the cabin. She got a series of grants to build it as a nature centre then built it on private land that didn’t have zoning laws. The original plan had running water but the grant funding didn’t cover the full plan. To save money she brought in a group of trainee log home builders and scrapped the heating, cooling and plumbing. There was power for lighting and laptops. The trainees dug an outhouse. The staff moved into the office in early spring and I kept records of the indoor temps, which were 55°F. She gave me a space heater and promised to get a wood stove installed but it never materialized. The staff wore full winter outwear. I complained about the outhouse and she added a hand sanitizer bottle to it. I considered reporting her but in the end just quit.

      2. stratospherica*

        Oh my goodness. The animal bones maybe I could tolerate (even if I find it wrong place and time for a bit of memento mori) but you’re a much braver person than I for sticking it out for months in the cabin. I’d be out of there so fast.

  6. Jamoche*

    “a room filled with so many desks that he had to walk over one person’s desk to get to his”

    There was a skit on the Carol Burnett show like that.

    1. WeirdChemist*

      The research lab I worked at in undergrad required some acrobatics in order to get to a few of the grad student desks… and some of them were even shared on top of that (the desk sizes were approximately postage stamp sized).

      I’m surprised that was “BigWig University”, in my experience with academic grad student facilities, big universities and small private universities usually have the funding to at least have *some* space, it’s the small public universities where theres struggle

      1. Anonymous Scientist*

        My first “desk” in one lab as an undergrad research fellow was the top surface of a two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a chair pulled up to it. There was, of course, nowhere for my knees, and if anyone wanted any of the papers in the cabinet, I had to move.

      2. Rusticatrix*

        Might depend on the department. When I was a grad student at a decent sized state university, English grad students were I think around 15-20 per office, which was a long, narrow ish room with desks lined up on both walls. Not many wealthy alumni or people making big donations to the English department for nice facilities.

        1. WeirdChemist*

          Yeah, most of my experience is in the sciences, may be completely different for humanities!

          1. NotBatman*

            In order to count as R1 institutions, U.S. universities must have a “grad student office” or “grad student break room” somewhere on campus. I’m sure the intent was good, but in practice our “grad student lounge” was so small that the ca. 1995 copier in there took up literally over half the floor space. It was an otherwise bare former-closet, so I only ever saw it used by people who wanted to make out or make personal phone calls.

      3. Wolf*

        My university had converted a two-people office into a six-people office with desks along both sides. So people sat back to back, and if one wanted to get up, the other had to move out of the way.

        Another office was a repurposed bathroom. As in, they removed the stalls and the toilets, but it was still a tiled room with three sinks and it never quite stopped smelling like a 60 year old bathroom.

      1. Pie Fight*

        Haha, love it! “Is my Aunt Minnie in here” is my family’s locator phrase. You can call it out in any crowded place and we are the only ones who respond (usually in a Groucho voice). :-)

        1. H3llifIknow*

          I still do “Marco” and await the “Polo” despite the fact that literally everyone in the store wants to answer… EXCEPT MY HUSBAND. I’ll never stop trying though…one day, it’s gonna work.

    3. Wayward Sun*

      I’m surprised the fire marshal wasn’t all over that. In the grad hive at the university I worked at, they weren’t even allowed to have a table in the common area because it was between the desk area and the exit.

    4. Marion Ravenwood*

      There’s a TV show in the UK called Sort Your Life Out (which is about decluttering/organisation). This would not be out of place on that!

    5. ElenaSSF*

      When they tore down the freeway obstructing the view the collection of six cubes our team was occupying were immediately taken over by “important people”. That would have been okay except that they stuffed the six of us into an oversized closet with desks leaving almost no room to move. Being contractors we put up with that for about four weeks, getting fobbed off weekly with tales of them working on a solution.

      At that point we discussed it with one another and decided we were done. The entire contractor team reported to management that if we weren’t in a better location within a week we all quit. 3 days later, they magically came up with 6 contiguous cubes, and we were moved to something halfway decent. This was all in the early 90s, when cubes were the minimum you could expect instead of an unexpected grace in the corporate real estate profit productivity losses world.

  7. Free Meerkats*

    I missed the original.

    Not a desk, but a shared work truck belonging to maintenance at the wastewater plant. Our maintenance people were … idiosyncratic. Each had a Way They Did Things and a Way the Truck Was Organized. And none of them meshed. At least an hour of each morning was spent reorganizing the truck to suit the day’s user’s desires, along with much commentary on “How can X work like this?”, only with more colorful language.

    That was going on when I started there and was still going on with different people when I retired 32 years later.

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      That’s like kitchen mise en place but with socket wrenches. Hilarious!

  8. Will "scifantasy" Frank*

    About a year later we moved into a new “office” that she had built which was a log cabin with no indoor plumbing, heating, or cooling. There was an outhouse with no running water. I quit a few months later.

    I applaud your fortitude for not quitting at the word “outhouse.”

    2. Lock the door!*

      Yep, I’m at the “considering my options” stage because the toilet door locks have been dodgy at work this week! No plumbing and I’d be straight out the door.

  9. SH*

    A few samll tales from my stint with return to office at F100 companies:
    1. The coworker that was so quiet passed away at thier desk and no one noticed for a few days.
    2. The coworkers that got caught mid act in the elevator.
    3. The shared desk equipment growing legs (monitors, mice, keyboards, adaptors).
    4. The contractors stealing our new (huge) TV’s that were supposed to be digital signage.
    5. Folks booking a shared desk for months out but hardly came in and used them.
    6. People getting kicked out of conference rooms b/c their time was up.
    7. Folks “claiming” private office space that was assigned as drop in offices.
    8. F-100 wanting everyone in the office but doesnt have enough capacity/desks.
    8.5. Same company closing offices in other cities and forcing folks to move to overcrowded hub.
    9. Elevators jammed up with the new office traffic.
    10. All the new food trucks that eventually disapear.
    Bonus – Employees badging in for an hour then going home for the rest of the day.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      You can’t just come in here and drop #1 without giving us the rest of the story. Please tell us more!!!

      2. Zona the Great*

        And is it possible that it is a DIFFERENT death at work that no one noticed than the one recently at Wells Cargo?

      3. SH*

        I can’t get into details but it is not Wells Fargo. The employee was in his 60s and sat in the back cubical of the office. He always kept to himself and had a job that was individual contributor “heads down.”

        One day an employee comes in early and went back in that area for something and found the employee with his head in the desk. They thought he was sleeping but noticed his posture was awkward so they called his name. He never responded.

        Apparently he had a heart attack that Friday afternoon-ish. They found him Monday. Every few years the story comes up at work and new employees don’t believe it happened. It did – check on your quiet office mates :-(

        1. Strive to Excel*

          Over the weekend makes it a lot less weird, ngl. Still weird and sad but better than him just sitting there for several workdays.

      1. Seal*

        Technically a workplace tale but about furniture in public areas:

        One library I worked at had a variety of study spaces throughout the building in various configurations. Some spaces had traditional large library tables set up in rows; others were “flexible” spaces with tables of different sizes on wheels that could be easily rearranged to accommodate different activities. During finals week, the building was open 24/7 and packed to the gills with studying students, although the crowds tended to thin out between midnight and 7am or so. It was not uncommon to find the wheeled tables and chairs outside their designated areas, but one morning a staff member found one of the traditional 4-seat library tables – which was solid oak and VERY heavy – had been moved to a different floor overnight. Whenever library staff had to move one of those tables, it took at least 2 people and a furniture dolly and even then it was a bit of a production. Yet a bunch of sleep-deprived students amped up on coffee and energy drinks managed to pick this thing up on the first floor, stuff it onto the elevator, and drop it off on the 4th floor in the middle of the night without anyone noticing.

        Naturally, there was some lively discussion afterwards about whether or not the library needed a new policy regarding furniture moving or new signage reminding users to not move tables that didn’t have wheels. This was met with a collective sign from those of us who chalked it up to students being students during finals week.

        1. Tired Librarian*

          We caught some students moving a sofa up the stairs during exam season – they couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around why it was possibly an issue, because obviously they were going to move it back when they were done!

      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        Yeah, that’s appropriate behavior and literally the only good thing about our non-frosted-glass conference room doors — it’s very easy for people in a conference room to see the next meeting gathering outside and wrap up promptly!

      2. Zombeyonce*

        Yeah, everything else on the list was wild but that is a completely normal business practice. If you’ve used up your time in a meeting room someone is waiting for, you should get kicked out!

      3. MigraineMonth*

        That’s the one on the list I thought was normal. If you’re running over, I’m giving you bug-eyes through the glass panel. If you’re 3 minutes over, I’m busting in.

        2. Marion Ravenwood*

          Also, if you’re the person in the room, then you need to gather up your stuff as quickly as you can and leave looking suitably sheepish and apologetic!

      4. aunttora*

        Back in “on campus” days (huge pharma, not university), if you were above a certain level, you could squat as long as you wanted and the group of lesser humans waiting outside? Got the stink eye. Or just ignored. One more example of the “rules for thee” attitude in Corporate America. Yet another reason I’m so happy to be almost to the end of my working life, despite the way my aging body is falling apart!

  10. ian*

    OP #3, the answer is obvious – he uses your desk because you’ll be there to deal with the help desk to solve his problems! Next time, just say something to IT like “it’s not happening now, you should come back when E is back and he can show it to you” – that might solve the issue, either because they leave you alone, or because he’ll get tired of dealing with it when he doesn’t have you acting as an assistant for him.

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I mean, it kind of sounds like he doesn’t have any actual issues and is just trolling them. Or like he never actually gets any work done because he’s having “issues” and submitting all these tickets as a defense for why he never actually gets any work done, meanwhile nothing is actually going wrong and he’s just reading golf tips all day or something.

      1. Ama*

        That was my guess. If he has a ticket it “proves” he was trying to get this issue preventing him from working fixed so it’s not his fault.

        That said, I have worked with people who were capable of breaking software/hardware/websites in ways our IT found completely mystifying, so maybe he was just one of those. Still shouldn’t have been OP’s problem to deal with, though.

        1. Dahlia*

          There’s a website I use that I consistently break in new and interesting ways. I’m often the first one writing in about an issue to tech support, and then they gaslight me a little bit that no that’s totally how it’s always been, that’s how that’s supposed to work, and then a couple days later other people start experiencing the same thing and eventually it gets fixed.

      2. H3llifIknow*

        Yeah I was thinking along those lines. I also have an “E” and his initial is literally E. He’s a little older than I am, but he’s been allegedly doing this job in this industry for like 30+ years. Yet, he has issues with his laptop that NOBODY else on the team has. Whether it’s his VPN connection, he can’t get to Deltek to do his time/sign his timesheet, his Outlook disconnects all by itself, w/o him noticing for days. And he calls ME for all of it. I finally had to say, “I’m your team lead, not your personal tech support. If you’re having this many problems call the help desk and let them troubleshoot with you, but it’s impacting both YOUR work and MINE.” He finally stopped making so many complaints and excuses ….just one every now and then, especially if I call him out for not meeting a deadline.

  11. Mouse named Anon*

    #5 – someone at my husband’s office almost got fired for never throwing away their cans of Mt. Dew. Dude drank like 2-3 a day. He just kept stacking and stacking them. This one just reminded me of that LOL.

    1. Amber Rose*

      One of our techs at an old job had a tiny “office” in a closet next to the boiler. That was bad enough, but every so often someone would open the door and get buried in a flood of coke bottles. We had to create a “clean truck” policy for the vehicles because when he took one, the same thing would happen. Just tidal waves of empty bottles.

    2. Do the Dew*

      In an early job I stacked my many Mountain Dew cans. I never got fired for it, even when I occasionally spent work time designing more efficient stacking arrangements. When I had to move to a different office, the din from me knocking down the tower drew coworkers from across the building.

    3. WallOfCansFTW*

      One of my co-workers and I did that during a consulting engagement at the client’s office. The client’s employees complained about it all the time, mainly because part of our contract with the client included us having the same snacks service we had in our own offices, so we had our own private pantry in the office with a full assortment of soft drinks and other snacks while the client’s employees had to go to their own cafeteria and pay for snacks.

      Our couple-of-decades-younger selves thought it was quite hilarious.

      We did eventually demolish the wall of empty cans, because they got so high it was impossible to keep them from falling.

    4. H3llifIknow*

      OMG I worked with a guy who did that…. he was very proud of the pyramid (think soup cans at the grocery story) of cans he had and how big it had grown. It was there the 5 years I worked there and until he finally left another 3 or 4 after that!

    5. AnonforThis*

      One of the places that we buy parts from includes small boxes of snacks (approx. 2″ x 5″ x 10″) when they send your stuff. The boxes are also fairly sturdy on their own so they don’t immediately get recycled – they sit around the office holding odds and ends. A co-worker had apparently been stockpiling his boxes for a while. During his final 2 weeks at our company, he constructed a throne of these boxes. It easily held his weight.

  12. Longtime Lurker*

    #6, I have also worked at a place with an outhouse! It was a small, very hippie farm, so it wasn’t even that surprising! My favorite part was the curtain rather than a door. I worked there for 5 years. (actually, for 4 of those years there was an indoor outhouse, with water, but they didn’t want the farmhands in the main farmhouse during covid, which…fair)

    But #10 is my absolute favorite.

    1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

      LOL @ indoor outhouse! I know what you mean, but it sounds like an oxymoron! X-D

      1. Nightengale*

        Are fire marshals that obscure? I feel like our high school talked about inspections from the fire marshal and occupancy limits. I also remember meeting our campus fire marshal in medical school by chance at an event and bringing up my concerns about evacuation procedures for patients, visitors or employees with mobility impairments.

        1. Quill*

          My high school knew the fire marshall very well, but that’s because we built a haunted house every year and he wanted to make sure we didn’t burn the place down with strobe lights.

      2. Wolf*

        Oh, we knew, but when your boss is also the one that grades your thesis, you try not to do stuff that angers the boss.

      3. Seeking Second Childhood*

        Some fire marshals are better than others. When my late husband was in grad school he gave me a tour of his new lab, and *I* spotted that many of the smoke detectors still had construction protectors on them. They were *bright orange* snap-ons.

    2. postdooc*

      Yes, this was my first thought! As a grad student, we had people coming by ~ yearly to make sure that things were generally compliant with university standards. Though maybe that was focused on buildings that also had lab spaces in them?

      1. Wayward Sun*

        At the universities I worked at it was every space. We’d hear about it if we had a power strip plugged into another power strip.

    3. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

      At one new employee orientation meeting at a major corporation, the fire alarm went off and we evacuated. After we came back, I asked the HR rep why the fire burners under the food trays hadn’t been blown out. They didn’t seem concerned. This had been almost immediately after the slides on fire evacuation. I suggested that this situation should be added, but I didn’t follow up with the emergency action team.

  14. BethPlusBooks*

    Re #3: Perhaps the errors are the point. If he keeps reporting tech problems, and doesn’t resolve them, then he can do less work.

    Source- My husband who has worked IT support for many moons, and witnessed many ways people try to get out of working.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Yeah, this was my thought as well. I commented on another threat similarly, though my comment seems to be stuck in the ether at the moment.

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I have often said about certain team members that if they spent half as much time and effort in working, as they spend in finding ways to not work without getting caught, everyone would be so much better off.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        That is true about SO MANY PEOPLE. Imagine how amazing the world would be if people worked so hard doing good things instead of trying to game the system, etc? It’d be AMAZING.

      2. Lab snep*

        Like the people who spend so much time complaining about how busy they are and how they neeeever take their lunch thay they could have been done work and taken their lunch and had time to spare.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I used to play in an orchestra where if someone asked the conductor a question that was not on his rehearsal agenda he wouldn’t answer it but would instead say, “We don’t have the time to answer that, the clock is our enemy!” It drove me absolutely nuts. Like, my dude, it would take you an equal amount of time to answer the question as it does to say you don’t have time to answer the question. These questions were *always* relevant, too. Like, “Is this an A natural or an A flat?” Really important questions. That and the fact that after a few years there I was able to predict *exactly* what he was going to say about what we just played, and the fact that he never really fixed anything that went wrong led to my quitting that orchestra even though it was one of the only professional orchestra jobs I ever had. I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense.

    3. Charlotte Lucas*

      Back when tech support often had to physically be at a computer, I worked somewhere that had a lot of young women and one pretty cute tech support guy. A few people suspected that some of the “tech problems” that were reported were more accurately “I’d like a visit from the cute, nice support guy” requests.

    4. H3llifIknow*

      One of my sons is an IT/computer support technician. They use the code PICNIC error for those people in the ticket resolution: “Problem in Chair, Not in Computer.”

  15. Counter for a desk*

    Not really a shared desk situation but more of a space was limited one. I worked in Purchasing and Inventory for a managed services company. I was more on the purchasing side, but everyone pitched in for inventory when applicable. We did have one devoted inventory person. When I was hired there wasn’t enough space or a desk for me. Instead they sat me at a desk level counter top. Not only was the work surface small, but the counter was also used for inventory purposes. Our inventory person tried her best to respect the my space, but there was only so much she could do. Occasionally she would set down a heavy box and the whole counter would move. Thus sending all my stuff flying in the air. This should have been a red flag for the company. Don’t work somewhere that makes you sit at a counter….

    1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

      I’m having flashbacks to a science class I tried to take in high school that was oversubscribed and held in a home ec lab. I ended up sitting on the counter for the brief time I was in the class, since there weren’t enough chairs or tables.

      1. Knighthope*

        48 students in a hogh school English class when student teaching. 36 desks. The last 12 students to arrive on any given day had to sit on the windowsill counter and hold their binders on their laps to write. Good times.

        1. Nightengale*

          I sat on a windowsill for a college class. It was supposed to be lotteried down to something like 30 and there were maybe 38 people the first night, a few over but still small enough for discussion and participation, so we all agreed not to make the teacher lottery people out. I hung out on the windowsill with my laptop on my lap and had a great anthropology course that I still quote from almost 30 years later. I think attitudes about having enough seats somewhat relate to how much agency people feel they have. In our case the windowsills were by choice.

    1. Grenelda Thurber*

      It does! Especially if there’s a toaster nearby. For the issue of the repeated laptop lifting, they should have pulled an estimated daily quantity of pop tarts out of the big box every morning. ;-)

      2. Marion Ravenwood*

        I feel if this was me I would basically end up taking a Pop Tart for myself every time someone asked me for one (as ‘tax’), and then end up with a slightly concerning Pop Tart habit.

  17. NMitford*

    #10 reminds me of the “Homicide” tv show set in Baltimore, where the new detective didn’t have a desk and put his nameplate on top of the water cooler and worked from there.

    1. Katy*

      At least Gee got him a desk a couple of episodes in. Unlike The X-Files, where Scully never got a desk for THE ENTIRE TIME she worked on the X-Files.

  18. juliebulie*

    I shared a desk with someone (I had it the first half of the week, she had it the second half of the week, alternating Wednesdays) for a couple of years in the 90s. We were considerate to one another and it worked out fine. We are both very territorial, but we were equally respectful of each other’s space. It was nice. And now, I see, perhaps unusual! I’m glad ONE thing went right at that job!

  19. Skippy*

    I know how I use my keyboard and mouse, which is why I’m confident in saying that sharing a keyboard and mouse is gross.

    1. lizzay*

      YES! This is the biggest problem with hot desking! Ugh. I had to sit at my not-preferred desk once and the keyboard was FULL of crumbs. It was so gross. By the same token, I’m sure the keyboard at my desk was grody to everyone else. Your own dirt is fine, others is just nasty!

    2. TeapotNinja*

      The trick is to get a keyboard nobody else in your office knows how to use. The ergonomic keyboard market has been blowing up in the past few years. You can get some pretty funky keyboards these days, if you’re ok with re-learning how to type.

  20. Saturday*

    “a dried bear poop that she liked because it had seeds in it”

    I just have one question: What?
    Put another way, Whaaaat??

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Haha, right??? I’m a hiker and have been known to admire bear scat on the trail and find it fascinating if it has berries in it. Never once have I even entertained the thought of taking it with me and displaying it for others to see. That is incredibly weird.

    1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

      Ooh, a new user name! Right up there with Guacamole Bob!

      I’m sticking with my current user name, but maybe someone else would like to use it.

  22. Allornone*

    I just got a job for non profit that provides music education programming to schools (among other things). The thing is, our “office” is currently in the for-profit music school our CEO/founder also runs. So, aside from a conference room that can fit 8 but is frequently used for meetings, and a kitchen counter space that can maybe hold three people without being in the way of food, we have no offices, no desks, just small studio spaces we can claim until the school opens at 2 pm. Then students start coming in, things get pretty noisy, and we get kicked out of the spaces as they are needed. This includes the “offices” of our CEO and COO, who are in the studio spaces least likely to be used by students. We’re all on laptops, including our very annoyed finance person who really needs two monitors. Fortunately, we’re in a period of growth and will be moving into our own space in May, but for now, it’s tight and noisy. I admit I’m kind of enjoying the chaos, but as a grant writer who really does need some quiet to focus, I will be welcoming the move with open arms. I may actually have a desk again!

      1. Allornone*

        I think some people work from home regularly, but since I’m fairly new (just over a month in), I think my boss wants me in-office for now until I learn all the ins-and-outs (especially how he does/approaches things, which can be specific but seem to work).

        Despite the chaos, administratively, it’s the most organized and most communicative place I’ve ever worked for. Except for this pesky no-space thing, they really have their crap together. So it’s worth it for now. I am happy it’s temporary though.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Wow, that’s great! I’m a classical musician and former music teacher and I’m sure you know this already but musicians don’t tend to have a reputation for being the most organized people. I think this is an incorrect assumption because I know a lot of organized musicians, but there are enough disorganized ones out there to give the rest of us a bad rap. Anyway, as a musician and former music teacher, I am thrilled to hear that your new workplace seems so good!

          1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

            Eh, it’s probably just that the disorganized ones call attention to themselves more!

    2. I'm the Phoebe in Any Group*

      Overlap between a business and a nonprofit is so ripe for abuse. Makes me wonder how much rent he is charging the nonprofit, if nonprofit tech and supplies are being used by the business. Is the nonprofit being charged for a full time CEO when that person works full time for the business.

      1. Allornone*

        I miswrote. He founded the music school, but does not operate as its CEO. He will do some teaching for it, but I’m not sure the exact details. Your concern is certainly valid, but I can speak confidently as the grant writer who’s worked very closely with the budget of the nonprofit, things are on the up-and-up. For accountability and financial transparency, we currently rate 96% on Charity Navigator, and once they update it, it will be a perfect score (4% had been taken off for not having our 990 available on our website, but we’ve corrected that). Plus, we have ongoing contracts with the local school system, so aside from our own independent audits conducted each year by a third party firm, the government does their checks and balances as well. He’s not always easy to work with, but I’m convinced my CEO is just that passionate about music education (and music in general) and works like 100 hours a week to support it. He’s entrenched in all operations and has a clear vision and an actionable strategic plan to carry it out, which is refreshing in my experience, as other non profits i’ve been with seem to be throwing paint at the wall and seeing what sticks.

  23. Raida*

    3. The tickets
    I’d be asking my manager to talk to his manager, saying hey here’s a headsup – your dude has a lot of technical issues, they are user created, and he has explicitly stated that instructions from IT for him he chucked out.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I mean, yeah, I probably would too. Guy sounds like he’s not a particularly efficient worker, to put it mildly.

    2. H3llifIknow*

      Yeah I especially found it very passive aggressive erf you that he messaged the LW to say, “Hey I threw away those instructions that you left for me.” Just such a weird flex.

  24. lizzay*

    Not a great story, but when I started my first job out of college, my eventual office lead was already in an office. When I left ~25 years later, we were seated next to each other in open-concept hot desks (we got lucky, nobody ever tried to sit at our desks, so they were ‘ours’). The office lead! In a freaking desk – you couldn’t even call them cubicles.

    1. Bitte Meddler*

      For the one [very painful] year I worked at the Fortune 1 company, the only one in our 200-person department who had an office was the VP of the department.

      Everyone else sat at tables lined up in long rows in the biggest open plan environment I have ever seen. The configuration was that each row was made up of tables facing each other, so that the people on each side were staring at each other all day.

      Of course, the noise was godawful. Unfortunately, the company decided that the solution was to install “white noise” generators in the [20-foot? 30-foot?ceiling]. It was physically painful for me to be in that building.

      Also, viruses spread like wildfire. One person would come in sick and then, eventually, all 200 people would get sick.

      But if a Director (one level below the VP) wanted to have a private conversation or bring up sensitive info on their computer, they’d have to book one of the meeting rooms that lined the walls. (The rooms were glass-enclosed with fabric “roofs”, which meant that anyone walking by or loitering could hear what was being said. The only nod to privacy was a privacy screen on the large, wall-mounted monitors, so that only people directly in front of the monitor could see what was on the screen).

      I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

      1. aunttora*

        Since my company went fully remote years ago and I’m happily working in my Little House in the Big Woods for whatever remains of my working years, I should really stop complaining about the couple of hellish pre-covid years when this was our reality, minus the fabric roof situation. The worst part was the BS “IT’S ABOUT COLLABORATION AND EVERYTHING LOVES IT” marketing from the C Suite that absolutely no one swallowed. Or it might have been the exec who would sometimes sit across from me and chomp on life savers for HOURS. Not suck them, chomp them.

        1. H3llifIknow*

          Hah. I have to admit that I can suck on a lifesaver, mint or lollipop for about 10 seconds before I have to bite down into it. Apparently, I’m an “instant gratification and this is taking too long” impatient person when it comes to hard candies! But I can’t imagine doing that for hours — my teeth hurt thinking about it–and I’ve not had a hard candy in about 5 years now.

  25. Aelswitha*

    I once was a member of a kinda famous national police force with a distinctive dress uniform, and for a time shared an office with two other people. D was a couple of rank levels above us, and felt he rated his own office. He requisitioned a coat tree, hung his dress uniform on it on a hanger, and positioned it, not against either wall, but between his desk and his nearest co-worker’s desk so that it formed a wall of sorts, with the rank insignia positioned outwards facing. Because the office was small neither D or his neighbour could get to or leave their desks without brushing against the uniform, and every time it was dislodged in the slightest D would ostentatiously reorder it. The cleaning staff would come in and vacuum, and have to move the coat tree, and then they’d leave it against a wall (probably assuming it was in the middle of the floor by accident), and he’d come in and sigh, and replace it. Our work on the unit did not ever require wearing the dress uniform, and there was a perfectly serviceable hook for his coat hanger on the back of the office door. People, naturally, took to moving the uniform around after D had left for the day, so that many mornings started with mutterings and rearrangings. One morning the coat tree was gone altogether and packing tape “walls” had been stuck to the carpet around D’s desk a la Les Nessman (yes, I’m that old). The coat tree was later discovered riding the freight elevator. I kinda miss work, sometimes.

    1. Skippy.*

      >The coat tree was later discovered riding the freight elevator.

      So petty and delightful

      1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        Was the dress uniform still hanging on it?
        Was anyone startled by it and saluting it by mistake?

    2. anonfed*

      As someone who was once a civilian worker in the specific organization you are referring to, I enjoy every nuance of this!

    3. Indolent Libertine*

      I am choosing to believe that one might have encountered Dudley Doright at this organization.

        3. Teapot Connoisseuse*

          I was about to say, you wouldn’t have caught Benton Fraser behaving like that!

    5. Sharpie*

      Would it be fair to say Benton Fraser was a member of the specific national police force in question?

  26. Secret Squirrel*

    #10 reminds me of my second contract programming gig, which was at a survey research firm in Chicago. When I started they did not have a cubicle for me so I worked on a board propped on some filing cabinets at one end of the “mail shop,” which was a large room where people entered survey data (possibly at one point received by mail, which would account for the name). It wasn’t a bad place to work, actually, since I was right by the window and had a nice view from high over the Loop right by the river.

    Eventually I did get a cubicle. The project I was working on was a big ball of failure which I believe ended with a federal lawsuit, but that’s a very long story.

  27. Charlotte Lucas*

    On a sweeter note, I used to train customer service representatives in a classroom setting. The classes were several weeks long, and the trainees had assigned workstations (we didn’t release them to the floor until they knew what they were doing). We also had part-time staff who were trained in the evening, so there was occasionally workstation sharing. Everyone had a small shelving unit with assigned shelves and one shared supply shelf.

    Some of my trainees would leave notes and candy in the other person’s shelf. It was very cute, but I am not entirely sure some of them didn’t think the night trainees were elves.

  28. L*

    #7 – My office uses one of those plant services, and while it’s made clear they don’t take care of plants that don’t belong to them, I’ve never had an interaction like that! I somehow inherited an “unauthorized” peace lily that was gifted by one of our vendors, and despite my lack of green thumb and lack of help from the plant company, I managed to keep it alive for close to a decade! until the pandemic. I couldn’t bring it home because I have cats, so I eventually came back to it shrivelled and dry :( On the bright side, when I was promoted and moved offices, I got to bring my “authorized” plants with me AND keep my predecessor’s plants, too, so now I have four office plants that are always green and healthy, and I don’t have to do anything to make that happen.

    1. H3llifIknow*

      Ok so now I’m worried. I have a giant peace lily that we’ve had for about 5 years. Recently “inherited” a cat… what’s the issue with cats? Or they toxic?? So far I haven’t seen the cat pay it much notice but….

      1. H3llifIknow*

        I really could have just googled “cats, peace lily toxic” couldn’t I? D’oh.

  29. nnn*

    Congratulations to #6 for being the first person on the recorded internet to say ” an animal bone would fall from an overflowing basket onto my printer”!

  31. AnonORama*

    I never minded a shared office until I got someone who said everything about me made them sick. I changed what and where I ate; I changed my shampoo to unscented; I turned off the space heater and wore a huge sweater in the 60-degree office; I stopped listening to white noise even with headphones; I found places to make calls where my loud voice wouldn’t be distracting (ok, it is kinda loud); I turned off the fluorescents and sat in the near-darkness, like dark enough that I had to feel for the corner of my desk to avoid a bruise.

    Apparently, they thought saying everything about me made them sick was their ticket to WFH; either I’d feel so guilty at apparently being a giant toxin, or I’d get so sick of the complaints and changes, that I’d magically get them excused from the office. It would’ve been magic, too — my company is super-anti WFH, and this person knew that. So all they actually did was annoy the crap out of me before leaving for other reasons. I hope their new job is WFH, if only so they don’t drive their officemate around the bend.

    1. Put the Blame on Edamame*

      Oh that is horrible behaviour from the desk mate! My wish for them is far less generous than yours…

  32. Peanut Hamper*

    I work in the office one day a week normally and have never had any of these issues, for which I am eternally grateful.

    On the other hand, I sometimes go in to do training for new employees and because we don’t have a dedicated trainer any more, the training room is a mess. But still, tolerable.

    I may have to put in a requisition for a case of Pop-Tarts, though.

  33. Alicent*

    I was a veterinarian working full time at an office where my boss had an entire antique desk to himself that might fit in on The Gilded Age. I had to beg for a small desk that slowly got crowded with random crap like food gifts from clients, including an entire full size cake at one point (until my boss threw it in the garbage in a rage because he had gained weight). We renovated and expanded the office to twice its size and he built himself a fancy office with FISH TANKS in the wall. I was offered a standing, flip down wall desk in a busy hallway that never actually materialized. He was shocked and angry when I finally quit after two years of his wild malpractice, violating federal laws (at least 4), and refusal to pay my commission. And a board complaint because he didn’t maintain his equipment and the client was angry at me for something out of my control.

  34. Frosty*

    #8: I understand shared desktops if computer work is a very small part of you job.
    But shared log-ins? Especially if you are doing payroll?! How is that supposed to be audited if log-ins don’t correspond to employees? And even apart from auditability, that’s just bad security practice.

  35. Thegreatprevaricator*

    The visual of stacks of pop tarts and lifting your ‘desk’ to provide access made me laugh out loud. Thank you!

  36. MassChick*

    I’m having trouble picturing the setup in #6. If 2 desks are pushed together, how would the users be back to back? The best I can imagine is they are lined up against the shorter edge in which case the users would be side by side (about a desk length apart)..

      1. MassChick*

        You’re right! Lazy reading on my part..OP clearly says they faced each other. I somehow was hoping her organized self didn’t have to face the expanding pile every day. The horror. And I’m not particularly organized my self..

  37. 2cents*

    My jaw dropped at “a dried bear poop that she liked because it had seeds in it” and just never snapped back into place.

  38. hillia*

    One tax season I worked as a front desk person for a national tax prep company. It wasn’t a bad job, especially since I worked evenings: answering the phone, assisting customers with filling out preliminary paperwork, etc. However, the young woman who worked the day shift was…something. She was the daughter of the regional manager and had been given the job because her husband couldn’t/didn’t work and she herself had the emotional maturity of a junior high girl. She didn’t know the alphabet, so we actually had to tape a sheet of paper with the alphabet printed on it on the wall next to the filing cabinet to have any hope of customer files being placed in the proper place.

    My big showdown with her came because of a wallet sized photo of her young daughter that she kept propped up on the keyboard of the front desk workstation. This made it tricky to type because the photo was always falling on your hands or slipping into the space between keys, so one evening I carefully laid it in an otherwise-empty desk drawer for safekeeping, and left her a note so she’d know where it was. She waited for me to come in the next day (our shifts theoretically overlapped, but she had a new reason to leave early every day) and started screaming at me about daring to touch her photo. “You don’t understand, I love my daughter!” (as opposed to the rest of us parents who can’t stand their children, I guess) and started sobbing hysterically as if by moving the photo 8 inches I had inflicted irreparable physical harm on the child. The office manager, who was a friend of her mother’s, quickly escorted her to the back room and out the back door, and she was never seen again.

  39. What_the_What*

    For LW 2, can you bring in a monitor from home so that you each have one? Or maybe look into one of the laptop screen extenders (Amazon has quite a few, I’ll post a link in a follow on comment)? I’d lose my mind if I had to use just a laptop screen and keyboard all day….

    2. Scary MoFo*

      We are all losing our minds. I will do that if it doesn’t end soon, but we’re all REALLY hoping it ends soon. There is talk of taking over another area which would double our space and we’d all have our own (tiny and mushed together) desks.

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