Mark your territory

My new cube-neighbor, RM, unpacked yesterday. I suppose they're not truly my new neighbor - they'd been relocated there weeks ago - but the boxes are gone, so it's now official.

In CorpWorld - changing desks is a highly choreographed affair. Some time before the appointed day, you will receive Moving Instructions. These will inform you of a range of time when you can expect Moving Boxes to arrive in your work area. You are to use these boxes to pack up your desk by such-and-such date. You must label your things, lest they be delivered to God Knows Where.

Tape (essential to this task) is neither mentioned, nor supplied. Despite this, with a fair amount of scrounging, on the appointed day at the appointed hour - Personal Belongings have been duly boxed up and are sitting on your old desk. Sometime between now and tomorrow morning, they will be picked up by unseen forces and delivered to your new desk.

Then you unpack. Or, if you are RM - you don't.

Totally understand. Work is a bigger deal, and really - half the crap I have at work could vanish and I'd never miss it. I'm literally surrounded by weeks worth of discarded paper in three inch stacks.

RM lets their stuff sit in boxes - until they need something. Boxes get opened, one at a time until there's a row of cardboard boxes yawning open like post-industrial flora.

Again, like I have anything to say on this. My place is a pit that threatens to spill out onto the floor with every breeze or tremor.

So, yesterday - RM has at last had it with the state of things. Boxes are emptied, flattened and discarded. The resulting stuff is sorted, stacked up, filed and vanishes into drawers and cabinets.

RM's desk is spotless.

In contrast, my desk looks like it's been carpet-bombed with 11x17 paper.

That tears it - I grab everything I haven't touched in weeks and ball it up into a torso-sized mass and fling it into the recycle dumpster.

I do this three times. Then I pitch all the empty beverage containers. Put pens in drawers, stack notepads. Take down stuff I'd taped to the wall for some reason.

It's feeling good. For the first time in months, I can see all of my desktop. No longer the crappiest desk in the pod! Whoo-hoo!

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This morning, I'm in late. I'm rushing to make a 9am meeting - and down the hall I see BD. BD's my other neighbor. They're the one whose desk was always clean.

BD looks like he's seen a ghost. Asks how I'm doing, in an overly-restrained way.

I'm good, running late. Gotta go. He leaves.

Odd. I get to my desk and it hits me. Our fourth pod-mate, V, was laid off while BD was out.

BD just walked into a pod with three clean desks.

Whoops.

I find BD, "Just cleaning up."

They grin. "Had me goin' there."

I go back to my desk, unstack some paper, and scatter a few things.

To whom it may concern: Someone still works here.