Sans Fig Leaf
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"My own little corner"
6 January, 2005
A few years ago, before the mergers and buy-outs, the place I worked at let all of the contractors go at once (or very nearly). Management was a lot nicer about it than some places I've worked: we were allowed to tell our contractors almost 60 days before the end date. After all the good-byes were said and done, we were left with clean-up. Each of our contractors had had their own office--not a cubicle, an actual office, with a door they could close and everything.
Our department manager asked for volunteers to clean out the offices. Enough of us volunteered to make it only two offices each. I was just a teeny bit surprised at what people left behind. One of the offices I cleaned had a fistful of small change left in one of the drawers. Not to mention a much nicer (and slightly more expensive) letter opener than the kind kept in-stock in the supply room. There were several other small, personal things left among the paper clips, pens, binder clips, and post-it pads. We had a short meeting after the clean-up, and I mentioned all the personal items, only to find out that all of the other offices were similar. I was a bit surprised, though a couple of my more experience co-workers said they'd seen similar things left by temps and contractors before.
Many months later, when my employer was bought by a larger company, I found myself packing up my office to move, yet again, and for the first time really looked at all the personal junk I had filled my office with. Some of the things were toys and gadgets that co-workers had given me for birthday presents. Then there were my plants, which included a rubber tree that at the time was taller than me. But I also had a sculpture, decorations for seven different holidays--including enough christmas lights, plastic snowflakes, and other things to decorate both hallways in our department. I had a whole shelf of personal reference books in addition to the books the company provided. I had a stereo and a substantial collection of tapes, for goodness sakes!
I don't always think of myself as territorial--which is kind of funny coming from a fourth-generation packrat. I've done enough temp work and contracting to know that I'm perfectly capable of working in a situation where I don't have a space that's "mine." But clearly, having my own space for several years had allowed the nesting instinct to take rather deeper root than I had realized.
I resolved to reduce the volume of personal stuff in my office to that which I could conveniently carry home in one trip on the bus. That way, if I ever was in that unpleasant situation of being laid off and given a few minutes to pack my things and leave, I could actually do so. I had to except the plants from this criteria. My plants are in my office in lieu of an air cleaner for health reasons. If I do have to pack up and leave in a short time, well, the plants will be someone else's problem.
Over a period of several weeks I went through all the stuff in my office. A certain amount of it I just threw out and several boxes were hauled home and eventually gone through there. The funny thing was that in the long run, other than the books and the sculpture, I wound up keeping only an infinitesmal fraction of what I'd had before. For a long while I was perfectly content to think of my office as just a temporary space that I happened to go to several days a week. I went a year-and-a-half without decorating my office for most holidays, with only a few static cling things on my window for Christmas.
Eventually, after the second merger and move to a different building, I found myself chafing under my own restrictions. My office was too bland. I even had people asking why I wasn't decorating, or when I was going to "move in."
I had to admit that part of the reason I had adopted the rule was a defense mechanism. If I made myself think of my job as a temp position, then I wouldn't feel bad if it abruptly came to an end.
Except that of course I would feel bad. And of course it's a temporary position. Everything in the universe is, ultimately, temporary. Acknowledging that doesn't mean I have to give up ever thinking of any space as "mine."
So I modified my rule: I would limit the personal items in my office to that which I could easily carry home in one trip on the bus, or things I was willing to throw out or give away. I started bringing in a few more decorations for some of the other holidays. I put up a poster. It's not a lot, but it doesn't take much to make the office feel like my space.
Life is too awesome to spend too much time worrying about things we can't prevent.