I'll hot desk in hell!

I never minded working in an office. My first jobs were in factories, and I appreciate the luxury of warmth and comfort that comes with working inside on a winter's day. I like the camaraderie of the people you work with, the forever friends you occasionally make, and the weird office politics that always crop up. But I really, really fucking hate hot desking.

I have to work from home for most of the week, and the one day I do go into the office is the quietest day of the week, so there is always plenty of room. Which is good, because I've been working in the same huge room for a decade now, and I've never felt less personally connected to my workplace.

The latest fad for hotdesking is perplexing when we're still dealing with the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic. It is keeping with the general psychopathic nature of the management caste over the past few decades - making workers more and more miserable in the pursuit of some financial bottom line doesn't work out well for anybody, even if every business school is rabid about the idea.

But just having your own space, away from home is something that that is lost now. I've had desk spaces adorned with panels from Flex Mentallo, and far too many Far Side and Footrot Flats cartoons. Small piles of strange random books that just seem to accumulate, or my own fucking plant to take care of.

There's none of that with hotdesking, none of the desks have any personality, nobody keeps there stuff anyway, and it could just be any office, in any city, in any country. Blanded down by corporate cost-cutting, quietly ruining delicate structures of small societies, instead of just buying some more fucking gear.

My last desk got cleaned out during one of my day's off, and I lost some personal items, and that was two years ago, and I'm still fucking fuming about it. I'd worked at that desk for years, and it was truly mine, that tiniest slice of space/time. I'd gone through some things while sitting there - some properly traumatic things that I still struggle to deal with - and now it's just another empty space, in a world that is fucking full of them.