Like virtually all of my colleagues, I have tried to personalize my Soviet-issue office. This task is no small one, when you consider that the furniture is Soviet-issue, too. Well, no, I exaggerate: it came right out of Dilbert. The environs are an ironic challenge for humanists, who like to think of ourselves as being, to some degree, aesthetes.
So it is a test of the imagination to mitigate the severe uniformity of the decor. Maybe I’ve succeeded. Maybe not. I’ve assembled stuff from my travels into complementary shadow boxes and collages. I’ve acquired a squashy chair. I keep chocolate in a colorful bowl. Even my Kleenex (the real thing, even in these grim times—heh) box coordinates with my decor. Wow, how special am I?
This effort was made, it goes without saying, on behalf of my students. Less-ugly surroundings also make being there for sixteen hours on some days considerably more tolerable. I’m not surprised, therefore, that the overnight cleaning staff use my office. How do I know? The furniture is shifted around a bit. Thanks to my never-to-be-diagnosed OCD, I notice such things right away.
But this morning, I am appalled. In my wastebasket, there’s a huge pile of Kleenex (the stuff I buy for students and hope I don’t have to use)—damp—an empty Aquafina bottle, and. . .
a used Q-Tip. Crusty. Discolored. Definitely used.
Eeeeeeeuuuuuwww!
Here I must note that, over the summer, maintenance never enter our offices even to empty the wastebaskets. Hell, regardless of the season, my office has been vacuumed exactly once in the three years I’ve been here. I do not begrudge anyone the use of my office—it’s not even my property—but I am extremely squicked out by the prospect of bodily fluids mouldering away in my wastebasket all summer and diffusing throughout my 8′ X 8′ patch of purgatory.
Now I notice grime on my office computer’s mouse, which I always wipe down. When I fill in a form to register for a hotel room at an upcoming conference, I notice that the ZIP and phone number that autofill volunteers are not mine. I don’t conduct personal business from my office, and I would hate to think that I’m taking such precautions only to be busted for the personal business someone else is conducting from my office.
I have put my office computer on password protection, but I haven’t figured out what to do with the wastebasket. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, and I’m more than a little uncomfortable with the class implications of my revulsion. For all I know, whoever has been borrowing my office at night is a child, drowsily tagging along with a parent who works lousy hours for crappy pay at the pleasure of a capricious employer.
But these reactions are balanced by utter bewilderment: I mean, who the hell carries Q-Tips with them?
Posted by phd me on June 4, 2009 at 7:47 pm
That…is gross. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be quite so sanguine over an apparent invasion of my personal space. It might be a campus office but I claim it as my own and I really don’t want other people hanging about doing whatever they may be doing. Then again, such an approach to life puts me ahead of you in the running for an ulcer.
Posted by Lucky Jane on June 5, 2009 at 9:32 am
Well, I’m far from being peachy with having a secret, third-shift officemate. I did at first feel that my space had been invaded, and I do think it’s disrespectful for whomever not to clean up after him/herself. I had contemplated leaving a note on the chair telling my implied reader to get back to work and not to use my office as a break room, but then I decided that I don’t care enough—but obviously I do.
For hygienic reasons, I removed the wastebasket and sprayed the space down with Lysol. I am now paranoid about leaving my books, some of which are visibly “antique.” Who knows, but that this person/these people are like a humanities version of that dude from Good Will Hunting (which I’ve never seen, and so this simile may not make sense), who will scoop me on my book?