If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

- Albert Einsign

See, my co-workers have a problem with my messy desk. They think I care about what they think. I'm not there to worry about my co-workers opinion of me, i'm there to work, and my work requires to have a lot of paper spread out over my desk. I need to be able to access architectural/structural/mechanical/electrical/fire protection drawings throughout the day. If I constantly had to put them away, pull them out again to keep my desk in order, it would take me at least 3 times as long to get my job done.

My boss nodded his head and didn't say another word when I explained this to him after he said he was receiving complaints from co-workers. One of the biggest voices against my office was actually fired not too long ago.

Yogimus: Your "Co-workers" can go fark themselves. You have customers, supervisors, and people who don't farking matter. The first 2 care about results, the 3rd group cares about how your desk looks.

Plus, why would I want my co-workers to think I have enough time to keep a tidy desk? They'll just dump their crap on me and I'll have to do their work too.

I don't trust people with clean desks.

Your "Co-workers" can go fark themselves. You have customers, supervisors, and people who don't farking matter. The first 2 care about results, the 3rd group cares about how your desk looks.

Some of the brightest, most competent people I've ever worked with had some of the most (seemingly) cluttered desk. Papers everywhere, but no food wrappers or garbage. It was part of their mental organizing system.
It's the people with perfectly empty desks you have to be wary of.

People with clean desks obviously don't have enough work to do.

i work atop a 15 foot conference table. it probably has over 3000 pieces of paper on top of it at any given point. i also have more than 2 dozen legal boxes full of paper. all in all, I have a whole forest worth of paper in my office. the majority of my work is in electronic format too.

legal work. lots of paper. lots of reading. I keep originals safe while i work on copies. it's the nature of the beast.

there is no such thing as clean. not to mention, I'm not going to add an hour to my 12+ hour day to move some shiat around so that I can pull it out tomorrow. no one pays me to clean and I don't feel justified charging a client for my frolics into the world of self help and organizing.

On my desk, I have a tea jug, pad of sticky notes, pen, framed pic of the old man when he was 17 doing a skate trick called a disaster (he's 41 now, and since it's a professional photo no one has any idea why it's there or who it is, it just looks cool) bottle of lotion, box of tissues (I know, I know, but I'm a girl with dry skin and allergies, sue me) Other than that, all my clutter and crap resides in my drawers and overhead. Recently got promoted. Co-worker who has 10 photos of her family, fake plants and horse posters covering the walls has interviewed 2 times for a permanent position and still been turned down. Sadly, the article is probably right, at least where I work.

/not as spartan at home, however
//doilies and flowers abound in my domicile

Meh, say waht you want about nosey co-workers, etc. the article has a very good point. When I came to this job the FIRST thing that I did was to create and implement a filing system. Prior to that, they would just throw all of the completed work into a gigantic pile on of papers that covered two desks in the back of the office. They were so used to clutter and disorganization that they didn't really even realize how it was effecting their productivity. For example, instead of looking for a file they would just contact another department for a copy of whatever they needed.

We run like a well-oiled machine now and the biggest reason for that is there is now a place for everything and everyone knows where things should go.

My coworkers can suck it.

True story time. I once worked with a rather prolific biologist. His office was a freaking fire hazard. It was literally stacked from floor to ceiling with books, folders stacks of papers, etc. One day I went to him because he had written an paper some 20 years earlier and I was hoping he'd have a copy, so that I wouldn't have to order it. I asked him and he immediately went to one of the stacks and pulled a copy out from the center of it. I was amazed not only that he remembered the article in question (he had written some 600 articles and eight books), but that he knew exactly where it was in his near-landfill of an office. I asked him if he knew the exact location of everything in his office and he simply responded "yes."

Many years ago I had a terribly messy (to the unititiated) desk

Yards and yards of computer listings, all opened to specific places, as I tried to track down an annoying intermittent bug. This was in the days of 80x40 column text displays so printed out listings were the only way to read programs of this size.

I came in one day to find the office snickering, and the boss with a smug look on his face.

He'd "cleaned" my desk, neatly folded up all the listings and put them in a drawer etc.

I asked him, loud enough so most of the office could hear, if he'd bookmarked where I was in each listing? as it had taken me 4 weeks to narrow things down and I was close to a breakthrough (all perfectly true and I was somewhat mad)

Of course, he hadn't, and when I told him that effectively meant I had to start all over again his face was a picture, and the room wasn't snickering at me anymore, but him.

Oddly enough, he never tried that stunt again.

Sometimes a messy desk is a working desk and there's nothing you can do about it.

Being in IT, a clean desk and cubical was considered a clear indication that you were spending your time cleaning, not working. We were being paid for the latter. The only neat areas were the NOC and the server rooms.

I generally think that people who always have a clear desktop don't have enough work to do.

The stacks of paper on my desk are related to my job. When one task is done, the papers get filed or submitted to wherever it needs to go. Then I get another stack of papers and work on those. When all the stacks are gone, more papers come in and get organised into new stacks.

When I do manage to clear my desktop, it fills up with paper again in no more than a day.

Productivity cannot be measured by the amount of clutter, it's how much it cycles

/Like plate tectonics

A little clutter is no big deal to me. The worst desk I ever saw was a salesmans desk, he must have at fast food 2X a day and leave the wrappers and bags on his desk for weeks on end. I took a picture of his desk and sent it to my mom telling her there is someone worse than me out there. His manager finally told him he had to clean up his desk because the smell was offending people and spreading.