Let me describe my office.
My wood and tubular steel desk supports a cup of coffee on a CD coaster, an elderly computer, a phone, a stack of papers and periodicals, and some (yet to be installed) software upgrades. A coffee spoon is waiting next to my mouse pad. A pin and paper-clip lie touching by the keyboard. The mood is understated clutter. It's not a mess. You could shuffle the contents to make room for an extra pile and the piles aren't tall enough for a game of Jenga.
The morning sun lights up part of my desk but just misses my monitor due to my careful adjustment of the vertical blinds. The blinds waft slowly in the air conditioner breeze modulating the shadow edge on my desk. My window will stay closed today -- predicted top of 37C.
To my left is a pin-board. A periodic table poster covers most of it. Far Side cartoons of cars driving off lookouts and frogs singing the greens hang ignored alongside phone-mail instruction summaries. A row of gaily coloured pins wait for their turn to be used. They may rust first. Photos of teams gathered around newly released products adorn the south wall and the top of a filing cabinet. A patent plaque and a promotional poster from an old band I played in flank the not-so-whiteboard.
I face the open door with my back to the east window. The glass panel and aluminium grill in the door render it almost useless for privacy. Closing it serves only to tell the office traveller that I am not in (whether I'm visible through the glass or not). Outside the door is a passage way and an office partition. Last week a Nerf arrow flew over that partition, through my door and hit my right eye -- one of the most memorable shots in the sporadic cube-farm wars.
A cupboard and bookshelf sit against my north wall. I could do without most of the bookshelf contents. Occasionally I grab a statistics or signal processing text. The old day planners, software manuals and training course notes have ceased to exist (except when I force myself to describe my office). On the top shelf I see an old laptop, three volleyballs, one Thunderbirds cap and a Mickey Mouse hat. Lunchtime volleyball used to be fun. Eventually it drew too many frowns from safety conscious managers. They didn't like all the paperwork arising from life threatening finger-sprains and ankle-twists. The Mickey Mouse hat has one of our project code-names embroidered on it -- the result of a special mission assigned to me by my colleagues. I'm surprised they didn't demand a shrubbery as well.
Sometimes the off-whiteness of the walls is depressing. White door frame, beige door, off-white asylum-special walls. Is suburbanity a word? It should be. Did I mention the carpet? Beige. Worn. Stained. If it were human it would use a walking frame and keep forgetting where it had left its teeth. If it were a dog the vet would have given it an injection of mercy to stop the pain.
The sprinkler system pipe along the ceiling is near the end of a vast system that hasn't passed water in the last twenty five years. I wonder if it would work in case of a fire. When the little glass valve bursts in the heat, I expect perhaps a few rusty flakes, then nothing. Lots of things exist not to be functional, but only to comply with regulations. Shall I test my theory? "See! I told you so! The sprinkler system was useless," or "Oops, my office is drowning. How do we turn this off?"
The decrepitude of my office doesn't prevent work. It is a symptom. My marriage to the company started with enthusiasm. We learned more about each other. We did exciting things together and surprised each other with special moments. Now we've both grown old. She's changed a lot. She used to be driven by a leader. Now she's controlled by a managing director. I've changed too. I wonder what my office would look like in jade.