Working out your differences

FOR a lot of people today, due to the impossible house-buying situation, it’s pretty standard to live with housemates before settling down.
And it’s crucial that they find the right people to live with. Renting a place with people whose hygiene is similar to a ripe camembert is never desirable; neither if they try to offer a packet of batteries and a pineapple as payment for rent; nor if their idea of interior design is based on making sure there is a small path through a wall-to-wall collection of carrier bags, old food, body hair and stuff found in skips. 

So when you have spent time and energy sorting that situation out, it must be even more frustrating when you realise you have very little say in the choice of work colleagues.
As we work for a vast percentage of our lives, it’s not surprising how such a little thing like who your desk neighbour is can have such a large impact on your state of mind.

I’ve encountered a practice I’m sure is used as a form of torture in some countries. 
A colleague, come rain or shine, will religiously switch a desk fan on.  And due to the scarcity of sockets, she has to have it situated about six feet away from her desk, aimed somewhere in her vicinity. The trouble is that it's also aimed at me. And no amount of angling it when she isn’t looking will change the fact that she’s creating a micro-climate similar to that of the Arctic right by my feet. 
It’s causing me to sport a rather fetching appearance of goosebumps all along my legs as well as develop an involuntary shudder. In short, I am freezing. 

I spent all of last winter wishing the weather would get warmer so i could shed the obligatory coat-in-office look and 100 denier tights that I had been shuffling about in for what felt like an eternity. 
And now, in mid August, I find myself digging out my winter wardrobe - already - because of one woman’s love of a bargain from Argos.  I would be lying if I said I hadn't considered buying a portable heater and placing it side by side with her fan.  Like two gods controlling the elements, we could have these dramatic battles as our power and energies clashed and threatened to cancel each other out of existence... albeit on a much more feeble and pathetic basis.  Infact probably the only spectator would be a very weary H&S officer whose main concern would be the number of electric cables lying across the office. 
 
But these special little eccentricities exist everywhere in the workplace.  I know of an office which went to the extent of issuing memos asking people who ate lunch at their desks, not to.  Well, it was specifically aimed at the fish and egg sandwich lovers.  The smell was upsetting their colleagues who had felt it necessary to complain to management.  True the aroma of some foods can be pretty revolting, but for the 7.4 minutes it takes to consume them, is that really enough to ruin your entire day?  Do you really return home in the evenings, fuming that the default scent surrounding your work area of perfume, lip gloss and coffee was rudely interrupted at 12.47pm for a short while, thus ruining the entire feng shui of your environment?


And it makes me curious to think how far these niggling habits from our workmates will stretch; how long before you'll hear someone bitching by the coffee machine that Maureen from Accounts creates too much fluff and dust on her desk and it's irritating their allergies. Will management then issue lint removers and exfoliating scrubs to every employee?


With people facing increasingly longer working weeks, perhaps working from home is the way to go. That way you can install a industrial-sized fan so your room temperature is constantly below zero; munch on a feast comprising of fish heads, raw onions and boiled cabbage; and then spend the afternoon inspecting every bodily crevice you have for flaky skin, pluckable hair or that inexplicable blue fluff and scatter your findings merrily into the atmosphere, not worrying that your habits are of any consequence to anyone.


That is, of course, until your housemates return home...