Lack of Office Tinting

After coming back into the office after a six month stint working from home, I expected things to look different. Not too different obviously, because I know that my bosses are pretty stingy, but they had so much time to make the improvements our office so desperately needs. I mean if no one’s in the office for six months, it shouldn’t be that hard to bite the bullet and just get some office tinting. Within Melbourne, we constantly have people peeping into our office while we work. It’s just uncomfortable for everyone inside the office and it could’ve been easily rectified when everyone was working from home.

I’d love it if we got the windows in our office tinted. Our company is on the ground level of a massive skyscraper in the city, so there is a lot of foot traffic in the front of our building. If the windows were tinted like they should be, we’d probably have people walk past the windows and check their teeth or do something funny. Seeing stuff like that periodically throughout the day would give me a laugh and really lift my spirits, in addition to making me feel like my coworkers and I finally have some privacy. There’s honestly nothing creepier than being hard at work and then looking up at the window only to see someone staring straight back at you. 

I’m honestly really disappointed in my workplace. I don’t understand why they think that maintaining a decent level of comfort for their employees is something that they can avoid. We would feel at least 90% more comfortable if we just had frosted window glass to protect our privacy from the outside world. They know that every employee feels the same way I do and yet they chose to be lazy and cheap and not do anything about it. I think I’m going to start searching for a new job.

Ornamentation Situation

Desk ornaments: what are they all about? Not that I have anything against ornamentation on the whole, but aren’t desks cluttered enough as it is? Do we really need to be adding random objects that take away valuable surface area from essentials, such as notepads, ergonomic wrist supports, mugs and little bowls of paper clips and USB sticks?

I genuinely want to understand this. My grandfather, a successful businessman, had an office at his home with a big mahogany desk, and I remember it being adorned with an array of wooden 3D puzzles. They were very beautiful objects, to be sure, but I never once saw him pick one of them up to twiddle while musing on a business decision. I never saw him challenge a visitor to solve one while he went and fetched a cup of tea, which would have made perfect sense. I never saw anyone engage with these things, ever.

That’s the thing with these types of objects – they just become part of the scenery, and everyone forgets they’re even there. It’s almost like they’re part of the office space fitout. Companies near Melbourne take that up a notch by actively incorporating purely decorative elements into the foundations of their interiors. So what’s the point? You’d think keeping clutter to an absolute minimum would be one of the first principles of effective office workspace design. Melbourne design aficionados, back me up here. There’s simply no point introducing things into these environments if they don’t serve any functional purpose.

Unless… well, maybe they’re there as a sort of psychology decoy against accumulating clutter. Hear me out. Maybe the idea is that, with some kind of decoration on the desk, we don’t feel a need to introduce more decorative items, because it’s been taken care of by the random bust, kinetic pecking bird sculpture, wood puzzle or nostalgic figurine assigned to fulfil that purpose. Therefore, we’re less tempted to bring in some random piece of junk to adorn our workspace.