Pollyism of the week

Is the supermarket the new café? As we sail – or rather rocket – into the era of “hotdesking” and openplan everything, is the closest we get to catching up with friends accidentally running into them at the toilet-paper aisle at Countdown or New World?

Let me explain. I had no idea what was going on when a workmate from out of town asked me if I could show him where to hot-desk. Normally, I can bluff my way through most conversations, but the concept of a hot desk baffled me.

“OK,” I said finally. “What on earth is a hot desk and how is it different from a cold or lukewarm one?”

I work in a studio, and tend to pile things and random collectables in stacks along the wall. It’s not very presentable, but it’s homely and colourful, like most things in my life.

“You know, desks where anyone can plug in and start working,” my workmate responded. “A hot desk, Pol!”

I was horrified and confused. Apparently, there is a whole new world in office space I knew nothing about. People arrive at work and just grab any seat they want. They then plug in their laptop and away they go.

I’m so disturbed by this. It’s tantamount to an early morning game of intense musical chairs. My Lord, it makes me chill to the bone. It’s so temporary and cold. It should be called a “cold desk”. No photographs? No bric-a-brac? No jar of pens and piles of sticky notes? What about the fork you took from the kitchen six months ago and then just kept with the pens? Egads, the horror!

Why are we so quick to get quicker? Why are we so eager to be transient? Why is it in vogue to have no roots in the ground, no bums on well-worn seats and no time to call a workplace home?

I’m an anxious person. My fear of arriving at an office of 10 people with only nine hot desks available scares the bejesus out of me. The thought of ending up sitting on the floor and begging someone to let me crawl under their desk to plug in my iPhone completely horrifies and terrifies me equally.

When I go to the supermarket, which seems to be a daily occurrence, I seem to always run into someone I know well and should have taken home to have coffee with weeks ago. It’s like the supermarket is another version of the hot desk.

We stop in the aisle for five minutes to talk about our kids, lives, jobs and how we’re coping in this crazy world. It seems, like it or not, I am hot-desking life. I have to stop this silly, transient nonsense. I need to sit down with people I like and look them in the eye, minus the frozen peas and dog food.

Hot-desking will go down in history as about as successful as an openplan classroom in schools. Bloody stupid!