Engineering Offices

Engineering offices are strange places, primarily because they are inhabited predominantly by engineers. I suppose every profession has its quirks, but math and science fields seem to appeal to the quirkiest among us. Perhaps a gathering of TV meteorologists or college professors could boast a greater per capita count of quirks, but it would be a close contest.

Working late one night this week I was able to walk around the office and see what it was like without people. I’ve been in the office alone before, but I’d never really looked to see what the work spaces revealed about their inhabitants. Some cubes are neat and organized, others complete disaster areas. The young guys all have their computer screens turned away from the aisles, but the older guys’ screens face directly into the aisle (so their backs are turned to any potential distraction, or so I’m told). I think it is possible to determine someone’s age by the angle of their computer screen to the aisle.

A lot of work spaces have pictures of significant others and kids. There are quite a few work-related pictures, like a guy climbing on a bridge. Most of it is standard fare: tons of books, blueprints, and office supplies. But then there are the quirks, the sides of people you really don’t get to see in office life but that is hinted at by clues they (knowingly or unknowingly) leave.

One guy, amid stacks and shelves of design manuals and specifications has a calendar with crop circles on it. His neighbor has a small, framed picture of Betty Boop. His neighbor has pictures of what appear to be an outdoor Jacuzzi and a little garden in his yard. In another cube hang team pictures from every company softball game over the past several years. One guy has an unusually high number of hanging plants. Another has tons of pictures and paintings of Italy (his home).

How much can you know about someone by what they have on their desk? What does my work space say about me? I hurried back to my desk to inventory the clues I leave for my coworkers to find and make assumptions about the real me.

At first I didn’t find anything too quirky or revealing. Mostly just papers and blueprints from the project I’m working on, a couple of design books, tons on highlighters, pens, and pencils. On the cube walls hang a company phone directory and a magazine clipping about my project that my boss gave to me and I hung up out of diligence. No pictures or real decorations. Granted I’ve only been here for two months and came to NY with a very light load of things I might use to ‘decorate’ an office space. Some other – possibly revealing – clues I did find were a copy of The Economist I had bought earlier that day, a little black notebook/journal I keep in my bag, and a half-finished bottle of Vitamin Water. Mostly a very plain, non-descript, even boring cube. Maybe the lack of quirky paraphernalia is revealing as well…