The Office

 

When I last wrote about the office farter, I did so from the relatively luxurious position of being seated far away from him.  His emissions affected me only if I happened to walk past that area of the office.  Otherwise, I could laugh at the problem, knowing as I did that only those less fortunately seated colleagues had to suffer the smell on a regular basis.  All that has changed now.

This week, in a brand new cost-cutting measure, we moved into a new open plan, hot desking arrangement.  Work has used a lot of jargon to describe the new arrangement; we’ve been told not to call it “hot desking” but “flexible working” and that instead of it being called “open plan” it should be called a “free flow area”.  In reality, what has happened is that they have removed all of the privacy dividers between desks, given us smaller desks and crammed 3 times as many people into the same space.  The best part is they have provided us with fewer desks than people, on the assumption that there will always be a few people out of the office attending court, clients or working from home.  Sadly, all too frequently all of us are in the office on any given day. Mornings are therefore a fight to get in early and nab one of the few available desks, as those who miss out find themselves sitting at tiny temporary desks near the boss (the professional version of wearing a dunce hat and sitting in the corner).  It’s all rather unpleasant.

What is perhaps most unpleasant is that it means each of us in the office finds ourselves on various occasions sitting next to the farter.  And as someone who was in that unfortunate position today, I can say that it is one of the most unpleasant experiences one can have in a professional environment.  Indeed, it took me some time to work out just what was happening on the first occasion, as the smell was so foul and odorous I simply didn’t think it could come from a human being.

No one in the office knows where to begin to resolve this problem.  A conversation with the farter needs to be had, but who is to have it?  Perhaps I have been in this country too long, and I am starting to become a Brit, but I am increasingly thinking that it might be easier to change jobs than to confront the farter.  So if you hear of anyone needing a (mostly pretty useless) lawyer, let me know.