Tuesday, December 02, 2008

My colleague's desk - before and after pics

This is my colleague's desk. He sits directly behind me - you can see my desk is in exactly the same location.

Notice the piles on the floor. Every evening he moves the piles onto the desk so the cleaning ladies don't throw it all away.

Anyway, I try not to tease him too much about his messy desk but the other guys have no such qualms. In fact, his line manager regularly asks me to help him "sort it all out". To which I reply, "sorry, I only work with people who want to change" :)

So in typical guy fashion, they bet him that he wouldn't be able to sort it all out in a week. And in typical guy fashion, he rose to the occasion and did it.

It looks a MILLION times better and I'm so proud of him. It really made my heart proud and he did it within the deadline (I think my camera said 3.22 pm on a Friday afternoon). Just goes to show what you can do when you put your mind to it because he did it in about 2 hours.

4 comments:

Janelle said...

What did they bet him?

Carolyn Caldwell said...

Just goes to show that with the right motivation, amazing things can happen. Now if we could just figure out what the right motivation was 100% of the time, we'd be golden!

Dixie said...

Gosh that feels familar! Now... can he keep it that way? Great post, all the guys in my office have desks that look similar, but the worst is my Sr.VP... and his boss, the CEO, frequently mentions to him that he needs to organize! I think I'm going to suggest the "bet" tactic... good idea!

Marcia Francois said...

Janelle, he says they didn't bet something specific. It was just the way they were all teasing and daring him.

Caroline, that's true. The key is to find what works for each individual person.

Dixie's whimsey, one week later and it still looks the same. I am so proud of him. And he says the clean desk is here to stay.

Personally, I think it was just a bad habit and now that it's clean, he's determined to keep it that way, with a little encouragement from me, of course :)

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