New Desk Acquisition

A few weeks back...  wait.  I'm only lying to myself, let me start again.

A few months back, I moved desks at work.  At the time, I merely pushed aside the old desk-owners belongings and plunked my own right in the centre.  My computer.  My books.  My pencils.  My keyboard filled with my skin dust.  It instantly became My Desk.

It wasn't until a few days back (truth) when I became severely low on work for the day, that I was scrounging around the depths of the third draw only to find that the majority of stuff in there was not mine!

The challenge had been set, how much stuff could I viably throw out without someone asking me later down the track where it had gone.

Now the interesting part of this story isn't how much I threw out (it was substantial), but what I threw out, and what I learnt.

Here's a list of useless things I found in my draw:

• Receipts for the departments fruit bowl for the past 5 years (1 for each week)
• Printed email trails regarding how popular the fruit bowl is
• 1 x copy of Advanced Microsoft Outlook 2000 (Still in the shrink wrap)
• "Introductions to types in organisations" (in regards to types of people according to the Myers-Briggs Indicator)
• Hundreds of business cards (2 x books full)
• More stationary than can be found in the stationary cupboard

Here's what I learnt:

• Buying fruit for a department of about 50 people for the week costs about $200
• People will waste time sending emails on absolutely any subject
• Staff will ring IT and ask how to do simple shit rather than read an instruction booklet in their own draw
• According to Myers-Briggs I am an ENTJ, some famous ENTJ's are: Bill Gates, David Letterman, Charles De Gaulle, Winston Churchill & Barney Stinson.  Which made me think, wow, I'm in a pretty good group!  until I saw these famous ENTJ's: Adolf Hitler, Darth Vader, Eric Cartman & Whoopi Goldberg..

I digress..

• Business Cards are pointless.  If you must, save paper and make an E-Business Card 
• People are hoarders, how did it come to be that my desk is more well equipped for the everyday business person than the entire contents of the stationary cupboard!?  It got me thinking, why are people hoarders? I didn't find an answer, but maybe you could for me?
• The subtle differences regarding the words learned & learnt while writing this post.  

hopefully I got it right...