It's awesome. I work in an office that has what we call "bays" and there are about a dozen of them, separated by various things, such as dividers and sometimes high walls that have windows in them. There are very few doors (except for the doors of the people who have their own offices) just lots of bays and hallways. Each bay usually has about 4 people in it - one person in each corner, with our backs to each other. This way, we can all work in the same "room" without having to watch each other. When we get into conversations, we just swivel our chairs around and talk to each other, and when we're done we just swivel back to our desks.
In our bay we have 3 solid walls and one windowed wall, so we each have 3 long shelves attached to the walls over our heads, all full of manuscripts, books, and files. My own corner is part of the entrance to the bay, so I only have one side of a corner, but it's a long side, so I have maybe 9 feet of desk space that's all mine. Plus my shelves. Plus file cabinets under the desk.
As far as my own personal space goes, I haven't accumulated enough paperwork yet to really make a mess. Everyone else in the company, it seems, has a big messy desk. I try to keep my actual work pretty organized so I always know what I've got to do and where it is, but I let some "junk" remain on my desk, loosely piled in little organizer shelves, so it doesn't seem like I'm a nit-picky super-organized person. And really, it's not that I'm super-organized, it's just that I don't generate enough actual paper stuff to create a good mess. A lot of what I do is on the computer. If it involves manuscripts, each stack has it's own spot on one of the shelves (so others can reference it).
My policy at this new job is paper-in, paper-out; email-in, email-out. I know it sounds silly, like, doesn't everyone do that? You get work, you do it, it's done, you give it to whoever requested it or you put it away... well, yes, but at my old job it was almost impossible to have this kind of policy. It was paper in, more paper in, mail in, more paper in. Paper out. Paper comes back with a post-it attached because boss has nit-picky, unanswerable question about it. Paper in, paper out, paper in, paper in. Paper out, paper comes back with a note on it...
Same thing with emails. I would send an email with some zippy request like, "Can I get the business credit card to renew the website domain name? It expires in a month" and forward the email reminder I got from the domain name company. I would get a reply like: "Well, is this something that perhaps the national office will be taking over now that we've streamlined all of our websites? Should you contact someone there to find out who will be taking this over?" (No, it's not, and no, I shouldn't, because no one's taking charge of this, that's just the way it is, just like I explained to you last year when we renewed the domain name, and if I try to explain it again you'll just have more questions, again. Gosh. I think I will just wait until tomorrow to respond to this one.) And so on.
At my old job there was also a lot of needless time wasting going on. For example:
Them: Can you come help me with something on my computer? I can't figure this out.
Me: Sure, what is it?
Them: Well, I'm trying to log back in to my profile for this site that we used last year, when we were at the old location. I don't remember my username and password, so I'm on this page that will help me retrieve my password. So, I'm putting the old address, you know, 123 Main Street, in this box, because we haven't been on this site since before we moved. But it's not accepting the old address OR the new address, I'm not sure what's wrong.
Me: Ok, which box?
Them: This box.
Me: You mean the one that says Enter Email Address Used To Create Profile?
Them: Yes, that one.
I wasn't sure whether I was going to laugh or cry.
I love my new job.
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