Making hotelling/hotdesking work for you

Post date: 2017-12-13 20:10:28

What hacks have you developed to make reservation-less unassigned seating work for you in the workplace? I find the whole concept really unpleasant and unsettling.

Our workplace has a hotelling/hotdesking set up where you don't have an assigned desk, you just walk in and work wherever there is space. I find this very unpleasant/unsettling: the fact that I don't know who's going to be sitting next to me on any one day, the fact that I need to allocate an extra 5-10 minutes at the beginning and end of my day to set myself up with my computer and ergonomic requirements in the morning and then put everything away into my locker again at the end of the day; knowing that being even a few minutes late in to work means I'm going to end up with the one desk which is less good than all the others.

There's also a psychological component I find difficult to explain but the feeling of not having a place in the workplace that truly belongs to me is unnerving. I've always liked to be able to personalise my workspace with a favourite mug, stationery, maybe a plant etc - working in a different impersonal space everyday makes me feel... more transient somehow, as though I am a temp worker or someone there on secondment as opposed to a permanent member of the team.

It's been a few months and I'm kind of used to it but not really. I still feel twitchy and unhappy at work. Does anyone have any ideas about how to feel more grounded, and waste less time getting used to a new space every morning? I've never really thought of myself as particularly sensitive, but this has been getting to me. I've spoken about this to my line manager, who also hates the set-up, but can't really do much to change it, as it comes from 'on high'.

Anon because I'm fairly certain a fair few of my co-workers read Metafilter.

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