Correspondence Regarding Seat Neighborhood Loyalty

Dear Facilities and Hot Desk Policy,

This letter is submitted to record the current status of seating arrangements in the open-plan area and to note, without complaint, that those arrangements have become arrangements in the true sense of the word.

The desks are officially unassigned. This remains true. Nobody has been assigned a desk. Nobody has been told which desk to use. The flexibility is real.

Someone repeatedly chooses desks near the same people even though seating is officially unassigned. Having chosen the same vicinity twice, both parties have generated an expectation. Having generated an expectation three times, they have generated a policy. The policy is not posted. It is nonetheless in force.

The day is called flexible while requiring extra location planning.

The planning is as follows: on Tuesday, the question is whether the usual people will be in. If they are, the usual vicinity is selected. If they are not, an adjacent vicinity is selected so that the usual vicinity can still be claimed if they arrive late. The plan is not documented. It is executed silently each Tuesday with the smooth efficiency of a practiced routine.

Seat neighborhood loyalty adds one coordination step to the day. Coworkers start planning around that step. The step generates its own coordination: a brief message to confirm attendance, a glance at the desk to check occupancy, the slight recalibration if the desk is taken. Flexibility hardens into an unwritten schedule.

The acceptance here is resigned because this was always going to happen. The research on informal territorial behavior in shared spaces is extensive. The hot desk policy did not supersede that research. It created the conditions under which the research would run again.

The desks remain officially unassigned. The neighborhoods remain operationally fixed. Both things are true simultaneously.

Regards, The Regular Occupant of the Middle Row