Is Anyone Warming to Hot-Desking? Is It All That Hot?

Welcome to workplace musical chairs

By Ed Goldman

When I first heard the term “Hot-Desking” I’m a little embarrassed to tell you what I thought it referred to. Let’s just say it sounded like using office furniture for a purpose neither God nor Herman Miller had intended it.

Upon further investigation—reading an article in the Wall Street Journal, my favorite source of humor—I discovered it was simply a workplace version of Musical Chairs. 

In this new era of work-from-home-mostly, Hot-Desking means that on the days you deign (or are mandated) to come to the office, you have no assigned desk. You just prowl the cubicles until you find one that isn’t dominated by someone else’s personal paraphernalia—such as the photo of a golden retriever with a discouraged-looking duck in its jaws, a certificate of merit from Rotary International for exceptional attendance, an “executive pen set” from Target and a crayoned, chocolate-smudged card inscribed “Best Gwamma/Boompa Ever”—and stake your eight-hour claim.

I did a story a few years ago for the Sacramento Business Journal about an architectural firm that created a Hot-Desking-by-any-other-name milieu during the darkest days of the recent pandemic. In a cavernous, warehouse-like space, the firm not only had numerous anonymous work stations but also wheeled carts, one or more of which you could commandeer for the brief duration of your office stint in which to place your stuff: purse, briefcase, keys, golden retriever photo, executive pen set, and so forth.

As I wrote: “Even during the worst years of COVID, the designers and CFO of the 113-year-old architectural firm, Lionakis, along with construction supervisors, continued to meet regularly at the company’s new $10 million, 39,000 square-foot headquarters. Well, to virtually meet.  

“Wearing Oculus virtual reality headsets, firm architect Laura Knass; its interior designer Brett Harper; its CFO Andy Deeble; and contractor Paul Thomas of A.P. Thomas Construction, conferred regularly.”

It was very smart, industrious and, no surprise (they’re very fine architects), aesthetically cool. But I remember how the layout reminded me too much of one of the disappointments of college life versus my K-12 schoolyears. 

In college, I grabbed whatever desk was available when I staggered or crawled into the room, depending on whether it was an early-morning or late-afternoon class. But during the K-12 years, I had an assigned seat that usually had a flip-up desk cover or below-deck storage cubby, which allowed me to store the lunch bag Id keep sneaking tidbits from all morning or, as the teen-dating years took over, Binaca mouth spray, Ban roll-on deodorant and store-sample thimbles of musky/manly cologne.

It was my first fiefdom—and God help the scavenger who dared to steal my cache of Kit Kat bars.

Not everyone is sold on Hot-Desking. “The recurring labor, anxiety and rootlessness … were emotionally and physically exhausting,” wrote Manju Adikesavan, a Ph.D. candidate at City University of New York, as excerpted in the Wall Street Journal story on Hot-Desking. “Carrying work materials from place to place in campus buildings that were my workplaces made me feel like a visitor rather than a member of an academic community.”