Sticky carpets. Unidentified smears on the walls. The overwhelming acrid stench of doom. Sit back and let me show you around some of the most untidy offices in Britain!

1. The classic

Sometimes people are simply a bit messy, and that’s not always a bad thing. Maybe they’ve had some deadlines to meet and so not had time to clear their desk for a while. Or perhaps they need lots of papers quickly to hand. Or perhaps they don’t work well in a sterile and tidy environment. This creates the classic messy office

But as you’ll see further down, sometimes messiness is not acceptable. Really it acts as the mirror to the poor worker’s tortured soul…

2. Given up trying

This is the classic scene of the young corporate dream having been slowly and consistently broken on wheel of the daily grind. You can imagine its poor inhabitant, pendulum-swinging within this chaotic cubicle of oppression between blind panic and almost serene catatonia. Notice the abandoned shoes in the foreground; the calling card of the mad. Possibly this ship has already sailed…

3. The I.T. Professional

Jesus once said ‘The meek shall inherit the Earth’, and how right he was. Once I.T. geeks were pale, nervous creatures, scratching around at the corners of society. But then, one day, computers became kind of a big deal, and the geeks suddenly found themselves with the biggest balls in the jungle (so to speak). Nothing else can explain the misguided arrogance and superiority exhibited when one of these thirty four year-olds with their own action figure collection tells you how to install a new network printer to your PC. Above is the type of office layer they create for themselves.

4. You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but…

Wacky. Fun. Zany. These are all adjectives that the owner of the office above would use to describe herself (and let’s not beat around the bush. This is a woman). These also happen to be the types of adjectives that induce a gag-reflex in most right-thinking people when they hear them. Decorating your office with bright batik throws and your ‘fun’ hat collection does not make you fun. Rather it suggests an over-emotional dependency on cats.

5. The misguided creative

I’m sure it all started off so innocently. First the Escher-inspired black and white print went up to represent their tasteful interest in graphic-led art. Then perhaps, after an office party, the pyramidal structure of red cups went up, never meaning to be permanent. But then things just started to get way out of hand and creativity soon descended into madness. Before they knew it their desk started to represent the type of OCD not seen since Howard Hughes decided to rearrange his bedside table.

6. I’m not gonna hide it…

For many people of a certain generation, computers and the Internet have become second nature. They’ve grown up with them and rely on them for nearly every daily task, and they are totally comfortable with this relationship. So comfortable in fact that this guy is completely unashamed to leave his box of tissues for all to see. ‘We all do it’ he thinks, ‘why hide it?’. (If you don’t get what this is eluding to, cherish your innocence for the sake of mankind’s soul.)

7. The ‘Marie Celeste’

You’ll notice the inherent creepiness of this office that taking its photo through the window has bestowed upon it, but that’s not the only reason its creepy. This is a ghost office, long since abandoned by its workers but left perfectly unchanged. These Marie Celestes of the office world are often found in porter cabins, or older industrial parks. They’re always incredibly messy, like work goes on in them, yet nobody ever seems to be there and the phone never rings.

8. Time Warp

Within the warm and musty confines of this office the world essential stopped in 1978. Thatcher hadn’t taken the throne, Open All Hours was just approaching its second series, Bovril was still a socially acceptable drink and more importantly, the average computer was still the size of Blackburn and manned by men still referred to as ‘boffins’. Even the mention of the Internet brings this man out in hives.

Cartridge Dave’s Article Round Up

So as you can see, what you may consider simply as a pile of papers and a few coffee mugs that need cleaning away on your desk, your colleagues will consider a biohazard. They will look forward to spending time at your desk with the kind of relish they reserve for spending time in a coach station waiting room any time past 10.30 in the evening (if you’ve ever experienced this, you’ll know what I mean).

I suggest you breakout a fresh packet of dusters, fire up the Cillet Bang and invest in some elbow grease.

Do your colleagues have a messy desk? Name and shame them into action by telling us about it as a comment below (or even sending us a picture of it to dave@cartridgesave.co.uk)