Discretion advised

The people we share an office with are like our family members in one important way: they know things about us we wish they didn’t. They hear our personal phone conversations, they know when we’re down, they see us doing embarrassing things. Of course, we know the same things about them, too. So how do we keep the situation from becoming claustrophobic? By being discreet. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t share our colleagues’ deepest, darkest secrets with the rest of the team — that’s a given anyway. But, whenever we can, we should pretend not to notice our colleagues’ “human moments.” Imagine your co-worker just had a difficult conversation on the phone. You know it was her no-good boyfriend calling; you know he must have said something stupid to her; you know she’s angry. You were there — you couldn’t help overhearing. But that doesn’t mean you should confront her with that. Instead of saying, “What did he say now?” or worse, “You should just leave him, you know,” you could act as though you were just now looking up from your work and noticing her emotional state.

“The people we share an office with are like our family members: they know things about us we wish they didn’t”

The question “Is everything all right?” gives your co-worker support without telling her that her life is an open book. Discretion is an invisible wall that gives people a bit of privacy to hide behind. And because we don’t have to be discreet about our own human moments, I’ll tell you about an embarrassing story that happened to me. Once, in the office, I sneezed unexpectedly hard. And I didn’t know it, but proof of my sneeze was still visible on my shoulder afterwards. I was talking to a colleague later who said, simply, “There seems to be something on your blouse.” Not: “Careful, you’ve got snot on your clothes.” Not: “Ew, what’s that on your shoulder?” Of course, he knew perfectly well what he was looking at, but the way he said it left me some much-needed privacy in which to be mortified.

Put that back!

As every baby knows, it is hard to put things back where they belong. If you look around many offices today, you’ll see that a lot of us still haven’t quite learned that lesson. But there are two things that even the most disorganized office workers mysteriously put back where they found them: empty milk containers always seem to go back into the fridge, and pens that don’t work almost always get put back in the pen drawer. I suppose you have to start somewhere...

KATHRIN ENKE is an American editor and translator based near Stuttgart. She is still getting used to her new boss: her baby daughter, born in September 2007. Contact: k.enke@spotlight-verlag.de