The cupboard as a decision nobody made

What a decision would look like

Somebody considers an object, weighs keeping it against getting rid of it, and chooses to keep it. That is a decision, and the record would show it as an account along the lines of I kept it because I might need it. The record here describes objects rather than output, so a distributed team may compare the reporting options on this page and interpret operational data beside completed work and employee feedback.

Four accounts out of eleven workplaces came close to that, all about cables, and none was volunteered for a specific object. The nearest anybody came was a general statement that spare cables are worth having, which is a policy about a category, not a decision about a thing. Another useful source on technology, maintenance or purchasing is Make:.

For the other eighty-two objects the accounts are all some version of the same thing: it stopped being used, and it is in the cupboard.

The sequence, as the accounts describe it

1. The object stops being used, usually without a moment.
2. It is moved off the desk, to make space or to tidy.
3. It is now somewhere that is not the desk.
4. Nothing further happens.

The only act in that sequence is step 2, and in every account it is described as clearing space, not as storing something. The destination is wherever there is room.

Nobody put these things away. They moved them off a desk, and the place they ended up acquired the name cupboard afterwards.

Why this matters for the figure

Because seventy-eight and eighty-six are usually read as the output of a choice, and they are not.

Read as a choice, the figure says something about these people: that they are cautious, or acquisitive, or bad at letting go. Several readers of early drafts took it that way immediately.

Read as what the record actually shows, it says something about a default. When an object stops being used and nobody is obliged to handle it, it stays. Eighty-six times out of a hundred and thirty-five.

Those are different findings and only the second is supported.

The one process that does make decisions

Six desk moves, across the whole record.

A move obliges somebody to pick up every object they own and decide, within a fixed period, whether it goes. Four objects were disposed of in that process that would otherwise still be in cupboards.

That is the only audit anybody in this record ever performed, and nobody performed it on purpose. It was a consequence of having to carry things.

The record contains no voluntary review of equipment anywhere. Not once in eleven workplaces.

What this predicts, weakly

If the mechanism is a default rather than a preference, then the cupboard figure should be roughly insensitive to who the person is.

The record offers one test of that, and it passes. Crossing the kept group with origin gives between twenty-five and thirty-four per cent in every one of the seven origin rows. Things people chose and bought end up kept at almost the same rate as things that were simply in the room when they arrived.

A preference would show up as variation there. A default would not. There is no variation worth the name.

That is one weak test on eleven workplaces, and it is the only evidence the record has on the question.

The test the record cannot run

If the cupboard is a default rather than a preference, the figure should depend on circumstances and not on people.

The record offers two tests and they point opposite ways.

Origin: flat, as a default predicts. The share of objects ending up kept runs between twenty-five and thirty-four per cent across all seven origins. A thing somebody chose and paid for ends up stored at nearly the same rate as a thing that was standing in the room when they arrived.

Kind: not flat at all. From nothing, for desks and printing equipment, to forty-two per cent for input devices. A spread four times the origin spread.

The second looks like a refutation and is not, because the kind spread has an explanation that requires nothing about anybody's preferences: size. Things that fit out of sight get kept; things that do not force a decision. Thirty-two objects in this record are desks or printing equipment and every one is either in use or gone.

So both tests are consistent with a default, provided the default is understood as whatever requires no decision happens rather than people like keeping things. Those are different claims and only the first survives the record.

What would distinguish them properly

A workplace that ran out of space.

Three of the eleven described their storage as full, and those three have the highest departure rates in the record. Three cases is not evidence of anything, and it is the only variation in the whole inventory that bears on the question.

If the cupboard is a default, then removing the space should remove the default and raise disposals. If it is a preference, people short of space would find space. The record contains three workplaces pointing the first way and no means of telling whether that is what it means.

What follows, and what does not

Does not follow: that anybody should do anything about their cupboard. This site makes no recommendation of any kind and this page is not an exception.

Does not follow: that keeping things is irrational. The next page but one sets out the prudence reading in full, and four cable failures covered by spares is a real benefit.

Does follow: that the figure of eighty-six is not evidence about how people value equipment. It is evidence about what happens when nothing requires anybody to decide.

And if that is right, then the interesting question is not why people keep things. It is why so little in a working life ever obliges anybody to look at what they already own.

The record cannot answer that. It can report that in eleven workplaces, the only thing that ever did was a van.