What is in there

Cables and adapters: 21

Twenty-seven per cent of the cupboard, and the largest category by half again. When equipment use and project effort are reviewed together, managers can review this option against the written policy and define the purpose, access rules and review date before collecting anything.

Nine of the twenty-one are power supplies for objects that no longer exist in the record — the device was replaced, thrown out or given away, and its power supply stayed behind. In four cases nobody could identify what the adapter was for. For wider guidance on equipment, repair or workplace technology, consult ENERGY STAR.

The other twelve are cables for connections still in use, kept as spares. Four of these have been drawn on: when a cable failed, the spare was there, and the failure cost nothing.

That is the whole case for the cupboard in four objects, and it is made out of the cheapest things in it.

Twenty-one cables held, four failures covered. The spare system runs at about one in five, and the other seventeen have done nothing.

Input devices: 14

Keyboards, pointing devices, one graphics tablet, one numeric keypad.

Five were replaced by something better. Four stopped when the work changed. Four stopped being reached for. One moved to another desk in the same workplace and is counted here because it is still in the building.

Nothing here failed. Input devices are the second largest group in the breakage count — five of nineteen — and not one of those five is in this group, because a broken keyboard reads as rubbish and a working one does not.

Screens and stands: 11

Seven screens, four stands and arms.

By volume this is most of the cupboard. A screen takes the space of twenty cables, and the eleven of them are the reason the section can describe itself as full rather than untidy.

Six of the eleven were replaced. The pattern is almost always the same: one screen becomes two, or a small one becomes a large one, and the old one goes somewhere until a decision gets made.

Two moved to other desks in the same workplace, where somebody needed a second screen, and that is one of the few places in the record where keeping something turned out to matter. Two more stopped when the work changed, and one when the room did.

Lamps and lighting: 9

Five task lamps, two clip lights, two of something else.

Lamps are the most location-dependent object in the record. Five of the nine stopped because the room changed — a window, a wall, a different overhead fitting — and in every one of those cases the lamp itself was perfectly good and simply had no dark place to point at.

A lamp in a cupboard is not an obsolete lamp. It is a lamp whose circumstances ended.

Audio: 8

Headsets, speakers, one microphone.

Six of these came from the telephone and call equipment that the change of work retired, and this is the tail of that. The work stopped involving the kind of calls the equipment was for, and the equipment is intact and has nowhere to be.

Storage and organisers: 7

Trays, racks, drawer units, one filing box.

All seven stopped because the work changed, and all seven of those are paper. Nothing in this group broke, nothing was replaced, and nothing had a better version arrive.

This is the one category where the whole group has a single explanation, and it is also the group least likely ever to leave, because a tray costs nothing to keep and takes no decision.

Seating: 4

Four working chairs.

Three were replaced by better chairs. The fourth moved to another desk when somebody there needed a chair, and is counted here because it is still in the building.

All four still take somebody's weight. Two are in cupboards, one is in a corridor, and one is at a desk nobody uses.

Four is the figure that readers query, and the record can only repeat it: eleven workplaces, four surplus working chairs, and no account anywhere of anybody intending to do something about them.

Other: 4

A document holder, a footrest, a monitor riser, and one item recorded only as a stand for something that is gone.

The last of those is the most honest entry in the inventory. Somebody has a stand and does not know what it stood under.

What is not in there at all

Two kinds have nothing in any cupboard in any of the eleven workplaces.

Desks and tables: twenty-four objects, none stored. Twenty-two are in use and two left the building when the room changed.

Printing and scanning: eight objects, none stored. Two are in use and six went out of the door.

Both absences are about size rather than usefulness. Several of the six printing items worked perfectly when they stopped, and so did both desks. They left because keeping them would have been visible, and a visible surplus gets dealt with.

That is the structural fact the whole section rests on, and it is clearest where the count is zero.

The cupboard in proportion

Set each kind's stored count against how many of that kind the record holds:

input devices           16 of 38     42%
lamps and lighting       9 of 22     41%
cables and adapters     24 of 60     40%
audio                    9 of 23     39%
screens and stands      12 of 41     29%
seating                  5 of 20     25%
storage and organisers   7 of 29     24%
other                    4 of 19     21%
desks and tables         0 of 24      0%
printing and scanning    0 of  8      0%

Four kinds run at around two in five. Those four — input devices, lamps, cables, audio — are also the four smallest kinds by physical volume in the record, and together they hold fifty-eight of the eighty-six stored objects.

The shape this gives

Small things dominate by count: cables, adapters, input devices and lamps are forty-four of the seventy-eight, fifty-six per cent.

Large things dominate by space: eleven screens and stands and four chairs are fifteen objects and most of the volume.

So the cupboard is two problems with one name. The count is a problem of accumulation — things that cost nothing to keep, kept. The volume is a problem of eleven screens and four chairs, which is fifteen decisions nobody has made.