Fates
Forty-nine that left the room
Twenty-seven passed on, twenty-two disposed of. The smallest fate, and the only one that required somebody to act.
Forty-nine items are no longer in these workplaces. Seventeen per cent of the record, and the smallest of the three fates.
Twenty-seven went to somebody else. Twenty-two were thrown out.
The split
given away or sold 27 (55% of those that left)
thrown out 22 (45%)
Slightly more than half of what leaves these rooms goes on to another use. Where home-office equipment is shared or supplied by an employer, teams can Monitask analytics for hybrid operations to understand the available records before choosing the smallest workable setup.
That is a higher proportion than the people involved expected when the figures were put to them, and it is worth noting what it does not mean: the record does not know whether the twenty-seven were used by whoever received them. Another useful source on technology, maintenance or purchasing is Repair.org Europe.
Why this fate is different
Every other outcome in this record happens by default.
An object stays in use because nobody stops using it. An object sits in a cupboard because nobody takes it out of the cupboard. Both are states that persist without anybody doing anything.
Leaving the room is the only fate that required an action. Somebody had to carry the thing out, list it, arrange for it to be collected, or put it in a bin.
Forty-nine objects out of two hundred and eighty-four prompted somebody to do something. The other two hundred and thirty-five did not.
What leaves
| kind | n |
|---|---|
| cables and adapters | 10 |
| screens and stands | 9 |
| input devices | 7 |
| printing and scanning | 6 |
| storage | 4 |
| seating | 4 |
| lamps | 3 |
| audio | 3 |
| desks and tables | 2 |
| other | 1 |
Cables and screens lead, which is unsurprising for the cables: they are small, cheap, easily replaced and easy to carry out.
Printing and scanning is the figure that stands out. Six of the eight such items in the record have stopped being used, and all six left the building — the only kind in the inventory with no survivors among its stops and nothing at all in a cupboard.
The large objects
Of the six printing and scanning items that left, five were given away or sold and one was disposed of. Of the four chairs, three were given away and one disposed of. Of the two desks, both were given away.
The account given was the same in every case: the thing was replaced or no longer needed, it still worked, and it was too large to keep. A printer cannot go in a drawer and neither can a chair.
That is the mechanism the whole section turns on: whether a thing leaves depends less on whether it is wanted than on whether it can be tolerated where it is. Small objects stay by default. Large objects force a decision.
Four of the eleven workplaces made this point unprompted when their figures were shown to them.
Where they came from
bought new 12
from an employer 12
bought second-hand 6
handed down 6
a gift 5
already in the room 5
origin unknown 3
Gifts are the standout: five of sixteen gifts have left, which is thirty-one per cent, the highest departure rate of any origin.
Already-in-the-room is the opposite: five of forty-four, eleven per cent, the lowest. Things that came with a room do not leave it.
The five that went back
Five of the twelve employer items that left went back to the employer.
That is the only route in this record by which an object returns to where it came from, and it accounts for one per cent of the total inventory.
The remaining seven employer items that left were given away, sold or disposed of by the person who had them, which is the practical answer to the ownership question the inventory could not ask.
What the record does not know
Where anything went.
The field recorded only that an item had left and by which of two routes. No destination, no recipient, no price, no date.
A fuller inventory would ask when, and that would be the single most useful addition to this section: the interval between an object stopping and an object leaving is the quantity that explains why the kept group is nearly twice the size of this one, and the record can demonstrate that the interval exists without measuring it at all.
Given away against thrown out, by kind
kind given thrown
cables and adapters 3 7
screens and stands 6 3
input devices 3 4
printing and scanning 5 1
storage and organisers 2 2
seating 3 1
lamps and lighting 1 2
audio 1 2
desks and tables 2 0
other 1 0
--- ---
27 22
The split tracks size almost exactly.
Everything large that left was given away rather than disposed of: both desks, three of the four chairs, five of the six printing items, six of the nine screens. Eighteen of the twenty-seven handed-on objects are from the five largest kinds.
Everything small that left was thrown out: seven of ten cables, four of seven input devices. Eleven of the twenty-two discarded objects are cables, adapters or input devices.
That is not about value — the record has no prices — and not about condition, since most of these objects worked. It is about whether passing a thing on is worth the arranging. A chair is worth a message to a colleague. A cable is not.
The thing that did the deciding
Six desk moves across eleven workplaces, and four objects left in those moves that would otherwise still be in cupboards.
That is the only audit anybody in this record ever performed, and nobody performed it deliberately. A person packing a desk is forced into exactly the decision nobody ever makes voluntarily, about every object at once, with a van waiting.
Why seventeen per cent is low
Because leaving requires an action, and the alternative does not.
In eight of the eleven workplaces, the storage available had not yet run out. Where there is room in a cupboard, an object that stops being used goes into it, and the question of disposal is deferred indefinitely.
The three workplaces that described their cupboard as full are also the three with the highest departure rates in the record. Three cases is not evidence, and it is the only mechanism visible here that would explain the difference.