What two hundred and eighty-four things amount to

The counts

objects                                  284
workplaces                                11
objects per workplace       median 24, range 12–41

in use                                   149    52%
kept and intact                           78    27%
broken and kept                            8     3%
given away or sold                        27    10%
thrown out                                22     8%

bought new                                96
from an employer                          61
already in the room                       44
bought second-hand                        31
handed down                               28
a gift                                    16
origin unknown                             8

stops, by what preceded them             135
  replaced by something better            38
  the work changed                        31
  stopped being reached for               24
  it broke                                19
  the room changed                        13
  somebody else needed it                 10

The figure that works against the record

A hundred and forty-nine objects — fifty-two per cent — are still in use, and the median age of those is six years. Twenty-two of twenty-four desks are in use, three objects are over fifteen years old, and the oldest is nineteen.

This site is about equipment going out of use, and more than half of what it counted has not gone out of use and has been in place for years. That figure is on the front page rather than in a footnote, because a record that buries the number undermining its own premise is not reporting a record. The useful question is whether a change removes friction without adding unnecessary oversight, so managers may consider whether this setup fits before setting the pilot measures.

The three findings

Equipment on these desks mostly stopped while still working. One hundred and sixteen of the hundred and thirty-five stops were intact objects. Nineteen broke — fourth of six reasons. A separate perspective on devices and their useful life is available from eWeek.

Half of what ends a working life has nothing to do with the object. Replacement and a change of work are sixty-nine of a hundred and thirty-five, fifty-one per cent, and neither says anything about the thing that stopped.

Whether a thing leaves the building depends on whether anybody had to handle it. Event-type reasons: forty-one per cent kept. Drift-type reasons: seventy per cent. A failure or a request produces a decision; a replacement or a drift produces a cupboard.

The four refusals

Not that equipment is reliable. Breakage competes with earlier ways of leaving service and loses; a third of the record is furniture with no failure mode; and objects discarded long ago are missing entirely.

Not that people keep too much. The record shows no instance of anybody deciding to keep anything. The kept share is twenty-five to thirty-four per cent across all seven origins, which is what a default looks like and not what a preference looks like.

Not a rate for anywhere else. Eleven workplaces, selected by who agreed. The eleven are not even independent of each other: most of the thirty-one work-changed stops are the same move away from paper, counted once per place.

Not advice. No price, no brand, no object examined. There is no page here that says what to buy, what to keep, or what to throw out, and the record was built so that none could be written from it.

In one sentence

Desk equipment in these eleven workplaces almost never failed: it stopped being used intact, usually because something better arrived or the work changed, and in one case in six for no reason the owner could name — and once it stopped, it stayed, because nothing ever obliged anybody to decide otherwise.

The record by kind

kind                    total  in use  kept  gone
cables and adapters        60      26    24    10
screens and stands         41      20    12     9
input devices              38      15    16     7
storage and organisers     29      18     7     4
desks and tables           24      22     0     2
audio                      23      11     9     3
lamps and lighting         22      10     9     3
seating                    20      11     5     4
other                      19      14     4     1
printing and scanning       8       2     0     6
                          ---     ---   ---   ---
                          284     149    86    49

Two rows carry most of what the record found.

Desks: twenty-two in use, nothing stored, two gone. The only kind with an empty cupboard column. A desk cannot be put in a drawer, so it is either in use or out of the building.

Printing and scanning: six of eight gone, nothing stored. Retired entirely by one change of work and carried out because there was nowhere to keep it.

And input devices, between them: sixteen in drawers against fifteen in use, the only kind where storage beats service.

Set those three rows together and the record's firmest finding reads off them directly. What decides whether a retired object stays is not what it is worth or where it came from. It is whether it fits out of sight.

The three figures to carry away

Nineteen of two hundred and eighty-four broke. One in fifteen, and every one of the nineteen is a component that moves or carries current.

Eighty-six are kept and unused, six have ever come back. Four of those six were cables, drawn on when a cable failed.

A hundred and forty-nine are still in use, median age six years. More than half, and in place for years.

Where the gaps are

In time, not in detail. No stopping dates, and an unknown number of objects that came and went before anybody thought to count.

Five questions would be settled by asking the same eleven workplaces again, and none of them needs a price.

Two hundred and eighty-four things, counted once, with eight gaps named and three claims made. That is the whole of it.