You spend approximately 35 hours a day in the office and your desk is that special space where work needs to be carried out. The office desk is where your laptop or desktop resides and all the required stationery and personal effects to ensure you are performing at your best. Most offices also have a work drawer for each employee that ensures you can easily store your files, snacks and drinks.
The office desk earmarks your territory and could reveal your personality. It is often believed that the easiest way to decipher someone’s personality is to look at their workstation. The extrovert is usually expected to have a cluttered desk which could seem a bit chaotic to the more organised colleagues. On the contrary, research reveals that the minimalist tends to have a less cluttered desk and these individuals are believed to be cautious and disciplined. They are also very hard working and are likely to get a lot done due to a well-planned work schedule. One could easily argue that a minimalist is likely to have a cleaner desk than their clutter or more extroverted counterparts
In this age, companies now have a desk less or flexible working station that allows employees to move around quite easily. As our individual hygiene standard differ so does the state of the office desk. Some individuals make a conscious effort to wipe down their desk once a week or every other week. Others leave it to the cleaners and see it as no responsibility of theirs.
Average desk contains about 400 times more germs than the toilet seat
This is a shocking statistic that can easily drive one to clean their work desk about twice a day. Research suggests that about two-thirds of office desks have more bacteria than the average toilet seat. The findings also revealed that about 20,961 germs per square inch can be found on the average desktops. For the keyboards, a total of 3,295 bacteria are nurtured and the mouse has a total of 1,676. These are some staggering figures that can easily lead to a daily cleaning of the desk to prevent contracting any disease. To add to these figures, our phones are believed to contain about 25,127 of germs. Adding all of these together makes the office desk accommodate over 400 times more bacteria than your average toilet seat.
Some of the dangerous germs found on our work station include E-coli, Staphylococcus, Helicobacter and Pseudomonas but to name a few. The survey findings were based on about 1,000 office staff interviewed. Employees in sales and marketing had the least hygienic desk when compared to other departments. Some of these staff claimed to clean their desk about once a month.
Have you ever eaten some nuts or biscuits directly from your desk? Eating these straight from your desk without a serviette is almost as good as eating directly from an average toilet seat. As the research revealed that an average office desk has more germs. All it takes is a regular wipe of your workstation with anti-bacterial wipes.
