Saturday, December 10, 2005

What Kind of Messy Are You?

Other than a brief stint as a basket room clerk at the neighborhood pool when I was sixteen, I've worked in offices my whole working life. From this experience, I've broken people down into four categories of messy:
  1. Organized on the surface, messy in their drawers
  2. Messy on the surface, organized in their drawers
  3. Organized on the surface, organized in their drawers
  4. Messy on the surface, messy in their drawers
I fall into category number one. Although I will confess that all of my labels face forward in my refrigerator and food pantry and that all of my clothes face the same direction in my closet; the inside of every drawer, closet and file cabinet in my life is a mess. On the outside, however, everything has a place and everything is in its place.

I discovered the different categories years ago when I looked into a desk drawer of a paralegal I worked with on a daily basis. On the surface, this girl's office was a wreck. I never understood how she could find anything in that office. Yet, if you asked her for something, she knew exactly where it was. I was, therefore, amazed when I opened several of her desk drawers one day and found that every pen, pencil and paper clip was in its designated place and all of her file folders had neatly typed and color coordinated file labels. The folders were even all the same color. My files aren't even alphabetized let alone color coordinated.

She and I took an informal poll around the office and found that roughly 90 percent of the office fell into either the neat/messy or messy/neat categories. Those people who fell into the neat/neat or messy/messy categories were invariably a little on the quirky side and suffered from all sorts of phobias and anxieties.
What kind of messy are you?



What Kind of Messy Are You?
I am neat on the surface, but messy in my drawers.
I am messy on the surface, but neat in my drawers.
I am messy on the surface and messy in my drawers.
I am neat on the surface and neat in my drawers.
Why do you care so much about people's drawers?
You have just set my therapy back five years.
I wish you would have never discovered that quiz maker thing.
This Poll by lauriea776
Click here to view results

8 comments:

Lorna said...

If you can close a drawer or a closet door without breaking anything or setting up a potential injury for the next opener, you meet my neat standard. However, all the surfaces you can see in my home or office are pristine. So is my face, hair and outer clothing. Of course, saying "outer clothing" implies inner clothing, and I'm going to stay mysterious about that.

OldHorsetailSnake said...

I have not been messy in my drawers since about age 2 1/2. And I never put any on the surface.

Anonymous said...

I have so much junk it is scary. No horozontil surface is free from being piled up with stuff.

Laurie said...

Lorna - I'm the same way and I think it has something to do with our outer persona vs. our inner persona but I haven't gone into the whole thing that deeply. I don't think I want to know.

Old Horsetail - Good for you, dude!

Anonymous - What about your drawers?

thenewmrsf said...

well, i'm messy on the surface, neat in my drawers, i believe. but, i used to be the opposite. since we've moved offices, i have less work space, so there are more & more piles of crap on my desk, yet in the desk drawer, all the pens & pencils are in a cubby, all the paper clips are in a cubby, i even have a cubby for post-it notes. but, does it count that the desk drawer CAME to me like this? this used to be someone else's desk...damnit, Laurie, I think I'm messy/messy. i fall into the crazy quirk office workers...DON'T say you're surprised!!

Laurie said...

Mrs. F. - You quirky? Never!

Danno said...

Organized counter, messy drawers, if something is missing, I ask my wife what in the hell she did with it.

...knowing full well she wouldn't go anywhere near my drawers. :)

Laurie said...

Danno - Maybe if you had clean drawers, she would touch them more.