Employee takes over desk at work by leaving his trash all the time, coworker adds even more trash to it until manager notices and intervenes: ‘No more camping at the desks’

Bar Mor Hazut • Lead Editor

Jun 4, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

The only thing worse than working in an office is working in an office that uses the "hot desk" system.

If you are unfamiliar with "hot desks", it is a term to describe an office with desks that are open for anybody. No assigned seatings, no desk is reserved. You come to work in the morning, you choose one of the remaining free desks, and you get settled for the day. Then you do it all over again tomorrow.

While the office might save a few bucks from this system, we have never heard of an employee who actually enjoys sharing a desk with their coworkers. It is almost always a cause for some friction between the employees, and you can be sure that there will be at least one employee who thinks they are better than everyone else and tries to prove it by claiming ownership of one of the open desks. Usually, the one everybody wants the most.

That is exactly the case in the office from a story posted on Reddit's r/pettyrevenge Subreddit. While everyone in the office was trying to make the hot desk system work, one employee tried to rig the system by taking over a desk and leaving it in a state that ensured no one else would use it. He would constantly leave his coffee cups and other garbage on the desk just to make it look like the desk was constantly in use, even on days when he wasn't even in the office.

This led one of his coworkers to take action and put an end to the childish behavior. Every time this employee was not in the office, the coworker would either mess with the desk's cables, readjust the monitors, or even add more trash to the desk to make it look significantly less appealing. Eventually, this caught the manager's attention, who was appalled that someone had left a desk in that state, and proceeded to remind everyone of desk etiquette and cleanliness principles…

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via Tim van der Kuip

^{Employees sitting at their work desks, represented by models.}
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Someone claimed the best hot desk for themself by leaving their garbage.

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via Arlington Research

^{Image representing an open-space office filled with employees.}
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