Seating Arrangements

Seating plans are strange things, aren't they?

I'm a bit out of the loop with these (as I am for most things), because when someone asks me about where people should sit, I tend to think in terms of locations.

If you asked me where I wanted to sit, I would pick a place. "Over by the window", "On the right side of the aisle so I can stretch my leg", "where I can see the door".

Actually, nine times out of ten, I usually pick a place where I can see the door. It may not be obvious at first, but if you paid close attention you might notice that, when given the choice of where to sit, I tend to pick a spot where my back is to a wall and I can easily see the door or passageway. I'll sometimes pick a spot that is less attractive or more awkward to get to, just because it has better lines of sight.

Over the years I've managed to whittle most of my hang-ups regarding personal space down to two:

The big one is that I don't like people touching my head. I'm okay as long as they are a professional of some description (a hairdresser, for example), and I have asked them to do something (like, say, cut my hair), but apart from that I can see no reason why anyone would touch my head, and therefore no reason why anyone should touch my head. Not unless they were being a) deliberately annoying, b) weird and creepy or c) all of the above.

The second one is that I don't like having my back to a door or passageway. I don't mind having people behind me as long as I know they're there. I'm really not comfortable with the idea that someone can enter the room and walk up behind me without my being aware of it.

I spent the last three years sitting in a desk in a nice spacious office next to a big window. I had plenty of natural light, I could see the sky and some trees, I could talk to people without making a special trip and I had lots of places to store things. It was, however, positioned in such a way that I had an entrance behind me.

I have recently moved to a smaller office in a poky little room with less room, less storage space, hardly any natural light and the world's most unpredictable airconditioning (some days it's hot, but then it's freezing by the afternoon) - and most of my friends are in a different room. I actually like it better than where I was sitting before because I'm in a nice little corner where my back is to a wall and I can easily see the only door from where I am.

I need to enjoy it while it lasts, because when we move to the renovated office space in October (well, maybe November), I've managed to get one of the only two spots which is right at the end of two corridors. I've got one passage way directly behind me and another on a slightly oblique angle. People can come up behind me from two different directions. Yay.

Now, the reason why this has come about is because, other than having my back to an entrance, I don't care where I sit - or, rather, whom I sit next to. Other people apparently do.

It seems that other people, when asked where they want to sit, make their decisions based on "I don't want to sit next to X or Y". So there were a couple of combinations of people that needed to be avoided.

It's not that the people who didn't want to sit next to X or Y don't like X or Y - they just find them annoying and prefer having them in small doses. The thought of spending all day every day in close proximity to the annoying person is something they wanted to avoid.

I don't have that problem. I can rest safe in the knowledge that, in any given combination of people, I'm the most annoying person in the room. I am, quite frankly, the most annoying person I know, and I've yet to meet someone who annoys me more than I annoy myself.

So, someone turns to me and says, "do you mind sitting next to X or Y?" to which I can only say: "Why would I mind? They're the poor sucker who has to put up with me."

So, as everyone else arranged where they wanted to sit based on whom they were willing to sit next to, I wound up choosing a location I don't like just to get out of the way.

Oh, well. I need to get over this anyway.