u/EntertainmentFair414

I feel like I keep seeing the same hybrid office problem over again so now I’m curious how many people are dealing with this.

A lot of smaller teams seem to think desk booking will be super easy to manage... you make a simple system, ask people to book before coming in, remind everyone to cancel if plans change, maybe send a Slack reminder here and there but hey, it should work. But people always make it a bit harder of course.

You have those who forget to book and just show up, then others that reserve desks and never come in. And somehow the office manager or ops person becomes the detective trying to figure out who is actually coming into the office that day and no one even knows where to look at lol.

I’ve seen so many people here say they don’t want to become overly strict about it because they’re trying to keep things flexible and friendly cause they are a small team and etc but hey, we have to keep our sanity too.

if no one is following the process can you keep being flexible?

Honestly… ? Other people. But let me be more specific …

The honest mistakes I can work with like a forgotten cancellation or a double booking. We're all human and I've done it too. What actually gets to me is the deliberate stuff that someone decided was a good idea without thinking about anyone else. Booking a room for the entire day "just in case" because you couldn't nail down a time yet is not a productivity hack. It's lazy and it makes life harder for everyone else in the office. Especially when it's the same person every single week.

What's the hardest part of the job for you right now? Vent freely just keep it casual, no names. We're here to fix problems not start office drama

Had a moment that reminded me how broken the gap between systems and human behavior is. 10am and every room showing as booked so I assumed we were maxed out but when I walked the floor and I found two empty rooms and one had a laptop plugged in but no one there.  

Meanwhile I got 5 emails in my inbox from people saying they can't find anywhere to meet..

I manually booked them and sent the obligatory "please cancel rooms you're not using" email and I briefly considered calling a meeting about it.

The thing that bothers me isn't the inconvenience its that this didn't used to be as common.. I think when booking something takes more than two taps it stops feeling like a commitment. The friction was doing some of the work and we removed it. 

Anyone else dealing with this? If you've actually fixed it I'd genuinely like to know how!