Setting: At the Office
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2023 there were roughly 18.5 million office and administrative support jobs in the United States, making up 12.2% of the country’s employment. That’s a pretty significant number of people heading to the office every day for work.
An office setting merits consideration for any contemporary story you are setting out to write, not only because it is a reality for so many people in the world today, but also because it offers delightful opportunities to weave in situations that will drive plot, conflict, and character development.
My first experience working in an office was as a janitor. For many years, I cleaned an office building in the evenings as a part-time job. Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience in many ways, some of which I will get into below. I now have a Monday–Friday job working behind the desk in a different office building and it has been an illuminating experience as both a writer and as a human being.
Here are a few considerations to help you build an office setting into your book:
Layout
Here are some other rooms you can expect to find at an office:
Front desk: Typically, there is a larger desk by the entrance for a secretary who can greet and direct visitors.
Cubicles: Maybe not every office has them, but cubicles are certainly a convenient way to fit a lot of people into one workspace. The thing about working in a cubicle is that there really isn’t much privacy; your business is pretty much laid out there for everyone to see. This is just something to keep in mind if you choose to park a character in a cubicle of their own.
Separate offices: Generally, offices with actual doors are reserved for individuals with more authority, but that may not always be the case. I am privileged to work in a building that is full of separate offices, and it is incredibly nice to have a door to close on days when I am feeling grouchy, depressed, or antisocial. On the flipside, it is a pleasure to have friendly coworkers who come and knock on the door to check in on difficult days.
Kitchen: You can probably expect to find a microwave, a dishwasher, a sink, a fridge, a table, possibly a vending machine or two, and of course the oh-so-essential coffee machine. The office kitchen can be a fantastic setting for character or plot development because it is a hub of interaction. People loiter around the coffee machine, chatting, venting, or gossiping. Sometimes, they fly in and out on their way to meetings. I have a peculiar idiosyncrasy in that sight and smell of other peoples’ food tends to gross me out, so I often actually find the kitchen a challenging place to be—but I think I’m an odd duck in this respect.
Conference rooms: Usually, there’s a big table, chairs, and a screen for presentations. When I worked as a janitor, the conference room was a pain in the butt to clean because getting the fingerprints off the massive table was tedious. Also, the bottoms of the rolling chairs would get super dusty (or muddy, depending on the season) and needed wiping.
Storage rooms: It’s true there are digital files now, but paper files still exist. They might be kept organized in filing cabinets, but I have also seen stacks of cardboard boxes that make the room feel much more claustrophobic.
Paper room: This room contains office equipment like the printer/copy machine, paper shredder, staplers, hole punches, and other smaller tools (scissors, paper clips, etc.). As a rule, paper shredders generally make a mess and people often leave bits of paper behind on the floor.
Bathrooms: Honestly, I think the most annoying part about cleaning the office bathrooms was the amount of water that people would splash on the mirrors.
Furnace room: The office in your story may or may not have this room if it’s on the ground floor. When I worked as a janitor, this is where we stored the cleaning equipment and let me tell you, it was as creepy as heck in there. I used to have this waking nightmare in which I would get trapped in the furnace room and have to stay there all night.
Stairwells and elevators: Obviously, this will only apply if your fictional office space spans more than one floor. Office stairwells, I’ve noticed, often have something gross on the stairs: strands of hair that got left by a mop, muddy/snowy footprints depending on the season, coffee spills, dead bugs. If you are intrigued by the scene possibilities of a stairwell setting, check out my blog post on the subject!
Conflict
Once you have the layout for your office, consider how you can manipulate it to create conflict in your scenes. Perhaps your character is stuck in a section of cubicles with some challenging co-workers surrounding her. (My favorite example of this sort of scenario is The Hating Game where two rivals are seated at desks directly across from one another.) Maybe your character is in a rush to get through the crowded kitchen while on a break and she overhears a group of colleagues gossiping about her by the coffee machine. And to make matters worse, the new guy is heating up his disgusting tuna casserole in the microwave and your character knows that the whole office is going to stink for the rest of the day. Or, God forbid, maybe your character is forced to make a trip to the creepy furnace room because… Well, you decide. The point is, office spaces—for all their normalcy—are FULL of opportunities for things to go wrong. This can drive your plot forward, add humour, or facilitate character development.
And speaking of character development…
Characterization
I think if I were a future archaeologist digging up something that exists in the world today, I would want to find an office building. Offices are fascinating cultural hubs. They facilitate the coming together of wildly different individuals as they work in close proximity towards some common goal. These individuals probably have a similar base of knowledge or skills, but their personal lives—families, backgrounds, dreams, fears, beliefs, passions, nervous habits—are different. And here they are, side-by-side in their cubicles, working towards that one thing they all have in common.
If you walk around an office building, you will see little assertions of individuality all over the place. Trinkets, coffee mugs, photographs, art work, stationary… All of these adorning desks like middle school graffiti: So-and-So was here. As a former janitor, I can also tell you that people’s garbage cans are a fascinating window into who they are. There’s the garbage bag that’s speckled with chewed pieces of gum like a nest of alien symbiote babies; the garbage of the allergy guy, full of used Kleenex; the garbage with liquid coffee in the bottom of the bag (make of that what you will); the garbage with—wait for it—fingernails littered AROUND the can. I can’t tell you how many fingernails I picked up off the floor in my janitor days. Also, I’m pretty sure some of them were toenails.
The way people interact with their space is also significant. Some desks are rigidly organized; others are so full of paper and knick-knacks that it’s unclear if there is in fact a desk beneath it all. For all you know, that paperwork is levitating in midair. However, it’s important to note that the way people treat their space is not a reflection of their quality of character. One of my favourite colleagues from the past—a funny, kind, and supportive man—had a desk that looked like one of those scenes in a spy movie where someone’s office has been searched by an enemy agent, everything dumped out and overturned in search of a single piece of evidence. He wasn’t a lazy guy, by any stretch of the imagination; rather, he was extremely busy, and on his list of priorities, maintaining a clean desk space simply didn’t outrank helping out his colleagues, assisting his clients, and going home to his family at the end of the day.
Think about how your character’s office space can reflect their priorities. What is important to them? How does it show through their interaction with their space?
Final thoughts
Remember, the key to writing a realistic setting isn’t pages and pages of description. It’s the poignant, specific details that you drop into the scene as your character goes about their business. Those details—the mosaic of fingerprints left on the conference room table, the guy in the corner cubicle who clips his nails every Friday, the woman whose desk is covered in sticky notes like that one scene from Bruce Almighty—all serve to pull your reader into the scene and make them feel as if this office is 100% real. You are setting the stage for your character to grow and experience life. Have fun with it!
Writing Challenge:
Imagine four different desks you might find in an office building. Make a list of what is on each one and how everything is arranged. What do the desk spaces tell you about the people who work there?
Repeat the first activity, but this time try it with four different garbage cans. What does the contents of those garbage cans tell you about the people who use them?
Pick a part of an office building you find interesting (the kitchen; the paper room; the stairwell; the boss’s big, plushy office; etc.) and make a list of as many things as you can think of that could go wrong in that space. What are the possibilities for conflict?