“I’ll give up my desk for just one interview,” Béatrice told herself, but she unexpectedly lost her workstation for the entire day.

She was planning to check invoices in the open-plan office when a colleague from HR needed a quiet spot for an urgent video call. The meeting room was occupied, and Béatrice’s desk sat the farthest from the noisy corridor. Béatrice agreed to swap for half an hour, gathered her laptop and mug, and moved to her colleague’s desk right next to the kitchen.

Someone was grinding coffee there. Béatrice enlarged the numbers on her screen as if that might help her read them over the clatter of dishes. When the first call ended, her colleague asked for twenty more minutes. Then she inadvertently posted in the main work chat that she had discovered an ideal spot for calls. By lunchtime, four back-to-back interviews were on her schedule.

Going back to retrieve her charger, Béatrice found a printed sign-up sheet on her own desk and a pen laid beside her keyboard.

Realizing she wouldn't be getting her desk back anytime soon, she remembered the tiny archive room down the hall. It held a few storage boxes, but it had an outlet, a window, and a real door. With her manager’s permission, Béatrice neatly shifted the boxes to a lower shelf, plugged in her laptop, and shut the door. In the quiet, she checked a complex invoice on the first try.

When her colleague came to return the desk that evening, Béatrice simply smiled and asked to leave things as they were. She moved a small plant to her new windowsill, confirmed the permanent relocation, and closed the door once more. The coffee machine was further away now, but Béatrice was more than happy with that distance.