Everyone knows what a pigeon-hole is, right? It's a term for the trays or boxes in offices that are assigned to people or groups so that you can drop mail off for someone without having to know where their office is. I'm defining the term because I honestly don't know if it's an Australian term or if it's used overseas.

Anyway, we recently got some new ones here at work, and I felt the need to post and rant about the labelling system that some brainiac here has come up with.

Firstly, instead of the individual shelves being labelled with the name of the person (or group) that the shelf belongs to, they are instead assigned a number (from one to about 35). A "legend" mapping numbers to names has been printed out and stuck on the wall nearby. So straight away you can't just look at the shelves to determine where to drop your mail - you have to shoot your attention back and forth between the printed list and the shelves.

Secondly, the numbers run top to bottom instead of left to right, contrary to how the western world thinks when reading. So you're looking for #19 - you find #20 and move one to the left, and it's #13.

And lastly, the numbers are actually on the shelf above the one you want. So you find the shelf labelled "19" and go to put your mail onto it, and then you have to remember that the label actually applies to the shelf below the one it's stuck to.

Basically they've turned what should be a very simple exercise - finding someone's name and putting your mail on that shelf - into a complex, multi-step process. It's a small thing, but the small things add up.