Security blanket.
That's the obvious way to describe working for the same company, in the same building, in the same office for sixteen and a half years. There is an immense comfort in taking the same route every day, arriving roughly the same time and starting your day by doing the same things in the same order.

It's a vocational existence of quiet manageability where the biggest possible surprise could be that the drinks machine has run out of still orange juice. Of course, it won't because someone will be right on top of that...but that fear remains inherent anyway.

People work the same way and even say the same things, day after day. YOU say the same things, day after day. You say the same things to co-workers, the same things to visitors and the same things on the phone to other people in other offices, themselves working to this very routine. You go to the drinks machine around the same time, go to the bathroom around the same time and yawn - leaning back in your chair to stretch - around the same time.

You refrain from moving anything because you like the secure feeling of knowing what you'll see, when you glance up from your work. In fact, you don't need to glance up. Like screen burn-in on an old CRT monitor, the static nature of your surroundings has caused them to be burnt into your consciousness. You notice - and tut - when your bin is more than a couple of inches out of line.

To the uninitiated, it's a bizarre, almost dystopian world of pathetic 'hidden' agendas and petty personal politics. Your desk area is a right-wing police state where crimes such as taking a pen or moving your keyboard, are bedfellows with murder and rape. You develop an attachment because you spend almost as much time here, as you do at home. Like at home, you want to have some semblance of authority...because it's quite galling to invest so much of yourself into one place and not have any kind of feeling of control. Around you, co-workers' motives are distrusted and office gossip is traded beneath the background hubbub of printer, copier and phone. The despicable foundation beneath the lightly constructed structure above, of 'mornings!', cakes on birthdays and cheap Christmas cards.

It's a vocational existence of quiet manageability...and whilst I couldn't hate it more, I also couldn't be more dependent on it.