LEDGER COLUMNIST

Anyone who has ever seen my desk will never diagnose me with OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder - unless a new sign of that condition happens to be piling things up in complete disarray.

Every time I wipe the slate clean, so to speak, by cleaning off my desk at work, I know it's only a matter of time before the mountains of paperwork start rising again in no particular order.

There's an old saying I'm fond of that a cluttered desk is a sign of a brilliant mind. It's funny, though, no one I meet has ever used that phrase in my presence. That observation would imply witnesses of my desk are too intimidated to take note of my obviously superior mental faculties, or the old saying is complete hogwash developed by disorderly people as a way to explain their inability to file things away where they belong.

The funny thing is I'm not like that at home.

My golf gear gets cleaned, polished and put away after those increasingly rare opportunities to get out on the links. My fishing gear is always neatly stowed away, too. The many lures I have that only catch fishermen, not fish, were painstakingly organized by color, size and type in their own individual tackle boxes.

So after 15 years of driving coworkers bonkers with the realistic fear of an eventual paperwork landslide, I've come to the conclusion that my inability to keep an orderly desk is nothing more than a bad workplace habit, and a hard one to break.

Smokers have access to nicotine patches or gum to help kick their habit. About the only things that catch my attention, and make me think about changing my ways for the better, are paper cuts and dust bunnies.

I'm quite an expert when it comes to desktop dust bunnies, by the way. They hide in dark crevices and tend to scurry when exposed to light. They're quite easy to get rid of, too. With just a huff and a puff, you can blow them in your coworkers' direction and let them deal with the fuzzy critters.

On those rare occasions when I do some sprucing up, a somewhat orderly desk is an instant conversation starter for all the people walking through the office and I love to gab. Much like a new haircut, which I only have to get every five months or so now because of a thinning hair line, a noticeable lack of clutter on my desk is something you have to remark upon.

"Hey, you cleaned your desk," I'll hear from just about everybody who walks through.

"Yeah, and I lost a few pounds doing it. Thanks for noticing."

Perhaps, though, there's some method to my madness.

I've always been one to believe that you never know when something is going to come in handy, like loose buttons, nuts, bolts and other bits of metal that you have no idea what they are or what they do. I've got jars full of such stuff at home and, sooner or later, I'm going to find an opportunity to use them.

Such is my desk. I know there are police reports, press releases or studies sitting there that just may come in handy some day.

My desk is like a phone book, too, and you can't get rid of one of those.

I have a tendency to write phone numbers down on just about any piece of paper that happens to be within easy reach while I'm on the phone. Move any piece of paper on my desk and you'll likely find a collage of numbers that I know will be handy for a future story.

Unfortunately, that brings to mind one more bad workplace habit. I sometimes don't always write a name down to go with those numbers. So what I end up with is a somewhat meaningless number scribbled on the edge of a paper with no idea who may pick up if I should happen to punch it into the telephone.

"Is this Joe?" "No." "Nancy?"

"No."

When in doubt about a number, simply call and ask if the "chief" is there. You're bound to get one no matter where you call and hopefully you'll figure out who the number belongs to before embarrassment sets in.

Thinking about all of this is starting to motivate me to clean off the desk, but such is a fleeting thought. Besides, it would wake up the dust bunnies hiding beneath a press release from the "Dukakis for President" campaign that I might need.