• Tutorial: Improve your workplace by using plants

    Plants? Shouldn’t we talk about support? Fixing Operating Systems? Recover lost data?

     Well… Yes! In fact look around you, can you see those millions of cables, piles of hardware surrounding you and many old CRT monitors staring at you?

    Mess on the Desk
    Mess on the Desk

    I guess that one of the things we can actually do to when providing support is to be aware of three important things:

    1. We can do something about improving the look of our workplace;
    2. We can do something the quality of the air surrounding us in the workplace;
    3. We can actually do something that will help us relaxing, even if it’s for just a couple of minutes.

    The solution to all this is simple: we can use plants.

    There are in fact some plants that are beautiful, can clean the air, don’t (almost) need water, will make your workplace looks better and it will take a couple of minutes of your time to actually put some water and stop thinking about work for that small amount of time… I’m currently using two different plants at my office: the Tillandsia and the Calathea.

     
    Tillandsia
    Tillandsia
    The Tillandsia is a genius of more than 500 species that obtains moisture and nutrients from the air (dust, decaying leaves and insect matter) through structures on the leaves called trichomes. From a research performed in Italy it’s clear that it can absorb polluting particles (like benzopyrene) and metabolize them.
     
    You’ll have to water it one a week in winter and between two and three times in the summer.
     

     

    Calathea

    Calathea

    The Calathea is a beautiful Brazilian plant that just needs water every 7-10 days in winter and a couple of times a week in summer.

    During the day its leaves will be open while during the night they will tend to close, so it’s like having two plants.

    Everybody knows that a support person has to work late or very late quite often, so you’ll feel like having a companion when you’ll look at this plant.

     

     

     Please remember that both of them shouldn’t be put under direct sunlight and that you can explain to your boss that you really care about that company policy about the environmental awareness…

     I hope that the information contained in this post will make some support life a bit better…