Obsessive cleanliness disorder the real pandemic

All this hysterical sterilising weakens our immune systems and is also counterproductive to office life

I KNEW I had a problem when I started disinfecting the neck of my bottle of disinfectant. And not just the bottle in my bathroom cleaning cabinet – the bottle beneath my desk in the office. Or perhaps it was the expression of a colleague when she walked into the lift and caught me pressing the button for the sixth floor with my knee.

With the UK government winding down its National Pandemic Flu Service this month because of the declining number of swine-flu cases, now seems a good time to tackle the subsequent outbreak of obsessive-cleanliness disorder and other strains of hygiene hysteria that have transformed our workplaces over the past year.

We were told to clean our hands more often by omnipresent health notices and wall-mounted antibacterial hand-gel dispensers that have replaced watercoolers and coffee machines as the office detour of choice. But the way some of us have been carrying on, we may as well have just swapped our desks for the bathroom sinks. And while I know that I’m an extreme example, the hand-gel dispensers empty too quickly for me to be alone.

Obsessive behaviours become compulsive because they give people an illusion of control in an uncertain world. So it is hardly surprising that a global flu pandemic coupled with the worst recession in decades should have tipped many otherwise sane people over the edge.

But, beyond the fact that all this hysterical sterilising can actually weaken our immune systems, it is also counterproductive to office life.

For a start, it is embarrassing. In spite of my antics with the elevator buttons, I found myself cringing at someone at the office cash machine keying in their PIN a little too literally – with the keys to their front door.

It is also inefficient. Not just the constant hand-washing but the inability to switch freely between all your various keypads and keyboards without the fear of cross-contamination.

This might sound over the top, but friends who work in hot-desking environments complain about the daily rigmarole of having to sanitise their phones and keyboards with complimentary alcohol wipes. Apparently there is even an etiquette to it: it is impolite to disinfect a desk in the presence of its previous incumbent.

This leads to the most significant impediment to office life: precautions that are supposed to be socially responsible can easily become antisocial.

Even if you sterilise your workspace more robustly than a hospital operating theatre,

the act of doing so suggests an implicit mistrust of The Other. This is damaging: it sets the wrong tone for teamwork and it becomes all too easy for acceptable suspicion of your workmates to spill over into blatant rudeness.

Jacqueline Whitmore, the Florida-based author of BusinessClass: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work, says it is for this reason she has been advising clients to continue shaking people's hands. "Even though more people today are more forgiving if you refuse a handshake, in business it's important to make that physical connection."

Of course, over-cleanliness can sometimes be as unpleasant as dirtiness in this respect. After all, nobody wants to shake hands with someone whose skin is so dried out by alcohol hand gel that their fingers are flaking, their every gesture conjuring clouds of crusty-knuckle dandruff.

Perhaps even more important than these formal interactions, however, is the damage done to the softer kinds of office camaraderie – the afternoon tea run and communal crisp packets.

A year ago, I would think nothing of commandeering a colleague’s coffee cup or joining them in all those bonding birthday-cake moments. But now I can’t even eat with plastic cutlery unless it comes sealed in Cellophane. Declining an offer of MM’s from a workmate might not be as mortally offensive as declining food from your grandmother, but it still counts as impolite.

In this new work environment, there is less space for sympathy. When people sneeze in the office, we no longer say “bless you” but stare daggers at them with suspicion. And when they stay at home with a mere sniffle, we resent them even more for our extra workload.

Apparently, the cure for our irrational fears is to confront them head on. Accordingly, last week I decided to embrace my inner slob. I allowed my desk to descend into a giant Petri dish of decaying food and paper. By Thursday morning, our facilities department had left me a note asking me to clear away all the crumbs because of the danger of attracting mice.

But the trouble is, I’ve come to like having piles of rubbish on my desk. It helps conceal my keyboard and phone when I’m not around – in case anybody sneezes. – (Copyright the Financial Times Limited 2010)

Lucy Kellaway is away