Ugh! Darling, your desk is filthy

A new survey says that women are the worst at office cleanliness

Women may appear the fairer sex, but when it comes to cleanliness at work their desks are seven times dirtier than those of male colleagues, according to one of the world’s leading experts on workplace germs.

Dr Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, believes that the average office desk is host to 400 times more germs than the typical lavatory seat. He says that our penchant for plonking purses, handbags and make-up bags on toilet floors is increasing the bug count on many womens’ workstations. Inside the desk drawers, he says, matters are even worse. Stale make-up, old plastic cutlery and long-forgotten lunchtime snacks make many womens’ desk drawers a haven for potentially harmful bacteria and help to give female office workers an overall bug count seven times higher than that of the average male.

He says: “We found that women seem to have more stuff on their desks generally — family photos and the like — and these can act as germ-transfer points when they are repeatedly handled by employees with a cold or with unwashed hands. When you add to this that handbags are often walking ‘bag-teria’ in their own right, it appears that women’s offices and desks are often not nearly as clean as they first appear.” He adds that men are not blameless when it comes to office bacteria, either.

Dr Gerba’s research finds that far from being the “babe magnets” they aspire to be, many men are walking germ magnets and he points the finger at the average manly wallet as routinely crawling with beasties and bugs. Researchers at Arizona found that mens’ wallets were the single most bacteria-laden item in any office and were, on average, four times as dirty as a woman’s purse.

Dr Gerba’s “Germs in the Workplace” study has found that the office phone is home to about 25,127 microbes a sq in, and an office desk surface itself will usually play host to 20,961 microbes. Keyboards carry about 3,295 germs a sq in, followed by the mouse, fax machine and photocopier. The average lavatory seat used by both sexes is home to just 49 germs a sq in.

Makes you think where you want to be now don’t you???