Piles, piles and piles of paperwork clutter the ground of Ashley Kisla's office, as well as her workspace — a dining room table.
"I have a filing system: It's the floor and my desk," jokes the director of sales and marketing for Rosbottom Interests in Shreveport, La.
It may sound like poor form to meet in such a mess, but business studies indicate the opposite.
"Visitors feel significantly more welcome in offices that are in organized stacks," said Lorraine Krajewski, a management communication professor at Louisiana State University-Shreveport.
Perfectly neat and tidy offices may seem too sterile and make visitors, be they guests or coworkers, uncomfortable, she said. Too much disorder can be equally unwelcoming because people feel like they're intruding.
"Organized stacks simply means that it's in-between," she said. "You have lots of things on your desk, just in stacks that look organized."
Plus, messy offices aren't conducive to finishing long-term projects, she said.
Kisla says her stacks make sense to her, and they're also understood by her coworkers.
If she's calling in from out of town, others can find what she's seeking. Then again, usually her workspace becomes a little tidier before she travels, and she'll go over papers with someone at the office.
Day-to-day, it's a never-ending task to separate paperwork as it comes in, she says. Sometimes a weekend trip to the office is in order when things are too out of order.
"Who likes to file?" Kisla asks. "It's probably a bored individual who likes to file."