Marked benches

Citation

(2002), "Marked benches", Work Study, Vol. 51 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2002.07951faa.006

Marked benches

Marked benches

I was in a lecture hall recently, sat at an uncomfortable bench with a much too narrow strip of wood on which to rest my notepad, listening to a rather boring lecture. In the end I spent more of the lecture reading the engravings and graffiti on the bench itself. This was an old lecture hall which had not been refurbished for several decades – and the markings actually formed a kind of social history. One could trace the evolution of both themes (of particular interest to students) and language. I knew that "benchmarking" was considered a useful activity providing helpful information – but I had never thought about it in these quite different terms.