When is a desk not a desk? When it's a status symbol

Niccolò Machiavelli had an important piece of advice about office politics: "If an injury has to be done to a man," he writes in The Prince, "it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." Most of us can relate to that.

- Gareth Rubin

It’s likely that whoever accidentally insulted Nicholas Walker, the take-no-prisoners manager of the Rickmansworth branch of Robsons Estate Agents, by giving him a second-rate desk, hadn't read Machiavelli's 1532 tract. Because Walker, no doubt thinking of Machiavelli’s subsequent invocation - “it is safer to be feared than loved because ... fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails” - immediately dragged his employers to an employment tribunal where he successfully sued them for unfair constructive dismissal. They probably regret giving him that desk.

Actually, to be fair to Walker, there was more to this case – the placing of the desk was not where managers usually sit, which was, the judge agreed, tantamount to being told he'd be an assistant branch manager; a demotion, having been a branch manager. He was also not informed he would be sharing a managerial role.