The Australian Taxation Office has found itself in a sticky compensation battle, after the desk and chair heights of one employee were changed without her knowledge.

The former Australian Taxation Office worker, now aged 56, said she experienced severe neck and shoulder pain on one day in April 2011, after she found her ergonomic requirements were not being met.

The change was made despite a sign on her work station saying “do not adjust or sit at this desk”.

For some, it shows the potential liabilities of hot-desking, a practice that allows multiple workers to use the same workstation.

The hot-desking practice is becoming popular in private and public sector offices trying to cut down on office space.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal has heard that the worker’s supervisors at first told her no one had used the workstation, but later revealed that said casual staff had used the workstation and had made adjustments.

The woman said it took weeks for an OHS rep to return the workstation to her preferred settings.

“The ergonomic adjustments were major,” she wrote in her appeal.

“The chair height and back rest, the desk height, the distance of the monitor the height of the monitor.”

She was paid compensation from 2011 to 2013 for aggravation of neck pain and a sprain of her shoulder and upper right arm, but the Tribunal has upheld Comcare’s previous decision to refuse ongoing compensation.

The woman had been sitting at a workstation with important ergonomic settings suited to her own needs, after an initial compensation payout in 2005 for work-related neck and shoulder pain.

But the Tribunal found that she has now been diagnosed with a degenerative condition, and ruled that her ongoing pain is a result of this.

A physician said rehabilitation for her chronic pain disorder and chronic pain syndrome “has been repeatedly unsuccessful”.

“Sadly this situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future,” the doctor’s report said.

“It is my opinion that [she] is permanently and totally incapacitated for work.”