Since we moved into this office building in the insane week between Christmas and New Years, 1999 (alas, pre-blog), I’ve basically been in a single area. I was in one office from 2000-2001, then we did a one-office shift in January 2002.
About a year ago, the Powers that Be decided to move the rest of the IT group into the former mail room down on the first floor. They broke it up with cubes and with Gorilla racks and shoehorned the techies down there, so that they could free up the floor space for project task forces. That left just me and a regional server ops manager in offices up here on 2B.
That IT group move included the manager in charge of the local site ops, and she’s been finding being a manager without an office to be a real problem. It’s tough to do confidential chats with (or dressings down of) staff when you’re a thin cube wall from the rest of the team, and conference rooms are sometimes difficult to come by. Which is why, in general, the rule of thumb in our company is that managers get closeable space.
An office recently came free down near the tech corral, and the local manager claimed squatting rights to it, ostensibly to be able to do budget work. The office manager, though, objected, since the two of them don’t really get along, as I understand. Offices are in short supply, and the “need” for the IT site manager to have an office became a matter of dispute, even though the person’s manager (in Calgary) and the other two senior IT managers in the office (incl. Yours Truly) supported the need.
Now … right down in that same corner of the world is a strange corner “suite.” It was an oversized office that got split into a common conference area (complete with table) and three long cube-sized offices with full walls and lockable doors. It was originally configured for the senior management of one of the business units here, most of whom were frequently travelling and who wanted to set a “good example,” noblesse oblige, of efficient space usage. Which made up, a bit, for the cube-and-a-half cube space allocated to the rest of their group staff.
I thought it was the goofiest thing I’d seen, an example of how “eccentric” that particular business unit was. I’ve come since to see it as actually a very clever move, an efficient luxury.
Anyway, times and organizations have changed, and that suite is basically now empty. So we’ve proposed that the local IT manager, the regional server ops manager, and Yours Truly, move into that suite.
Pros:
- IT would be located in a common area.
- The regional server ops guy and I could provide mentoring/support to the local IT manager.
- We’d have a readily available conference space.
- The office, as a whole, would “get back” three full offices.
Cons:
- I’d be in a “mini-office” that’s about half the space of my current one.
That last isn’t a trivial concern, but it’s not so bad as it sounds. The office is actually well-furnished with modular furniture. It has more file cabinet space than my present arrangement, more desk space, and more bulletin board space. Less easy of an angle to hide my blogging from the doorway, but still doable. Biggest disadvantage is that the bookshelf space is much more limited. And there’s no large whiteboard and no wall space for one because …
… well, it’s a corner office, which turns it back into an advantage. Windows on two sides, and plenty of tree coverage (most of it evergreen), such that I can leave the windows open a lot more.
Other amenities include a kitchen that’s a heck of a lot closer (and where the coffee flavor I prefer, vanilla nut, is also served) and more convenience to the outside.
And, did I mention it’s a ground floor corner office? So good views of the weather and the outside, which will be nice. Slight bit of fish bowl (esp. when I’m there pre-dawn), since it’s on the corner of the wing by the office entrance, but that’s not that big of an issue. Minor reduction in aerobic exercise, since it’s ground floor instead of second, but since I don’t actually get out of my office all that often (which makes lunchtime that much more valuable to me), that’s not a huge impact.
This has been in discussion as a plan for about a month, and I finally got confirmation that it’s actually going to happen, though not immediately. Wanting to avoid a feeding frenzy, the office manager wants to have bodies slotted for our offices at the time we move out of them. Current prognosis is probably before Thanksgiving.
Which is probably just as well, since I’ll need to take a bit of time about packing up stuff to take down and, in a lot of cases, to take home.
But it’s exciting. Frankly, I always find moving exciting and fun — work, to be sure, but a new adventure, a chance to clean up my stuff and to discover new possibilities.
Time to start collecting copier paper boxes …