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I wish I was working at home right now. I haven’t got a huge amount to do and the office is largely empty with people on their summer holidays. A couple of things I should like to get on with are stalled for various reasons and frankly, it is all a bit of a chore, sitting here pretending to be busy.
Still, it could be worse, I guess.
Our new office is actually quite pleasant, though it will be a much sterner test of its capabilities next month when more people are in at any time. At the moment we have the luxury of more desks than people, but if everyone was here we would suffer – there are seven desks for every ten bums.
Although a couple of us have managed to swing ‘fixed’ desks (we like them higher off the ground than most people) I haven’t always managed to grab one (mostly I do), so I have to join in with the flexible desking that we are supposed to use as routine. Never been so keen on that, but given that staff comfort is entirely supplementary and everything is driven entirely by cost and savings (no matter how much they try to polish the turd, it’s still a turd), we have to live with it.
I suspect that it is entirely accidental that the office is pleasant. Quite how long that will last, I don’t know. There are more coffee bars and a very good restaurant, so that’s good. Meeting rooms are at a premium, which is less good and we are not yet fully integrated into the (probably incompatible) electronic systems, so conference and video calling is awkward.
Still, I’ve worked in worse places.
Ironically, one of those worse places was the building I worked in 20 years ago, which was on this very site, though I was at the north end rather than the south as now. THAT was an awful building; the only real plus point to it being that while you were in it, you couldn’t actually see how awful it was. For the last 10 years of its existence, the sides were covered in awful green netting to stop the cladding braining passers-by when it fell off.
Google ‘Marsham Towers’ – I think there are still a few photos of the old dump hidden away on the intarwebs.
Still, it could be worse, I guess.
Our new office is actually quite pleasant, though it will be a much sterner test of its capabilities next month when more people are in at any time. At the moment we have the luxury of more desks than people, but if everyone was here we would suffer – there are seven desks for every ten bums.
Although a couple of us have managed to swing ‘fixed’ desks (we like them higher off the ground than most people) I haven’t always managed to grab one (mostly I do), so I have to join in with the flexible desking that we are supposed to use as routine. Never been so keen on that, but given that staff comfort is entirely supplementary and everything is driven entirely by cost and savings (no matter how much they try to polish the turd, it’s still a turd), we have to live with it.
I suspect that it is entirely accidental that the office is pleasant. Quite how long that will last, I don’t know. There are more coffee bars and a very good restaurant, so that’s good. Meeting rooms are at a premium, which is less good and we are not yet fully integrated into the (probably incompatible) electronic systems, so conference and video calling is awkward.
Still, I’ve worked in worse places.
Ironically, one of those worse places was the building I worked in 20 years ago, which was on this very site, though I was at the north end rather than the south as now. THAT was an awful building; the only real plus point to it being that while you were in it, you couldn’t actually see how awful it was. For the last 10 years of its existence, the sides were covered in awful green netting to stop the cladding braining passers-by when it fell off.
Google ‘Marsham Towers’ – I think there are still a few photos of the old dump hidden away on the intarwebs.