Re: seating arrangements
$Recently, market forces required that my company transfer me to another
$division of the company.
$Now instead of working from home four days a week and taking a short bus
$ride to a downtown office, I must commute 1.5 hours by bus or buy a car. (I
$hate cars.) I also must report to work at the site all days of the week, as
$this division does not allow home workers.
Back in the early days of my career, there is a reason I chose not to move to Toronto. I didn't like the idea of a two hour commute.
That said, a friend of mine used to work in a law firm in downtown Los Angeles, and to avoid the rush hour, she arranged to work 10:00 A.M. to 6:00P.M. so she could avoid the rush hour. It cut something between a half hour and an hour off her commute.
I don't know how your workplace would view such an arrangement, but if might be worth a look.
$But the main kicker is the seating arrangment. The new location sits its
$lone techwriter at a long table among the programmers. No cubicle and small
$desk space. Possibly a file drawer, but no bookcases. Just the same amount
$of work area that the programmers have. I find these accommodations
$unpalatable.
Back in my university days I used to work in a pay office. Durng winter three of us shared a small office with no dividers.
During the summer, when I did the pay writing on the coast instead of close to home, I could share a large room with six or eight other people. And if distractions from co-workers wasn't enough, we had to cover a counter with a regular flow of traffic.
On a recent project, I did do a little bit of my work on site while seated at a desk in the middle of a call centre. (The project supervisor quickly changed that arrangement without any push from me.) For most of the project, we writers shared an office with the document administrator--four desks with no cubicles.
And on the current job, I'm sharing an office with another coworker.
My point. By all means seek different working conditions if it helps make you more productive. But as others have suggested, give the conditions a try.
To borrow a line from 'Paradise Lost', "The mind is it's own place, and in itself can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."
--
John Fleming
Technical Writer and SAS Programmer
Edmonton, Canada
Please respond to the group. My address is set to reject e-mail from senders not in my address book.
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