RE: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Office Spaces

[mlist -at- safenet-inc -dot- com]

> 
> How about you?  Here is this week's poll:
> 
> Where do you live at work?
> 
> !! This one !!* A cubicle farm - cubicle, sweet cubicle
> * I have a private office
> * I share an office
> * Our desks are just in this big room....
> * Job sites or factory or shop or test lab
> * My den or living room or other home office space
> * In the basement with a red stapler
> * Other/None of the above

Apparently I'm in the majority.  I started with this company in summer of
'98, and had a cube... then we gruesome ...  er... we grew some.  For a few
months, I shared a cube. In 2000 we had this current building built for us,
and I've been alone in my cube since then... though I've had to shift its
contents to different coordinates a couple of times.  Cube size appears to
be eight feet by eight feet. 
I'm sharing this cube with one short filing cabinet (just moved a second one
into an unclaimed cube), several composting mounds of paper-stuff (I should
really catch up with my filing), and five computers and two monitors.  I
should probably be wearing the hearing protection that Lisa uses.

In my previous job, at Ericsson in Montreal, we had the Swedish standard of
private offices with the ten-foot-tall, massive, blond-wood doors and
sidelights with shades or blinds.  Then we got crowded, and some of us got
to share. It took a while to train my new office-mate to comply with "nap
time".  Thank god she wasn't in sales or direct customer support, or I'd
have been driven nuts by constant phone conversations. As it was, her life
was a soap opera of bad luck and various sorts of woe, to which I had a
ring-side seat.  Some days, it was entertaining. Other days it was, um,
entertaining.  That woman taught me more about attitude than anyone except
the single mom who worked two offices down the hall and was putting herself
through electrical engineering while working full-time.  Can you say
"contrast"?

Each circumstance had its pros and cons.  I dislike the lack of privacy in a
cube, sometimes, when I'm trying to concentrate on something ornery. But I
get a lot more casual access to info because of my cubescape location, so
overall its a benefit for a techwriter.  Having successfully agitated for a
new computer (ahead of almost everybody else in the company) and a
dual-monitor setup (one of only two in the building), I will wait another
half year before agitating for a new laptop (our existing ones are all six
or seven years old and used only when unavoidable). Then, I'll be able to
just go find a quiet spot when I need to... best of both worlds.  Of course,
lobbying for a double-wide laptop will be an uphill battle.   ahem :-)

Anyway, we're supposed to be moving to another building soon -- negotiations
in progress; three candidate locations, only two of which will not be a pain
in my butt. I live in hope.   :-)

Kevin

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