describe your work environment

Fairly relaxed here. i sit with my two immediate bosses, nesxt to the door to the serverroom, which is open at the moment as it's a wee bit warm in there. If I look over my shoulde ri can see though the glass window to the MCR, Rocket power is on Nicklodeon, ABC Sports on BEN.

I basicallly make my own work so this morning I've fired of a few requests for what people want to see on our revamped intranet, browsed eBay and some technews sites and made some phone calls about a new server that's making some unhappy noises and suffered a drive failure, 2 hours after installation. This may have something to do with the fact that the shipping company delivered it to a building site down the road rather than to our manufacturing department.

The worst thing is no natural light and the fact that I've had to bring my own keyboard as the heinously expensive mini keyboard that they provide has given me RSI of the left wrist.

Therefore no one bothers, as small and permanently silent research team began to take over the rest of the company, conversation was gradually forced out as everyone has an intense desire to preserve their own privacy and anonymity as they shuffle the meaningless data around. Those of us who used to attempt to make conversation gave up long ago, tired of pushing water up a hill. Then as we leave the office, we become rational sociable human beings once again, and actually talk to one another as if nothing were ever amiss.

Occasionally, someone will put a CD on. This is, invariably, the last Red Hot Chili Peppers album, the last White Stripes album, or a Wham! best of played ironically.

The company trudges on, failing to break even year after year, but never actually managing to die. Management come in and tell us of new hair brained schemes "lets publish thousands of books on the Chinese property market and the give them away for free!" concocted without the slightest nod to the concept of "market research". Every so often a salesperson will get sacked, and a wave of paranoia will rush over everyone in the room, and we are told it is all going to be fine. Despite the fact that every salesperson ever here has failed to meet their targets, without anyone ever realising that perhaps it is the product itself that isn't any cop.

Every so often someone will order us lots of free pizza or take us bowling in order to boost morale. It works for 48hrs or so. I sit here, burying my head in the sand, refusing to pay any attention to the internal politics of this place, for fear it will drive me mad.

It is suits, although business casual is allowed, just not advisable as there are always important people about. The tie can be dropped at will though.

So, it is quite a pressure, delivery environment to work in, I'd say. But that's what you should expect in the business I am in.

We are on flexitime, but it's not that flexible - we have to get permission to leave before 5 or arrive after 9 and there are stupid rules about taking half days which mean that if you have an early doctors appointment which would mean arriving at the office soon after ten, you still have to take a whole half day of flexi because it's out of core hours. It's very annoying.

Some people wear jeans, but always in a smart kind of way. I actually prefer not to wear denim and wear something a bit more conservative and dressy uppy because when I get home, the first thing I do is change into something comfy and it's like breathing a big sigh of relief - 'OK, this is where my life starts'.

Sometimes people put music on at their computers, but they keep it turned down really low so as not to disturb anyone else. They don't realise that it's actually more irritating only to be able to catch snatches of lyric and mostly hear the tsch tsch tsch coming from their crappy computer speakers.

There is one person in my office I really like, and she is leaving in two weeks.

There are 7 men and 19 women. Yesterday I went to my first agents meeting, which was 11 women and me. I've never had a male boss in all the jobs I've had since university.

The office itself takes up the 4th and half the 3rd floors of a Soho block. It's not spacious, but it's quite light and doesn't feel too crowded.

We work 10 - 6.30, though most people work a bit later than that and there's an unwritten laxness about what time people come in in the morning if they're regularly working beyond 7.

Its a big office, open plan, but managers have kind of offices with no front walls, and customer services are to my right in the sound proofed goldfish bowl. I like a lot of the people here really, some are great, but some are not so great at all

I have my own office which is pretty cool, with Ely Cathederal just outside the window.

It's pretty relaxed working hours wise, but mainly because people choose to do pretty long hours.

I do have to go to two other offices as well, one in Bournmouth which is strictly suit and tie, and no music, no personal interweb use ect, and no fun, but they are strictly nine to five. The other office is even more casual, but they do tend to have a very low level of personal hygiene.

We work 8:30 to 5:00, though nobody really checks. There is nowhere to go for lunch around here, so I usually just work through lunch and add the time to my total. Any overtime we do is paid double, which is still so exciting to me.

The office doesn't really have a dress code, and I often come in in jeans and (MY BELOVED) flip flops, riding my new goped. That said, yesterday I let in a party of well-dressed lawyers and one lady took one look at me, turned to her colleagues and said "See? This is a cool office". When I am "in the field" with jurors or travelling for work, I am required to dress "GQ smooth", which I secretly love. I am buying a new suit this Friday. A beautiful suit.

Everyone in my office has a rather high opinion of themselves and is socially a bit awkward (me included I guess!), so I don't really socialize with any of them or talk much about anything outside of work.

Oh, one other thing - yesterday a truck carrying mattresses backed up and hit a fire hydrant on our corner. I left the office to see two mattresses bobbing up and down in a thick stream just outside our front door, and a 40ft high jet of water on the corner. I will always be carrying a camera with me from this day on.

> Aphex Twin

i find '73 Yips' and 'Aphex Airlines' are probably the two things that will pull me up in my tracks when they pop up in the winamp random thing.

There are no more health benefits and recently the head of accounting (actually he is all that is left of accounting now) sent an email asking us not to use 411 as it costs $100 a year! Yes - we are getting emails about saving 8 bucks a month. and this is 8 canadian bucks so that makes it even more lame...

on the bright side we are right downtown in Montreal and you can take a nice long lunch, hang out on the steps in front of Place des Arts, go to a museum, etc. and the people are great - so in the end i don't spend as much time looking for new work as i should.

http://www.image4u.org/patloboyko/P1010038.jpg

Actually I wish that I could sometimes work at an office with other ppl. Maybe 1 or 2 days a week and the rest at home. I miss bouncing ideas off colleagues and having office chair races down the hall. I do have complete freedom in terms of dress code and hours and the like, so I can't complain. I used to rent an office space out of the house. Once our son is a little older, I'll do that again. It's better for my self-esteem to have to get dressed and go somewhere in the morning.

At the end of August, we're moving into the fifth floor of a building right on the lake front, so we'll have sunshine and a great view. Bigger cubicles, too, and better chairs.

http://www.hermanmiller.com/hm/content/product/image/P_AER_L122.jpg

Yay chairs!

I really need new office furniture, or any office furniture actually. And, whilst I don't miss schelping across London in the rush hour to get to Soho or the Godforsaken South Bank, I do miss other people, having a place to go, bouncing ideas and air conditioning.

on the other side of my cubicle wall is a woman who looks like charlize theron in 'monster', is desperate for attention, and is extremely full of shit. last week she told us that the president of china likes to rape young girls. when asked how she knew, she said, 'oh, believe me, i know things.'

i've got headphones and 13 gigs of mp3s on my computer, which is good, although conceivably illegal. i'm not allowed to listen to streaming audio, though i doubt that i would be caught were i to do so. i'm pretty bored most of the time and ilx has both saved me and made it worse (ie maybe i could get into the boring stuff and pass the time if ilx weren't calling to me).

ever thought of quitting?

It is pretty laid back. Our new bosses are centered in Boston and dress up, we don't. We just had someone transfer to Boston and he is fearing that he will have to wear dress trousers and a button down shirt and maybe even a tie every day, although he does nothing but sit at a computer and work db maintenance. Officially there is no flex time but everyone comes in late anyway. It's certainly the best job I've ever had and will probably ever have, although I despise one of my coworkers because she's decided to be competative in a very non-competative environment, which sets me on edge.

dress code is biz-caz-plus. i usually wear black, which lets me get away with dressing down a bit. i work 7:45-3:45 (i'm on market hours). there's a lot of downtime; most people would relish that but to me it only makes the eight hours go that much slower. sometimes i lie to myself that i only have four hours left when there are five; i figure i'll factor in the remaining hour when i get to it.

besides me, that is. ;-)

And so I go to my cubicle and begin the day.

10 minutes later...

A man in a giant plush panda suit came walking through the floor wishing everyone "happy employee giving month."

A GIANT PANDA SUIT. AS IN A PLUSHIE SUIT.

In the four years that I've been here, that is the single coolest thing to ever have happened. I regressed to childhood in a matter of nanoseconds and was literally talking to the panda.

"Oooh! Hello panda! Wow, hey look everyone! Isn't this SO COOL?!! Panda bear! Yay!! Okay, bye bye panda!!"

My manager was laughing (more than a bit uncomfortably) saying "Je4nnie is so happy right now. Hahahaha!"

I. Shit. You. Not.

I have officially lost my fucking mind. Sound the alarm. Elvis has left the building.

earlier today 2 men came into my office: one was elderly and had an unidentifiable accent and wore a lot of tweed. the other's face i didn't see but i heard him. he had a very distinctive voice and while he said something about "being a former broadcaster". the woman in charge of human resources here, who is around 70 and very very british, led them down the hall to a single battered chair. she said, "this chair MUST be removed." the elderly man said, "oh this is just perfect." the other man said, "yes, yes, exactly." they wheeled the chair out. no one knows who they were, why they needed that chair, or where they went to. no one wants to ask the human resources brit because every conversation leads into a scolding about an unrelated matter. so we all just stayed in our offices and wondered what it was about.

Lately, when I arrive to work at 6:45am the bus is f**king cold. It only starts to get warm inside the bus around 7:30am, when I am picking up my first kids. I wear a wool hat and some gloves until pretty soon before the kids get on, but I take them off so I won't look so much like an old fart to the 13 and 14 year olds.

The streets I drive are frequently very narrow and twisty, so it is a challenge to maneuver a big bus on them, especially with every other driver busting a nut to drive as fast as they can and half of them on cell phones.

Right now the students are mostly pretty dopey and quiet in the morning, but in the afternoon I have to keep alert to what's happening behind me as well as in front of me on the road. It keeps me on my toes. It is a good thing I like kids in general.

Another nice thing: my boss is far, far away most of my working day. A lot of autonomy in school bus driving, even if the parent company thinks it can wholly regiment the job by issuing a thousand directives from the HQ. Most of those are about limiting liability, not about making any kind of sense. It is your basic blue-collar job bullshit management bumpf. I do tire of it, though.

I like busdrivers!

My cubicle is directly across from all of the managers offices, including my boss, which means when there are big meetings or there's major shit going down, I get to hear all about it,because they all wander in and out of my boss's office when things are happening...often I get to hear the news repeatedly, as our managers tend to relay news like town gossips, repeating the story over and over and over again as someone new walks by. Often by the end of a crazy day I can recite the news myself. Have to restrain myself from dripping sarcasm when asked sincerely by the news-bearer of the day if I've 'heard the news'. I used to not work in such close proximity to management, so being in the thick of it takes some getting used to. At first it was cool that you knew what was going on, but now it's like sausage making, and I've decided that I would much prefer not knowing anything at all.

But my co-worker who sits across from me definitely makes my days lighter...even when I'm having a bad day, he's usually able to get me to laugh about something. All of the peeps on my row are cool, even my manager is a pretty cool guy. Very much a meeting of minds type group, where we use each other for problem solving, and we're always walking in and out of my boss's office bouncing ideas off him or he'll wander by and bounce something off us. By and large it's a pretty good environment.

I didn't realize I never posted here. I work at "home" too. Well, officially our private home is across the street but it's more or less at home as it's the shop/home of my parents (who in fact now live abroad). It's cosy. But in a sense "unworkable" as the kid(s) stays with us. It's great as well cause we can literally see her grow up, but on the other hand hard to get anythnig done. :-(

I am now in "the fishbowl" separated by a wall of glass from the station I used to sit at. I have the same kind of chair but now I have an actual desk desk instead of a section of bench plus it has a motorized height adjustment thingamajig and the whole keyboard section separates and cantilevers. should I have my phone number moved or just change all my e-mail signatures?

tell us more abt the fishbowl - im intrigued

i work at home in a 1 bedroom apt on the third floor my desk is facing one of two windows in the living room (three in the apt) all southern exposures that look out over a small triangular park (bonus factoid: the word for one of these is "gore") and an epic irregular intersection known as 7 corners - its a nice view lots of sun and people watching

the motorized height adjuster lets me raise it high enough so I can work standing up. and stare out through the glass at all my former peers in contract positions. who have to sit with the chairs down low because those benches have all kinds of line lumps and video switches and fiber interfaces stuck underneath them and if you hit one with your knee it really, really hurts.

I work at home in what used to be the dining room.

South wall: bookshelves with work-related stuff, computer gear, office supplies. Southwest corner: TV. West wall: french doors to daughter's room, more bookshelves. Northwest corner: unused fireplace, junk piled up. North wall: french doors to hallway, ladder, unused computer and tv collecting dust. East wall: shelves full of CDs and non-work books, door to kitchen, built-in glass-door china cabinet. Center: my desk, facing southeast.

oh and somebody covered half the glass in multicolored post-its on the other side from me so it's also a little bit like driving a carnival float

Faceless drone in a vast bureaucracy check-in

Wanna hear some incomprehensible acronyms?

all of ours are comprehensible

Because I am a Mignola stan I was tickled pink the day I was assigned to work on BPRD.

my new workplace is a giant room with four tables and four other employees and it is freezing all the time. sometimes there are two dudes from brazil in the back of the room yelling. I like the people I work with although they play the worst music ever on the stereo at ear splitting volume every afternoon so I have to keep my earbuds in. I can work from home if I like. working with this small a team is nice but a bit lonely; my last job (which I'd been at for most of the past nine years) was in a big office with a minimum of 45 other people.

oh yeah, I forgot the best part about moving to the other side of the glass, getting some insulation from the wackjob climate control on the operations floor. there's like one central vent that comes on at irregular intervals and just WHOOOOOOOSH for a few minutes each time, dumping all the refrigerated air into the middle of the room. circulation is mediocre at best so the thermostats which are like fifteen feet away from the vent always think they're keeping it a nice cozy 74 when everybody under the ice machine is wearing hats, coats, scarves and hobo gloves.

I should donate my hobo gloves to one of the new guys.

I am the captain of a messy desk bobbing on the waves of strange dusty archaic electronics. In the distance, some pimply seabird plays "One" by Metallica. wrong.

at the moment my work environment is REALLY NOISY ANNOUNCEMENTS from the 'FIRE COMMAND STATION' that the ALARM IS FALSE and there is NO NEED TO EVACUATE.

http://demonicious.com/20090122/unusual-system-administrators-office/

http://24.media.tumblr.com/b51da7978a91693f7c2d83c64caad183/tumblr_mwbcli3aP81qzznqro1_400.png

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/nov13/11-06getitdone.aspx#infog

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