This really happened at my office today. (funny...)

[jp1]

With last week's election a lot of people are on edge for all sorts of reasons. A number of people in my facebook feed have upped the number of adorable cat pics and the like to try and keep people from completely losing their sanity. I won't denigrate this board by posting pics of my adorable old man cats Chris and Everett (well Chris is adorable and Everett is...ummm...tolerable). But I will share this mostly pointless but true story from my day at the office today.

We're moving to a new office space in May. It's going to be a modern, wide open concept, no assigned workspaces, kind of place. Even the regional president will not have an assigned space. And nowhere to store stuff. Anything. We're officially paperless, so in this new space any paper (and everything else such as our laptops) has to go home with us every evening. And there's only going to be enough workstation space for approximately 75% of the people to be in the office at any one time. The average in office workforce over the past year was 60% apparently, so unless something happens to cause everyone to come in to the office all on the same day (CEO visit for example) this should be enough space. (lots of people work from home a day or two a week, travel for work, take PTO days, etc.) Although it's a major shift in thought, this is all very logical and practical. And with the exception of the fact that there are a few things that I would generally like to leave at work, pretty easily doable for me. With a business trip of one or two nights in a hotel every other week on average I am probably at the high end of work travel. Additionally, though, I work from home maybe once a week, and get 30 PTO days per year. Both of which are pretty typical of my coworkers so there are always a lot of people not in the office on any given day. I've always thought it a waste that I have a 150 square foot office dedicated to just me considering how often it sits empty, especially at the price of commercial real estate in San Francisco. For some of my coworkers it will be totally doable and others are going to find this a major challenge.

Anyway, after such a long lead up, now to today's events. Because of this fairly drastic change in our workspace environment they sent the zonal head of administration to our office to give presentations this week about the new office environment and answer questions, address concerns, etc. I was out of the office yesterday and Tuesday (natch...) so I went to the final presentation this morning. Presenter had connected her iPhone to the large TV in the conference room via airplay to display her powerpoint presentation. About halfway through the presentation it became apparent that she had not switched her phone to airplane mode because she got a text from her husband. It said (and I'm paraphrasing here) "babe, I'm so excited that you're coming home tonight. I don't think I could stand to spend another night sleeping in this big bed alone. Can't wait to see you!" Being a halfway decent public speaker she wasn't looking at the screen as she talked so she didn't notice this. Her subordinate who works in our office was frantically trying to get her attention but the text notification was up on the screen for a good ten seconds before she realized what had happened and managed to swipe it up off the top of the screen.

[bae]

I telecommuted for the last year or so I worked for my Silicon Valley company. From my island fortress of solitude. I'd fly down every few weeks for several days' of face-to-face work.

I'd just camp out in whoever's office was empty. I usually picked the CFO, CEO, or SalesCzar's offices because they all travelled a lot, and I could work around their schedules. Worked great, and I got killer office space out of the deal. I also think towards the end I was the only employee lacking a "badge", which confused the noobs when I'd set up shop.

I imagine the migrant-worker plan would be maddening for some specialties though, certain types of engineers come to mind.

[jp1]

I do think this is going to be an issue for the "technical" underwriters. These are the people whose entire job is sitting in a cube crunching numbers. Most of them have a fair amount of stuff printed out that they reference regularly, plus printouts of current, often complex, insurance submissions that they are working on. The more sales oriented people like myself already carry most of our current work with us, either on our devices or as a few printouts that we may need to reference while we are out of the office. For us it won't be a big deal. And getting out of our ugly old school dark cube farm style office space will be a positive. If it had been up to me I would've created a number of workstations for the permanently in office people to be able to settle in to, but I guess that goes against the new corporate plan which is supposed to "foster collaboration between different divisions". The whole idea of intra-divisional collaboration would cause the former CEO who built the company to be spinning in his grave if he were dead.

[rosarugosa]

JP1: Sounds like there is a downside to being a good public speaker!
Our company is starting to experiment with some of those flexible, collaborative work space options, as we are embracing more work-life flexibility for employees. But as a woman, my big question is where do the shoes go? :laff:

[Zoe Girl]

My job has been rather portable in many ways. The first few years I had 4 schools and I traveled between them and then also went to the main office where there was a big room we could share with printers. It was in an old elementary school so not that great of space. The rest of the time I had a lap top bag, a file box and my car. Now I have a pretty nice office and too much paper, our licensing department often needs paper copies, so that stacks up. What I do like about having my own office space is that when I am just sick of working at a desk I can set my computer on a small box I have and sit on the floor. Soooo comfy,

The presentation cracks me up. I have seen the email notifications pop up for my supervisors as we have presentations but not text messages. I will remember that if I ever get that tech savvy. I guess that message could be a lot worse!

[Lainey]

Our corporate Headquarters has gone this route. To me it's very sterile. Also agree about the reference material that many of us use. Our records go back to the 1940s, and only some of that is digitized. But it doesn't fit with the star trek like office image, so it's a scramble to figure out what to do. Also, no personal anything is allowed in the cubicle that you happened to get assigned that day, so any photos of family, pets, your vacation trips, etc. are nowhere to be seen. Creepy and robotic IMO.

Ugh.

[CathyA]

LOL jp1..........at least her DH didn't get any more personal than he did.

[sweetana3]

The strangest thing at my husband's former huge corporate office was the rule to eliminate ALL individual garbage cans. Everyone had to deposit trash in centralized containers. So there were people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year walking all around to deposit trash, trash being stored in drawers or in strange places until they could get to a trash container and even more of a mess. Wonder how many $$ the consultant got for that one.

Oh, and they forgot to cover the holes that now were without a trash can underneath when the implemented the plan.

[ToomuchStuff]

So this means there are going to be no printers anywhere around?

[jp1]

Rosa, there will be a small locker at each workstation where one can hang their coat, but for everyone that leaves shoes at work, no, there is no place to leave a pair of shoes. Similarly I have a coworker that leaves all his dress clothes at the office. We're full casual now (personally I hate this but that's another thread), unless one has an outside meeting. He has maybe 3 or 4 of those per month, so he just changes 5 minutes before leaving for a meeting.

We will still have printers, but anything printed will either leave with us at the end of the day or go in the trash.

[freshstart]

that is so funny about the text

[iris lilies]

OMG, my dream environment. No crap left at the end of the day, every day dawns a new, clean, work space.

How I hated the tchotkes and glitter stickers and etc pasted all over workspaces. It seemed to me to be a truism at my work that the people who had disorganized desks piled high with personal junk, drawers crammed with same, were also the least effective employees. They were not able to make good decisions about their time and priorities.

I tried to implement this general rule:two dimensional is fine, three dimensiomal interferes with your work. That meant employees were free to "decorate"their cube walls with printe items pinned to walls, but items that required desk surface space were discouraged. We had a fair amount of people switching seats and using a specific workstation for specific tasks, and I hated having to sit down at a workspace and immediately rearrange junk so that I could have adequate workspace.

[Float On]

I'm only in my office 20-25 hours a week but I would miss this 250 sq ft room with a view. The view is not as great as the view I had overlooking lake Taneycomo when I worked for a sports camp but my office there also came with a deer that thought he was one of the camp dogs.

[Teacher Terry]

So are all those people going to be talking on the phone at once? I could not work in a place like that. I need quiet. I also love personalizing my space with photos, etc.

[Selah]

LOL, I bet she's thrilled her DH didn't send her a d*ck pic, a la "Carlos Danger"!

[Miss Cellane]

People do keep things at their desks that aren't just ornamental. I have a stash of change, for the vending machines if I'm kept unexpectedly late, a bottle of pain relievers, hand lotion, tissues, my travel mug (which lives at the office, as I don't want to spill anything on the computer), a wall calendar to make it quick and easy to check dates, 3 or 4 reference books which I use more or less daily.

It would be a hassle to lug all that back and forth every day. Yeah, I could get a little pill case and just carry a few Advil around, and, of course, constantly be checking to see if it needs to be refilled--yay, a new chore! But the reference books would not be fun to carry around, and the company isn't going to pay for the on-line subscription to one of them, so there's that.

And I'll bet the workstations either won't have things like pens, pencils, staplers, scissors, tape, or if they do, those things will be gone in a few weeks. So you'd have to carry that with you as well, if you needed those supplies.

I think the unassigned work spaces are great for people who aren't in the office much. But for people who are there every day? They make no sense.

And the noise levels here, with cubicles, are such that 75% of the people here wear headphones and listen to music all day long, to escape the noise. Not a lot of spontaneous collaboration goes on, when you have to wave your hand in front of someone just to get their attention.

[Lainey]

Miss Cellane, this is what I'm hearing too. Plus a relative said she moved into a corporate hq just like this with of course no carpeting, curtains or anything to deaden the sound. It's basically a concrete warehouse with fun colors. Great if you're in advertising I guess, but an office where people have to think and really concentrate? No.

[rosarugosa]

JP1: You say "a pair of shoes" as though there was just one.

[jp1]

Miss cellane, your concerns are similar to mine. I don't have a lot of stuff that I'd like to leave here, but a few things like my padded, leather bound, corporate logoized portfolio that I take to meetings. It's bulky. I'm not going to carry it back and forth. Or my jar of Vaseline to keep my lips from drying out. Or my coffee cup.

As for personal items I just have a picture of my father, a couple of award certificates, those kinds of things. The painting I did at a paint and sip event we had as a thank you for a great year with one of our key insurance broker partners. I suppose the awards will go in the trash and teh pic of dad come home. Not sure about the painting. My painting skills do not seem to have advanced much since elementary school but I hate to just toss it. Perhaps I'll put it on the wall in the new office and force someone from administration to make the decision to remove it...

And yes, I'm somewhat concerned about noise. The space is going to have carpet and ceiling tiles in the workspace areas to cut down on noise, but I expect it to still be loud. If it's too much of a hassle I'll just up the number of days I work from home. Not my first choice since I generally prefer to be in the office, but when I need to concentrate on stuff it'll probably be a better option.

[ToomuchStuff]

We will still have printers, but anything printed will either leave with us at the end of the day or go in the trash.


So not really paperless then. Just reducing.;)

[jp1]

So not really paperless then. Just reducing.;)

Some of the younger folks seem ok with being truly paperless. The rest of us just aren't there yet. Maybe if I'd spent my whole life working at a desk that was only big enough for two sheets of paper and no pens to be able to write on those papers I could do it...

[Zoe Girl]

JP1: You say "a pair of shoes" as though there was just one.

Gotta ask about the shoes, how many pairs of shoes do people leave at work? I have one pair of tennis shoes since sometimes I need to sub for one of my after school teachers. There are times I just take off my shoes and sit on the floor at work, but I don't think that is what you are talking about.

I have this vision of shoes like at a meditation center, there are piles of them outside the room door or shoe racks.