It's moving time in CorpWorld. I'm to be relocated to be closer to my project team. In theory, this is a good thing. Project teams that are scattered all over creation have communication issues - and bad communication eats time like candy.
Moving the team to a common area has been discussed ad naseum for so long - I regard the idea like some mythological creature. I'll believe it when I see it.
Well, I've seen it. Out of the blue one day, I get an all-bold-text email informing me that I will be moving in four days. I am to respond with the ID numbers of all office equipment that will be moved, indicate the number of boxes the movers should expect, and add any special needs I may have.
I have only one special need: Where the hell am I going?
This was not in all-bold email - and my manager was not informed that I was moving- so they don't know. My project leader tells me what floor I will be on - but in CorpWorld, that's like saying "Move to Cleveland. Details to follow."
I typically have a light footprint at my desk. I put crap on my walls like any office stiff, but the idea of bringing in anything other than photos from the outside world is just alien to me.
This is work, I reason. Work stuff goes here.
So I email my equipment IDs back and say I'll have two boxes of stuff. I think it's closer to 1, but might as well have a cushion.
Which leaves only three items I give a rip about.
1) Laptop
2) Laptop bag
3) Chair
This seems a bit ungrateful - after all, when I first arrived in CorpWorld, they gave me loads of stuff. I remember thinking I'd landed in Shangri-La. My old gig had small cubes and office gear you scrounged from the abandoned gear of your predecessor.
In Corpworld you got a box of new office swag delivered to your desk. The nicest pair of scissors I've ever seen is the one I got here. Yes, it's just a pair of scissors - but it's clearly a design that's been focus-group tested to seem solid and expensive. It does.
In the same box was a (black) swingline stapler and an assortment of NEW office gear. An impersonable welcome, but a welcome nonetheless.
Now - four years later, I'm shoveling it into a box along with a random collection of paperwork and office printouts.
Because - and this occurs to me only as I'm moving - I've almost never used any of this stuff. The job I do leaves very little physical evidence behind. The sum total of four years work amounts to a series of differently aligned magnetic bits on a network drive. It is entirely possible the reason I'm saving any paperwork at all is because pitching it would destroy the scant evidence I was even here.
The evidence takes up two boxes, with room to spare. These will be picked up by unseen forces and delivered to my new location.
These same forces will be moving the one asset I value above all others: My laptop. Improbably - I was given a good laptop. It has been reliable, durable, and its battery outlasts virtually every other machine I'm around. Even the case is good. Moving my laptop is not my job - so I just leave it behind and hope the process goes well.
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Not that the early intel from the move is encouraging. My pod-mate, BD, was slated to move yesterday. Being a gregarious sort of person - they went to their future desk and introduced themselves to the neighbors.
What appears to have followed is that these same neighbors smiled, shook BD's hand, and as soon as they were out of sight - ran to their manager to protest BD being stationed in their midst.
The net result was that BD shows up the following morning with pastries for their new neighbors and sees that none of their stuff has been set up: No laptop; no boxes - and the neighbors are saying in no uncertain terms that BD will not be relocating to the desk in question.
BD has no laptop - no desk - and a box full of pastries. Oh, and a meeting to present at in less than two hours. Welcome to limbo. They ended up back at their old desk, sans tech.
There was a happy ending though - I got to eat pastries.
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Stuff like that makes me think I'm about to pay for any good corporate karma I've experienced. My laptop will get broken and I'll end up with some POS Toshiba (the horror!!).
Or they'll take my chair.
I love my chair. It's a genuine, undeserved luxury item. An ergonomic masterpiece with all the trimmings. Bequeathed to me by a co-worker who had the good sense to bail before the layoffs. They got it by way of an ergonomic need. I have it by way of.... well... having it.
There's a spot on the form to indicate that I want to keep my chair. Rather than entrust my chair to unseen forces - I opt to wheel the thing up there myself.
I have to go up there early anyway. I've collected all my personal items into a single bag - I figure I'll move them myself and if there's no room - I'll just take them home.
So the afternoon finds me wheeling my chair and bag to the new digs, along with a coworker who (miracle of miracles) has a printout that says where we are supposed to go.
As everything looks the same in these buildings, I turn up the wrong aisle and run right into the Client. Now, I consider myself a grown up - but this is not a happy event. The few times I've seen the Client this past year - I have been greeted with an incredulous "Do you still work here?" (To which I always reply "What kind of 'hello' is that?").
The Client sees me and is visibly disappointed. "There goes the neighborhood," they say - but they are obviously not kidding that much.
Honestly I'm thinking I get that we're not friends, but is barely masked hostility the best you can do?.
Turns out, I'm in the wrong row - which relieves both of us, for a little bit anyway.
I roll to my new digs and there the reality is inescapable: I will be sitting at the midpoint between the desks of two other people. One has been my team leader for years - and is awesome. The other I have no idea who they are.
The personalities are beside the point, actually. I will be sitting at a spot that is in the middle of a through route and essentially looking over the shoulders of two people while they work. This sucks for everyone. I used to have my own desk, and now I'm downsized to this non-space - but more to the point even if you would argue that only one out of the three of us deserves a desk, that person should get a desk of their own. Not some half measure with me lurking over their shoulder while they work.
Cube farms are anything but private, and I've learned more about the private lives of my co-workers than I've wanted to - but there's always been some remedy to minimize the intrusion. Earbuds, or just turning more towards your screen. Now I'm literally staring over their shoulder while they work. They want to check their bank statement, they get to feel like I'm spying on them.
Which is just crap. I get the idea of locating project teams together - I'm all for it, frankly - but give them their own space, eh?
I leave the chair and the bag. I have no drawer space for office tools and no place for my files. My team leader volunteers some of their desk for my papers. It's looking more and more like I should have pitched them. Madness.
It's only temporary I remind myself. In a few months we're supposed to move again.
In the morning, I go up to meet the new neighbors - and find that none of them have arrived. It's just me and my team leader - so far. My laptop is there (yea!) and my chair is there also - alongside another chair that the unseen forces saw fit to deliver (no doubt because I said I wanted to keep my chair). I unbox my boxes into my team leader's deskspace. I make a mental note to destroy these items if I haven't referred to them by summer.
The bag of personal stuff is (still) here as well. As my laptop and its docking station take up my entire desk surface - I opt to take all the stuff home. I tape one picture of the kids to my monitor - but there's no place to hang anything up.
My Swingline and scissors go into my team leader's overhead bin - not that I'll miss them - and I put up my nametag.
And that's it. I'm unpacked.
I scope out the network printers, search in vain for a supply room, and resign myself to the new reality that is my workspace.
All set. Buds in. Time to work.
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