Oh, shitfits aplenty have been thrown, for almost a year now, to no effect whatsoever. Except our division chief, who has a condo one block away from the new facility; he fully plans to spend all his non-OR and non-committee-meeting time working from home.
There's one faculty member whom I work for part-time, just an hour or so a day, who is famous for being a difficult bitch (not because she is, but because she has zero tolerance for stupidity and bullshit, which is not a valued quality in a female junior faculty member) but with whom I get on just fine; I know she's going to angle for someplace as (comparatively) isolated as possible, so if I can't change jobs I should at least try to get myself moved near her. Then we can bitch together until we're so bitchy that everyone else leaves us alone.
Seriously, it's a bad, bad, bad office plan. I mean, good for gregarious extroverts, but a perfect storm of badness for attention-shunning introverts. Our floor is almost totally open aside from some closet space in the middle for office supplies and IT wiring; even the "focus rooms" have glass walls, and the entire outside of the building is floor-to-ceiling windows. With whooshing wind machines.
That's what our new office is going to look like! But we have a few more interior walls and high cubby walls, so I think it's going to be cozier.
We've got floor to ceiling windows--and the stellar view I'm always gloating over--low cubicle walls that at least block the eyesight when you're sitting down. The managers' offices have glass walls on any wall facing a hallway/open area. The central core of the floor, with the bathrooms and break room, is solid walled. It's a cross between open-plan and gerbil maze. The halls themselves are narrower than any office hallways I've ever seen, they're horrible. And they have weird angles in them. The architect apparently has something against right angles. Awkward, useless nooks all over.
Some things are best done in private, surely.
And not in a creepy "Smokefilled room" kind of way.
I'd hate to be in a glass-walled room if I was getting chewed out.
In a side hallway of my floor there are four cubicles the size of old fashioned phone booths with glass doors and solid walls. Apparently they're supposed to be used for testing or private phone calls or something. They're odd and useless and have nothing in them. I think they're like the two "women's lounges" near the gym, which have a sink, cabinets, and comfy chair and which are always locked (they're probably afraid people will nap in them, and we can't have that). Some architectural/work life feature they brag about but which doesn't get used.
The women's lounges are probably for using a breast pump. It's good to keep them locked, because otherwise people WILL nap in them, and then when someone (like me) comes to use their breast pump, they have to wake up some sleeping person and be like, "excuse me, this room is reserved for me to take of my shirt and attach an apparatus to my boobs, so could you please leave?" Yes, this actually happened, except I phrased it more politely.
Yeah--my office gets frosted glass, since sometimes folks cry in HR. The others are all glass.
I will confess, I've often thought about napping in the women's lounge. But I lack the excuse.
We had a nap room at Charles Schwab when I worked there in the early 90s! I napped there once for 5 hours when I was, evidently, very sick. Then they paid for a cab to take me home. Good times!
Today was kind of productive and also emotinally draining. The good thing was the dentist, they were very nice and it's been a long time since a cleaning so they did part of it and I go back first week in November (frist time it would work with my schedule).
But I have a lot of anxiety/shame/fear about dentists, mostly stuff from when I was a kid and I was shamed and dressed down and generally treated badly because I had chronic allergies and it was hard to breathe through my nose and my gums were always sensitive and the feel of the tooth polishing and the gritty toothpaste made me want to run screaming.
I think PMSing for several reasons but it all just flooded out, so I was in the exam, getting my teeth cleaned, and tears streaming down the sides of my head. The hygenist asked if I wanted to stop but I said no. I tried to distact myself but eventually I just let the thoughts bubble up and the float away.
I did some other errands and went home and took a nap but I almost feel like I do after therapy.
The hygenist and dentist were nice, they didn't say anything negative about how long it had been or make me feel bad about not going sooner. It was just a weird expeirence,
Other things I did were - drop stuff off at Goodwill (although I bought a few things including the gallery of Regretable food book) and called Comcast to come out and fix the problem I'm having with my internet. I think it's the splitter that's outside the house.
And I McGuyvered (or whatever the semi craft version of that is) away to put in some insulating material in one of the windows wihtout it looking like it's being insulated and without using tape. Becuase I couldn't find tape mor ethan anything. The window is an older style mobile home window, so there's a space between the interior and exterior according the management you can't have visible insulation. So I had some foam board I wrapped in fleece so it looks like a curtain.
At least I think , I haven't seen it from the outside yet, it's too dark,
And the completely open office concept with white noise generator sounds HORRIBLE. My sympathies JZ, I hope there's some sort of protest and fix even though there supposdely isn't any money,
