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10.1.2002
Has it been THAT long?
It sure doesn't seem like it - I've been blogging under The Job Fairy for a year! WOW. Time flies when you're exposing scams and having fun!
Happy Birthday Job Fairy Blogger Page!
9.29.2002
My Ideal Office
Recently, during some work I was doing for my company's intranet site, I added a link to the daily Dilbert comic. One of the features was a mock up of Scott Adams' "ideal" office. That got me thinking, especially since the office in which I'm located is undergoing serious reconstruction. Now, once the all the debris is gone and the dust has settled, I'll still be stuck in the same cheerless cubicle, but it got me thinking about workspace and my relationship to it.
I have a tremendous home office; it's about 650 square feet. In fact, it's the biggest room in the house. It's got as much square footage as the apartment I used to rent downtown. There is a network of seven computers, two of which are laptops. Now, that's a lot of computing power, but since I do a lot of web development, it's practical, because I can test my designs on every monitor resolution from 800 x 600 to 1600 x 1200.
That's not what I love the most about this office space. The things that I love the most about it are that there is more than adequate shelving and efficient, generous, and specialized desk space. There is a separate bill paying work area. This means things to file and personal correspondence stay out of work areas. Each of us has a computer to ourselves. I have a separate area for college work, which means textbooks stay out of the way of my bills. I share this with the hookups for my work laptop, mostly because there's enough room for both laptops to not get in each other's way. Some of the workstations are built into or around shelving. I've installed wire shelving above some of the workspaces to hold fun personal items, which would otherwise clutter up the desktops.
Reclaiming this basement space wasn't difficult. We removed the ratty old carpeting, finding hideous fake-stone patterned linoleum underneath. There was fake dark pine paneling extending halfway up the wall, and a couple of small windows. The paneling got a couple coats of Kilz, then a muted sand color. The rest of the walls got a slightly lighter tortilla color, and the floors got deck paint in a light taupe. The monochromatic scheme really brightened and opened up the room. The windows got rice paper blinds. The desks were done as cheaply as the rest of the space. We took closet doors from other rooms, painted them to match the walls, and put them on pairs of two-drawer filing cabinets. We used leftover furniture from everywhere else. Old kitchen tables, Ikea shelving, even old nightstands were pressed into service (they make excellent printer stands, and the paper goes underneath). We spent under $300 total redoing the space.
The computers were acquired fairly inexpensively. We got an E-Machine from Costco for $400, and a WinGen for $900 years ago. One of the laptops was given to us used, as were two of the PCs. (Old PCs are excellent for reuse as print servers or Linux boxes.) The other laptop was gotten for less than half price, almost new, because it was a floor model. I was given several bags of donated CAT V - 100 foot length even - from another friend! Since most of the PCs in our house are used to surf, check e-mail, or type homework, they don't have to be high-end machines or have a lot of hard drive space.
I like the lounging area of the office too. There's a sofa, a comfortable reading chair, more bookcases, a TV, VCR, small refrigerator and microwave. It makes a nice place for taking a break from computer work, or for guests to stay overnight. I like being able to keep an eye on the news while I'm doing work.
Best of all, I no longer feel a need to decorate or personalize my space at work. The pictures stay where they're welcome; the trinkets and mementoes acquired over years of work go home and stay there. I don't jockey for better or more space on the job. I also don't make the mistake of bringing personal correspondence or bills to work in order to pay them (nothing trumpets your lack of something worthwhile to do like having that kind of stuff on your desk). And best of all, when I get fired/laid off/the contract ends, I can pick up and go with literally, no baggage.
The most interesting by-product of this philosophy has occurred with my current company. Due to certain political events that happened in the first couple weeks after I joined them, I took absolutely no personal items to the office. I did not even pin a simple printed page with my name on it to the cubicle wall. There are no pictures, no files, not even a clock. This has had the pleasant result of scaring the daylights out of my colleagues, and really has made my boss uneasy. There have been a couple of times when politics has gotten in the way of my accomplishing necessary segments of my work. Although I got no angrier about it than I ever have before, each time, I was perceived as "almost out the door", told how valuable I was, and placated with whatever I needed (or was thought to have needed) in order to persuade me to stay, despite this pro-employer's climate. I am not necessarily a fan of the strategy of brinkmanship, but this has been quite an effective arrangement. The behavior is in keeping with what would be predicted through The Rules.
I think that investing your time and energy into your own office arrangement, even if you can't routinely work from home, pays off for you in the long run. Anything that reduces your dependence on your employer is a benefit to you. It makes you have less interest in the spatial mechanics of your employer's workplace. This pays off two ways - the first in that you can, paradoxically, concentrate more on work matters at work. The second way is that it puts the employer back in the position of pursuer. It's just like during dating - if you can take them or leave them, they pursue you all the more. Show interest in them and they are somehow disappointed - and then they're quick to drop you. The better the home office you have, the better you can accomplish your goals - but the ultimate goal is independence, and any kind of home office will support that ambition well.
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