May 7, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers and
mothers-to-be out there.
So we moved into our “new” offices last week.
I’m going to try to describe what these offices are like.
Most are what you would consider a “single-person” room.
It is a rectangle with a window at one end and a door at the
other end. Each would
contain an L-shaped desk with a “pencil drawer” in the center of the
desk. There would likely be
a “short” drawer and two file-size drawers in the desk.
Maybe even two more drawers at the end of the “return”, the piece
added to the actual desk to make it L-shaped.
There might also be a bookcase, or a lateral filing cabinet.
Maybe even both. One
or two guest chairs across from the desk for visitors.
Lots of room to spread out.
But with TSIO (Two Squeezed Into One), there are
two “sit-to-stand” desks.
These are designed to fit into the corner of a cubicle.
They can adjust up or down to accommodate the needs of the user.
There is an articulated arm clamped to the corner holding an
LCD
monitor. The desk at the
window end would be in the corner, facing the window, with the user’s
back to the room and door.
The second desk would be against the wall away from
the doorway, sitting three feet in from the wall, more or less in the
middle of the room, with a
lateral file cabinet against the wall in
front of the desk. This is
what we found when we arrived on Monday morning.
We couldn’t understand why i-SPOT would choose to set it up this
way. (i-SPOT stands for
Information Technology Company (“i”), Space Planning Optimization Team.)
By the time I arrived at 7:00 am Monday, two of my
co-workers down the hall had already rearranged their desks to stand in
the corner, just clearing the door, with the file cabinet alongside the
desk instead of on the other side.
The first thing I determined was that there was no power for my
desk, or any of the things that also need power like the monitor,
computer, etc. We scrounged
up a power strip. Next, no
connection to the network. I
wrote it on the infamous “flip chart” taped to the wall in the hallway.
All problems were to be reported on the flip charts or they
wouldn’t be addressed.
While waiting for the network problem to be
corrected, we proceeded to move the lateral file cabinet out of the
corner (they’re not hard to move when they’re empty.)
With the help of some co-workers, we then moved the desk into the
corner, easily clearing the door.
Much more room in the center now.
Breathe more easily.
Somebody came around and fixed the network problem.
When I was able to log on, I found emails from “i-SPOT”.
One announced the fact that breakfast was being served in a
conference room down the hall.
Next came an urgent directive to everyone, “Do not try to move
the furniture by yourself!”
No problem.
We had help.
Later an i-SPOT person looked in the doorway and
pronounced, “You can’t do that!” meaning the desk.
“Nonsense.
We already did it, so obviously we can.”
“I’ll report you to your Manager!”
That would be the Manager whose desk we had just
helped to move.
By the end of the day, the Manager came by, with
the i-SPOT person, and solemnly declared that we would have to move the
desks back to where they were.
The only alternative would be to rotate the desk so that it would
still be in the corner, but the user’s back would be to the door and the
desk would still stick out into the middle of the room.
It seems that there is an
Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) requirement that there be a minimum of 18” of
clearance around a doorway so that a
wheelchair can enter the room
without bumping into anything.
One person, in the room next to ours, was so frustrated that they
wrote “i-SPOT sucks” on their whiteboard.
So now, a week-and-a-half later, we’re still
waiting for i-SPOT to come and move our desks back to where they first
were. Apparently, they’re
busy with something else. It
will be interesting to see how long they wait to remember.
Love, as always,
Pete
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