Greener Grass

I think I’ve mentioned that due to Hurricane Sandy, my work location has been up in the air. My team can work between 2 locations or stay at home. One location leaves much to be desired because it’s dark and there is a lot of noise around the area. The group next to ours completely lacks work etiquette. Aside from having to hear the ipod shuffle of a person 2 row from me, I’ve also had the honor of listening into a girl’s SKYPE conversation with her mom and niece. I got to a point where nothing amazed me anymore. 

Then I ended up going to visit my old team when they were all in town for a group meeting. They were having their meeting in a conference center. Because I wasn’t part of the meeting (just visiting), I had to sit in the room next to theirs. And the room I sat in was just baffling.

There were 4 rows along this particular space and on both sides of those rows were monitors. Imagine a bunch of long banquet tables were people face each other, only to be blocked off by computer monitors for each guest. They call this the trading floor. I call it hell in an office building. The whole time I was there, I could see and hear every person in front of me, to an angle from me and to the side of me. I even got the residual noise from the people in the row behind me - not to mention the sniffing, snorting, coughing and nose blowing of the people in my arm's length. It was an extremely joyous and productive occasion (and if you can’t sense the sarcasm, I need to work on my writing)!

I don’t think I got a single thing done in the time I was there. Just after 12, I stopped in to say hi to my old team and decided to leave. I had so much to do and there was just not much of a chance of my getting it done in the environment. 

It was horrible and I can’t understand the thought process behind that configuration (except cost saving but even then, how much of a saving is it when no one is productive!). It made me really thankful for the situation I am in. Despite having to split my time between two locations, both of them now looked like a Caribbean work beach compared to that set up. It’s important to see something else from time to time because we often do think the grass is greener on the other side. Until the other side is filled with people taping away at computers, listening to conference calls on speaker phone right in front of you and a plethora of other annoying work activities! Then you realize maybe you didn’t have it too bad.