For my last move I went from a full office with bookshelves for my entire engineering library to a tiny cube jammed in with 3 neighbours and everyone gets precisely 1 drawer. I kept the dual monitors though. Well yeah, they had a swiveling base so they could be turned to portrait. Two portrait mode monitors side-by-side, why that’s practically as good as a 30”. I existed like that for several years when the company started contemplating “hot desking,” but thankfully they sold out to a competitor instead. Everybody laid off. Whew!
Not been subjected to one of those for a few years now (wfh and having to book a desk at my current job) bit going back a few 20+ years my then employer made an art form of desk moves.
They were very desk size = rank when I first started there. I remember a desk move where one person was promoted and hence got a slightly (8”) bigger desk. To accommodate this they moved about 32 desks in the row about 1/4” so that finally they had enough room to get the bigger desk in. The numbers could be off but you get the idea.....
They also used to complain when we wanted number of desks x 2 plus spare network ports under a group of desks as it was putting stuff in that wasn’t needed.
Some years later we got more useful people who understood that leaving spares in was a very good idea - especially if someone decided they needed another printer or two.....
Now I have a laptop and a fairly large bag so I can sit anywhere and work - often do.....
My first full-time employment post graduation was in the Technical Service Department. We had extensive paper records of equipment still in service and as the new boy, I was trying to get the company to digitise the old records of machinery, going back 100 years……
Whilst I was on holiday, management took the opportunity to relocate our office within the building. On my return, I find our filing cabinets were all aligned neatly down the centre of the new office. Very smart but there was a noticeable curvature to their outline. The floor below was the Post Room (you may laugh; we had seven ‘internal postmen’) and a quick review indicated they were in danger of neglecting Chicken Little’s warning: the sky really was falling in on them.
Our cabinets had to be moved out into the corridor to make an ugly display whilst we rolled around in acres of space. This could not be allowed to persist so the digitisation of records began and we were moved to an office of lesser grandeur.
Used to work in small business support when I started in IT. so moving small companies around was a very common job, to the point we used to play bingo with the standard queries that came up.
People asking for adapters to connect to the legacy wall ports that had never been removed (10 base 2 coax was common, even centronics ports were not unusual), "what's the new WiFi?" when we're mid-unloading a van of the servers, switches and access points, "my email isn't working" at the same phase of the move.
Fights over who gets what desk, who has to walk 2 more steps to get to a printer and especially who got to be nearest the thermostat were also obligatory.
For my last move I went from a full office with bookshelves for my entire engineering library to a tiny cube jammed in with 3 neighbours and everyone gets precisely 1 drawer. I kept the dual monitors though. Well yeah, they had a swiveling base so they could be turned to portrait. Two portrait mode monitors side-by-side, why that’s practically as good as a 30”. I existed like that for several years when the company started contemplating “hot desking,” but thankfully they sold out to a competitor instead. Everybody laid off. Whew!
Not been subjected to one of those for a few years now (wfh and having to book a desk at my current job) bit going back a few 20+ years my then employer made an art form of desk moves.
They were very desk size = rank when I first started there. I remember a desk move where one person was promoted and hence got a slightly (8”) bigger desk. To accommodate this they moved about 32 desks in the row about 1/4” so that finally they had enough room to get the bigger desk in. The numbers could be off but you get the idea.....
They also used to complain when we wanted number of desks x 2 plus spare network ports under a group of desks as it was putting stuff in that wasn’t needed.
Some years later we got more useful people who understood that leaving spares in was a very good idea - especially if someone decided they needed another printer or two.....
Now I have a laptop and a fairly large bag so I can sit anywhere and work - often do.....
Now we have hot desking:
It's a daily desk move!
Yay!
The daily routine is now:
Arrive at office. Barista coffee. Peruse the map of available desks on the booking app.
What's that? Book it the night before, you say? Pre-booking is for WIMPS!
My first full-time employment post graduation was in the Technical Service Department. We had extensive paper records of equipment still in service and as the new boy, I was trying to get the company to digitise the old records of machinery, going back 100 years……
Whilst I was on holiday, management took the opportunity to relocate our office within the building. On my return, I find our filing cabinets were all aligned neatly down the centre of the new office. Very smart but there was a noticeable curvature to their outline. The floor below was the Post Room (you may laugh; we had seven ‘internal postmen’) and a quick review indicated they were in danger of neglecting Chicken Little’s warning: the sky really was falling in on them.
Our cabinets had to be moved out into the corridor to make an ugly display whilst we rolled around in acres of space. This could not be allowed to persist so the digitisation of records began and we were moved to an office of lesser grandeur.
30 years in the same role and I have never moved room, not even really moved inside the room.
I keep it cluttered enough to discourage any idea of anyone messing with my stuff.
Used to work in small business support when I started in IT. so moving small companies around was a very common job, to the point we used to play bingo with the standard queries that came up.
People asking for adapters to connect to the legacy wall ports that had never been removed (10 base 2 coax was common, even centronics ports were not unusual), "what's the new WiFi?" when we're mid-unloading a van of the servers, switches and access points, "my email isn't working" at the same phase of the move.
Fights over who gets what desk, who has to walk 2 more steps to get to a printer and especially who got to be nearest the thermostat were also obligatory.