Blogocentric Formulations

New Office

After months and months of waiting, it's finally happened... I have a new office! To fully appreciate the milestone, though, you have to understand a little of the history leading up to this point.

When I first started at this company, we had a massive office that took up nearly the entire top floor of a massive building. The company had gone through a round of layoffs in 2008, followed by a mass exodus in 2009 when a lot of employees just couldn't or didn't want to deal with the increased workload. As a result, we had so much empty space that there would be two, even three empty offices between executives, and assistants would have entire rooms and cubicle areas to themselves. One of the business affairs assistants was sitting in an area that had desk space for nine support staff plus filing and had it all to herself!

A little over two years ago, the company moved to a new office space that a much better size for our company. We moved into a building with two towers connected by a wide bridge with additional office space... and we took one entire floor of one tower. The problem was that, in their infinite wisdom, our office was at capacity the day we moved in, and it was at the beginning of a three-year period where we enjoyed quite a bit of success, so we started making additional hires the same month we moved into the space.

As a result, the last two years have seen our office space become increasingly more compact. Several executives have to share offices with other executives (fitting two full desks into each office was quite a feat!), mid-level execs and administrators who needed offices were stuck in cubicles on the floor, and the cubicle areas (shared by assistants and administrators) became increasingly more impacted. I was originally placed in a cubicle area designed for two... which then held three of us... when then held four of us... and finally housed five full-time employees in the weeks before the expansion. I was stuck in the back corner and was literally rubbing shoulders with the people to my left and right.

Starting a few months ago, we learned that some of the tenants in the corresponding floor and bridge of the other tower were moving out, so we signed a new lease for the additional space and have been building out the space ever since. We've taken about half of the bridge and second floor, knocking down a wall in our reception area to make the office one connected space. The new construction gave us 12 new offices and 12 new assistant spaces/cubicles, which has allowed us to "unpack" everyone and get them where they should be. Every executive and administrator has an office, and every assistant is sitting in their own space, with a couple empty workstations.

Of course, the issue now is that we're at capacity again... so if we hire anyone else, we get to go through the whole ordeal again.

I was fortunate, though, in that I was one of the ones upgraded to an office. So I now have a surprisingly roomy office with a door that closes and space for a filing cabinet or two, and even a small loveseat or pair of chairs at some point! It's nice to finally be able to spread out and not feel so claustrophobic and cramped all the time!