New office

Today was my first day in our exciting, “beautiful” new offices. Coincidentally, it was also the first time in almost a month that I was actually able to walk from Penn Station. (The leg is nothing but a scab now.) Now, I’m a positive guy by nature, but there are a few problems with our new space.

• It’s not on any of the Penn Station subway lines, so I have to leave five minutes earlier to catch the same train.
• The offices are teensy.
• The cubicles are smaller. Just absurdly tiny (6x6), with low walls. Editors are supposed to work in this space? It’s more suitable for battery hens.
• The carpeting is already stained from the move.
• Half the space isn’t complete yet, so there’s all sorts of hustle and bustle going on.
• There’s no men’s room on our side of the hallway, but two on the other side.
• The toilets in the men’s room are about 6” off the floor.
• There’s no soap in the men’s room.
• Or the women’s room. So I'm told.
• There are no down lights above the elevators on our floor yet, just holes. So the elevator sneaks up without warning – no light, no ding.
• All the power outlets in the offices are clustered in one little block in the middle of one wall, so you can’t rearrange your furniture well.
• The “furniture” consists of two tables, called “workspaces” by people who don’t have to work on them.
• The “workspaces” are kidney-shaped or egg-shaped. Hey, here’s a miniscule office – how can we waste as much space as possible? Let’s use EGG-SHAPED furniture!
• Rounded furniture means that you can’t push it up against the wall and hold power cords in place. So when I unplug my laptop, the cord falls behind the table.
• The office has a floor-to-ceiling glass window. But most of it is frosted for “privacy,” meaning that I can’t actually shut out light, but I can’t let light in either.
• The conference room lights turn off every three minutes if no one in the meeting is assigned to wave their arms and activate the “someone’s waving their arms in the meeting” sensor.
• The fridges are shared with salespeople, so by noon everything that’s in there smells like sales.
• I somehow ended up with a French phone manual. I don’t know how to redirect my calls, but I do know that le crayon est sur la table.
• Everyone can hear everything, even with the door closed, so I can’t talk about coworkers on the phone anymore.
• Since everyone’s so close together and looking for quiet, I can’t listen to the radio as I work anymore.
• Which doesn’t matter anyway, because I have no reception in the new office.

On the bright side, it’s…uh…it’s…we have a good view of Radio City Music Hall out the window.