I moved today.
No, not moving from one home to another, or anything really terribly consequential, but from one cube to another at work–clear across the room, actually: from one of the seats farthest from the windows to one right next to a window.
So, almost exactly two years after moving into the building, I’m in my fourth seat, and I’m back at a window.
I’ll be honest: I don’t understand the need to change seating in the cube farm we have at work, but I’ve come to accept it as part of being a drone in the hive. In fact, I’ve said that I start to worry if I don’t get moved to a different seat after six months or son in my current spot. Though I’ve been in my current seat for just over a year, so you can guess on the length of time I spent in the previous three in the other year.
Oh, I know it’s all about synergy and team building and maximizing efficiency or whatever other buzzwords management can throw at us. Though this move was impacted by another organizational structure change that ended up shuffling me into a different Pod than the one I was in. And reorganization is all fine and good, but I wonder if they realize the chaos it causes for a while.
See, the move in our area needs to be planned out in a logical order and then loosely scheduled to try to fit in with actually doing our core job of answering the phones. I was the first to move in the department, since I was going to a vacant cube. And all told, I probably spent a good three or more hours today cleaning, culling, organizing, packing, disconnecting, moving, unpacking, connecting, and organizing. Which meant I wasn’t actively taking calls for that time. I was in the queue and waiting for a call for a little over an hour of that, but for the rest of the time, I was busy.
Fortunately we weren’t busy today.
After I was out of my old spot and it was cleaned up, then the next person could move into that cube, and once he was done, someone else could move into his spot, and so on…There are roughly one-third of us moving, and they want it done by the end of the week. Four people moved today, so there are a good 20 or so left.
So I’m in a new pod, next to the window, and waiting for the next change that happens frequently: a new supervisor–I’ve had seven in almost eight years there.
See you tomorrow.