My workspace sucks. That’s a large part of my misery. I am IT guy working solo for a retail company. The retail company is a small chain of stores and my desk is in the computer room. That alone is not really right but I roll with it. The servers are noisy, very noisy. So last year I pointed that out and asked for a solution. The solution I got was a plywood wall with some office style padding on it set up between me and the servers. That helped with the noise issue considerably, however, it created another problem. Air circulation. The room wasn’t designed to have a wall in the middle of it, so now it’s stuffy and hot. Ok the worst and most undesirable part is I have to share my minimal space with someone else.
He isn’t an IT and he isn’t my assistant or anything. He’s someone else and he sits about 3 feet from me. He doesn’t even have a desk. He works on a folding table. This is his ‘desk’ and you can see my view from desk.
Nice isn’t it? It’s the desk from hell! Oh wait, it’s the table from hell.
The problem for me is that I have no workspace for some of the work I am supposed to be doing. I only have a desk and a computer desk squeezed into a corner. There is no room to do computer setups or take a computer apart. That table should be my work bench. I have to scrounge around for a work space somewhere else on the floor. Usually that’s not a problem as I work weekends and the administrative offices are nearly deserted on weekends. So that gives me two days I can drag my work into someone else’s office to do it.
Anyway, getting back to my office mate. It’s not just him. He has people that report to him so in any given weekday, there are people filing in and out of the computer room. I have pointed out this security risk to the owners many many times. Last year I pointed it out again and threw in the cramped quarters argument on top of it. At last I got them to agree this was not a good situation and he (my office mate) should be moved. They made plans and I started to get excited about it! They were supposed to have him moved by Xmas (of 2007). Well those pictures were taken the other day so you can see how well they kept their commitment. That’s pretty typical of this place. A lot of lip service but not much real action. That will probably makes its way into other rants here. In the meantime, oh the misery.
Why would anyone start a job dedicated to their job misery? Why not use that energy to look for another job? I have asked myself those same questions. And yes, I need to move on. Moving on is not easy. Well, I don’t want to get into something that will be just as miserable. That’s why it’s important for me to identify the miserable components of my job so that I won’t get myself into a similar situation again. And what better way than here in this blog? Maybe someone will read it, maybe no one will read it. Doesn’t matter, this give me a place to put my thoughts and gives those thoughts a place to live so they don’t clog up my brain.
