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Top 10 Bad Things About My New Office Building

By Beau ⋅ August 31, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I thought I would share the “highlights” of week one at my new office building. Enjoy!

10. Stall Doors in the Men’s Room – The stupid doors are always closed, so I never can tell if someone is in there or not. It’s like they auto close. So now I have a new fear that I am just gonna open the door on some dude dropping the kids off at the pool (who forgot to lock the door).
9. 3 Badges vs. 1 Badge – For some reason, I need three badges for this building. One for accessing the doors, one for accessing the elevators after hours, and yet another for getting in and out of the parking deck. Crazy enough, my one badge did ALL OF THAT at the other office.
8. Stinky Perfume Lady (and Other Smelly Items) – Need I say more on this one. Well maybe a little more. There is one lady in particular that sits near me and uses waayyyyyy to much perfume. Also, there are other people who have candles and what not in there cube that add to this fragrance hell. Why do you need a candle? Do you really smell that bad. Anyway, all of these smells are constantly giving me a headache. Man I miss my door!
7. Loudness – People around me are constantly talking. Don’t these people ever work? Also, there is just a lot more noise on the floor (from doors closing, etc.). This is just another time that a door would come in handy. Oh well, at least I have my iPod.
6. Floor Layout – Most of the people I work with on a daily basis are on the opposite side of the floor from me (in their nice offices – that have doors). Between that and talking with the other group of people I work with that sit in my old building…I feel like I do most of my interacting over IM now.
5. Stupid Code for Meeting Room Electronics – The meeting rooms in this building are just designed kinda poorly. The electronics (PC, projector, etc) are all connected to this central touchscreen interface. Well it requires a code to be entered before you can use it. No one initially told us the code to use. Always fun to track that kind of stuff down at the beginning of a meeting. I mean…why even have a code? Anyone is allowed to use the equipment. We have circulated the code out now. How pointless!
4. More Difficult to Get Out During the Day – We are located on the same exit as Perimeter Mall, so the roads are always packed. My other building was next to a mall as well, but there were a lot of back roads that allowed for quick navigation. There is just not an easy way to quickly run out, take care of an errand, and get back to the office over lunch. I definitely will be brown bagging it a lot more now.
3. Refrigerator Placement – The ONLY refrigerators are located on the second floor. I work on the sixth floor. Now I have to stop on the second floor every morning on my way up to drop off my sandwich and then come back down at lunch to get it. I am not sure why they opted for vending machines on each floor over a refrigerator. Just put all of those on the second floor. This is just annoying that makes no sense to me.
2. My Tiny Cube – Well let’s be honest, my office was not big….but at least it had more shelf space and a DOOR! My new “office” (i.e. – baby poop cube) has like two shelves and not even an extra chair. Man even my old cubes from the past had an extra chair. The closest thing I have is a file drawer that rolls out from under the desk and has a cushion on it. How lame! The Potato Head collection (there are 5 now, so I guess we can say “collection”) is on some make-shift shelves comprised of 3 of those letter/paper trays. Fantastic I tell you!
1. The Drive – This was the thing I was dreading the most with the move. Having to add yet another interstate to my commute was not something I was looking forward too. I really hate 285 and the merge onto 75; that is just a bad bad bad place for traffic and accidents. The first two days were REALLY bad and confirmed my fears. We had all of that bad weather and there was a bunch of wrecks those mornings. I even got lost one morning trying to avoid a wreck (one wrong turn led to getting off a bad exit and being stuck on one lane roads). That whole issue caused me to add 40 min to my drive that morning. The funny thing (funny now at least) was that I really never made a wrong turn. I just got turned around in the rain (something I determined on my way home Tuesday afternoon). Overall though, I think I should be ok IF I leave on time each day, but even just 10 – 15 min late will cost me about 30+ min on the road.