It’s nice to work in a busy office building where our office isn’t the only one there.
My old job was in an office park that was, at the time, being refurbished to bring in new tenants. We rarely ventured into the other buildings except for the time we went to scope out the koi pond/Japanese style water-garden in the atrium of one of the buildings that our CEO felt was very necessary to entice tenants. Personally, I thought the whole atrium smelled like fish and not the good and yummy grilled-with-lemon-and-rosemary type of fish smell but, rather, the type of smell that comes from having a badly ventilated area with a fish pond in it. It was not pleasant.
Anyway, that was as much interaction as we had with other companies there. That is to say…none. It was pretty boring to see only the people you had to work with every day without the hope of running into anyone interesting that I didn’t know. There was hope at times. Our CEO also thought that clearing the area around a forgotten pond that was attached to the office park would make it a very social area while also making it appealing to would-be tenants. Of course, the reality of that was that the pond was unearthed for a while but lack of maintenance made the walking path around in impassable after a few months. Also, said pond was really just a rather large, muddy body of water. There was a little deck built to extend over it but only in the spring/fall was it appealing to stand on because otherwise you’d a) be bitten to within an inch of your life by hungry mosquitoes that used the pond as their spawning ground or b) be subjected to the smell of the pond which was not terribly pleasant.
I’m not bitter about it. The money for these renovations came from a different budget than that which funded my old company. It just seemed as though this money could have been put to better use. It was the same budget that funded the building we moved into that hosted The Most Optimistic Bathroom in the World and forbade us to complain about anything in this ‘perfect’ building for fear of getting fired.
It’s just nice to work in a building in which you don’t feel it necessary to occasionally drop to your knees in front of the CEO, splay on the floor and say “Thank you, oh Spanky for this beautiful building!”
Instead, I get to go to work in a building that has a bathroom that’s unadorned by anything. We can get things fixed by simply calling down to the property management office without feeling ike we might in trouble because it might be considered a ‘complaint.’
Also, it’s just nice to be in a place where I don’t know everyone in my building.
This makes life interesting. Sadly, book lady was fired from her job so I haven’t seen her in a while. Apparently, she was not the most pleasant HR lady in the world and was relieved of her position. I wish her well and hope she finds a new job where she has no pesky stairs to have to navigate while reading. At least now I don’t have to worry about her falling.
Our office is actually on a floor that has two other companies on it. It’s quite nice because one of the companies is large and there’s a plethora of people to watch. Also, our branch administrator knows everyone so all I have to do is say “who’s that?” and I can get a short biography of them.
What’s nice is that the office across from us is IT related and there are a nice lot of men who work there. This may not sound like a big deal but as a Singleton who’s been working in an office where the only men are the ones you work with and there’s no one particularly eligible or interesting, this is a very big deal.
It’s not that I’m expecting to meet Mr. Right but it’s just nice to look if that makes sense. The fact that our branch administrator is also a single woman makes it more fun because we can have little sessions where we just watch to see who passes by the clear glass doors of our office and wait for the elevator which, conveniently, is located right outside our office door.
It just makes the day more interesting. I’ve learned that the older gentlemen who dresses well is actually British and he flies home to the UK every other week to see his family who still live there. I’ve learned that the crabby little man who I see often and who always buttons his coat wrong is actually a developer that my old company interviewed for a job but didn’t hire him. I’ve learned that Book lady was actually Bad HR Lady who treated everyone rudely, smoked like a chimney and read her book so she didn’t have to acknowledge anyone. This is ironic for a human resources person, I find.
I’ve learned that the company next to us does market research and occasionally they get samples of products they don’t want so they give them to us. We currently have a large supply of off-brand mayonnaise in the office that has been here a while because no one wants it.
In short, it’s fun to work in my building. It’s as unpredictable as my work day- I never know how busy I’ll be when I walk in the door. I like life like this- it’s fun to be completely swamped on day and then have a day where the phone is quiet, no one returns email and I have to find new resources to find resumes.
It’s as unpredictable as the conversations we have in our office and the impromptu gatherings we have at the front desk in which we find something to Google or in which we take a brief Cosmo quiz.
It just makes life fun when it’s not the same old thing every day. I kind of love that.
Happy Thursday!
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