Monday, December 13, 2004

Workspace relocation program

I made the official move into my new office this morning. Once the upstairs addition was complete, and all the admin/sales people had been pulled from their sardined cubicles and moved up there, we were left with a big open space downstairs. A couple new walls and a few coats of paint turned it into a few pretty nice offices. I called shotgun, and grabbed the one that has its own fax/copier/printer/coffee room. Not to mention a window for my plant, something the old office, (AKA: the dungeon), didn’t have. Being in a nice new office in the middle of the main building does have its disadvantages though... the offices beside me and across the hall were taken by the Western Division Supply Chain Manager (my boss), and the Western Division Operations Manager (my boss's boss). Guess I'd better show up on time tomorrow morning.
I'm looking forward to watching the walls come down in the dungeon, we're turning it into a lunch room for the new production line. I think when the time comes I'll grab a sledgehammer and lend a hand, it'll be cathartic.
Speaking of lending a hand, something really annoyed me today. Once I had arranged my desk and filing cabinets in the new digs, I was left with a rather bare spot just inside the door. I glanced at my jacket, tossed across the spare chair, and decided the bare spot was a perfect place for some coat hooks. I went down to maintenance, knowing that the box of hooks I bought them for hanging up hoses couldn’t have been used up yet. I stole a couple and borrowed their cordless drill. Once the hooks were up on the wall in my office, I went back to maintenance to return the drill… along the way I ran into one of the production workers who’s been there long enough to know me. He saw the drill in my hand… “Heyyy, Jeff! What’s this? An office boy with a workin tool?” This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten comments like that from knuckle-draggers out on the floor. Like whenever I felt inclined to grab a broom and sweep up in the stock room because the warehouse guys were too busy unloading trucks, or jumped on the forklift myself to unload a pallet when a truck driver was in a hurry and nobody else was around. Some dipshit would always come up to me and pull some witty remark out of his ass... Like “Hey, are you sure yer certified on that thing?” or “Don’t hurt yurself, you might get a blister from that broom.” Most of these guys have been there long enough to know that I started out in receiving and spent a year in the warehouse; they’ve seen me hauling boxes, unloading lumber trucks and doing routine maintenance all over the place. Perhaps that’s the problem. The guy who commented on the drill has been there almost 20 years, and he’s still slappin lumber on the outsides of tubs for 8 hours a day and $14 an hour. I guess you need to be two-decades-wise in the way a screw goes through a chunk of 1x4 before you can carry a drill with real pride.

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