Office Tales

Introduction

Going to the office 5 days a week for my Software Engineering role was such a standard thing until the whole Coronavirus and lockdown became the new world. It’s crazy that my employer doesn’t have any interest in us returning to the office other than for optional collaboration. I mean, it does make sense, but it’s a complete u-turn on their previous ideals. We used to have a few offices nearby, but I think we only have 1 now. They redecorated the remaining office, cutting down the number of desks, and we are allowed to book time in the office if we wish, either individually or as an entire team. I have never been in though, and have only seen a handful of colleagues on a recent night out.

Things I miss about the Office

I think I miss the conversations you overhear from nearby desks, and communication is much more efficient when you can just walk over to someone’s desk. There will be people that you don’t need to interact with for your current work, but will acknowledge them as you walk about the office (often going/returning from lunch breaks). So it’s much more social when working in the office. I think there is a general awareness of what things are happening across the business, because you see people moving about and hear them talking about work. Now I only get that information if people post on communication software such as Slack/Yammer.

It seems I have quite a few draft blog posts that aren’t that exciting on their own, but I’ve put together a collection of ideas to reminisce about office life.

I’ve just discussed some things I miss about the office in this introduction, but the rest of the blog is basically “Things I don’t miss about the office” and “Other tales”.

Things I don’t miss about the office

Moving Desks

Every so often, managers decide to reassign loads of people between projects. Then, if the team sizes aren’t the same, they have no choice but to rearrange the desks, or simply relocate teams. This meant the entire department would move, even if the new desk is just 1 desk away. It was a major disruption and was basically a waste of half a day. People tended to unplug their PC a bit too early, but you did have your PC, 2 monitors, keyboard, mouse, drawer unit, then loads of cables and other items. It’s a big chain of moves though because you can only move if your new desk is free, but it is only free if the current person’s new desk is free and so on.

There was supposed to be a big move shortly before the lockdown happened. We were told that it was coming but then seemed to get delayed but no announcement (so no one knew what the holdup even was). 

I was told I was moving desks by my manager. An entire month went by with no update. I ask my manager what is going on. He says “I’ve been asking many times and I don’t get a concrete response. If you hear anything before I do, then tell me“.

A few days later, I heard another team talking about the new seating plan. I told my manager as requested.

He says he has the seating plan “but I need to spend some time to digest it“.

What are you on about? Just send it to me.

It’s a seating plan that has been released, and many developers were already reading it. Why is he making out it’s something he has to analyse then explain to me?

Anyway, the conclusion is that desk moves are very disruptive, managers find it a really hard task and they change their minds about it, then this makes it seem like a bigger event than it needs to be.

Sounds Of The Office

When I need to concentrate on programming, I often put my headphones in and listen to music. Drowning out all the random talking really helps you focus on your work. If people are talking, I’d often want to listen just in case it is something interesting and work-related, or maybe some funny casual chat that I want to hear.

Periodically, I’d take my headphones out, or maybe I would have to because I want to speak to someone or have a meeting.

Although the general sounds of the office were fine, there were some sounds that would do my head in.

Many people also used headphones to listen to their music, but there was one woman that often had her music on really loud. One time I looked over and saw that she had hair covering her ears, a beanie hat over that, then the headphones were placed over that. So the speakers have to go through a hat and her hair to reach her ears. No wonder she has it that loud. Also, I found it more distracting if I recognised the song. When Tool’s highly anticipated Fear Inoculum came out, she was listening to classic Tool every day and it went on for well over a month.

There were a few people with really exaggerated laughs. In previous blogs, I have mentioned one guy which I nicknamed Beavis for his style of laugh, but there were plenty of others that often did a fake laugh. One person sounded more like they were in pain rather than having a good time. It stressed me out.

There was one person that coughed a lot but it was more like a “ah mmm” like a stereotypical teacher would do to get a student’s attention. It wasn’t aggressive enough to actually clear her throat so it just seemed pointless to me, and extremely annoying.

Maybe the worst thing is this next subject, because I wouldn’t ever consider doing this whilst at work. I didn’t realise until I heard these sounds in the office, but I think it is a sound where it’s very satisfying to hear when it involves you, but hearing someone else do it; then it is vile. There were 2 managers sitting a couple of desks behind me, the woman was filing her nails and the scraping sound was very distracting. The worst thing that had me cringing though – the male was clipping his nails. Like I said, really satisfying if I am clipping my nails, but hearing that “click” sound on someone else’s; it had me cringing. I had to put my headphones on and crank up the volume, and try to not imagine those fingernails fly across his desk.

Kicked out of large meeting room

Meeting rooms were a really in-demand thing. Managers do love meetings, especially pointless ones. Then when you really do want a meeting, you just can’t get a room.

There were two meeting rooms next to each other, located near my desk.

• Meeting Room A holds about 8 seated people, but you can get more people in if standing
• Meeting Room B holds 3 people but you can get more people in if standing

I was called for an ad-hoc meeting with 3 other developers. Both rooms were free at the time. We take the larger room (Room A), since there’s 4 of us.

5 minutes in, someone knocks on the door

“Sorry, I have a one-to-one and have booked this room“

My fellow developers didn’t seem interested in arguing, so I followed suit and kept quiet. It’s a one-to-one so it’s a meeting for 2 people. Room B is perfect for them.

So after moving to Room B, we were trying to crowd around a laptop – crammed awkwardly in our seats. Meanwhile 2 people were sitting comfortably around a large desk in the opposite room. It looked ridiculous.

Office Tales

Empathy Lab

As I just explained, Meeting rooms were in high demand so we needed more of them. Of course, we like cutting down the number of meeting rooms for some cool initiative. One of them was the “Empathy Lab”.

“We were inspired in part by Facebook’s empathy lab which shows how people with impairments may interact with Facebook using assistive technology.

However, when building our accessibility empathy lab, it was important to us that it had a dual purpose: To raise awareness about accessibility, but also be an assistive technology testing space.”

I never saw it get used, but I did see many people get frustrated that they couldn’t find a meeting room.

The Recruitment Letter

Beavis gets a hand-written letter delivered to work written in a green pen. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone get anything delivered with their name on it that wasn’t a package, mainly from Amazon.

He opens this suspicious letter, and it is from a recruiter apparently from LinkedIn.

She explains that the unconventional approach to contacting him is due to the fact that his profile lacks detail and therefore that signals he doesn’t want to be contacted by recruiters.

<Sure, that makes sense.>

She likes the lack of detail in his profile though; it’s the kind of person she is looking for, so she wants to meet in person and talk at a Café.

I’ve never heard of this before? Is it a weird scam?

AWKS

Years ago, I wrote about how I was working in a team that was making the framework for a new application. One of our developers, Timothy, got moved to a team known as “Solutions Team” who were making a framework for the new application. I had asked him how his team differed to mine, surely we were doing exactly the same work? He said he was just doing what the managers told him.

A new developer, Nina joined the Solutions Team.

She comes over and asks Timothy to send her some documentation so she can understand what they have done over the last few months. (The correct answer is “nothing really, just messed about and partially duplicated another team’s work).

You could see the absolute terror in Timothy’ face. I think at that point, he was probably realising that I was right all along and their team was pointless.

Nina detects the panic and says in a concerned tone “are you okay?”

Timothy says “yeah” dejectedly, and then mumbles about “maybe he should update the documentation.”

Nina says she will come back later

It was the most awkward situation in a long time.

Just Paste It In

William has been working closely with a Junior developer. The Junior had a list of objects and needed a simple sort.

William is new to Javascript, but the syntax is exactly the same as C#. He looked at the method signature and didn’t understand it, so he told the Junior to google it.

The first solution they stumbled upon on Stack Overflow had an overly complex solution, but the original poster did request he required only one method that can handle sorting various items. Therefore it required an elaborate solution.

In the Junior’s case; he just wanted to simply sort a list; therefore this code wasn’t appropriate.

William told him to paste the complex method in and “it will work”. The Junior challenged him on it, asking if the algorithm sorted the items in ascending/descending order, and asking him to explain how the code worked.

William then just reads the name of the method and the parameters, trying to say some words in a confident way to blag that it was the correct thing to do: “It’s a dynamic sort, you just pass in the list, along with the name of the property you want to sort by“.

The Junior asks again if it sorts in ascending or descending order.

He then says “yeah you are right, this might not work“.

He had no idea what that code did, he was just hoping it worked – so was just confidently telling him it would work if he just pasted it in.

I ended up telling him how to do it. It’s a one line solution; not a 30 line method.