Open Plan offices never really worked did they.....

j.e.j.

victor2 wrote: »

Having been involved with the set-up of an open plan office, one of the best things we did was to put the A/C control in the secured computer room. This meant that only the IT staff (of which I was one) could adjust it.
Standard responses to a request to change the temperature included "I've just done it, but it takes about 20 minutes to take effect" and "I'll go and do it now." The latter required you to disappear into the computer room for 30 seconds and come back having changed nothing. After which, the first answer may have become applicable...;)

Our open plan office was like that, - you couldn't open any of the windows and you often had to phone up and ask for them to turn the heating up or down.

I always, without exception, got this kind of cobblers from the person on the other end of the line.

Snakey

You should always keep the stuff you leave at work to the minimum, in case of unexpected employment issues. It must be bad enough getting escorted out of the office in front of everyone, without also having to carry a huge great cardboard box containing four pairs of shoes, three cardigans, two entire place settings of crockery and cutlery, a massive package of Sainsbury's Basics sanitary towels, half a shopping basket's worth of cup-a-soup, cous cous, your own personal special teabags, chocolate biscuits etc with a houseplant or two stuck on top like a game of Double or Drop.

I'm glad I happened to get wind of plans afoot at my previous employers, several weeks before anything actually happened.

duchy

Gloomendoom wrote: »

That is definitely one of the better things about an office to yourself. You get to choose the temperature you want, not what some bod from IT wants.

Avoids the power games the inadequates tend to want to play .

Gloomendoom

Snakey wrote: »

You should always keep the stuff you leave at work to the minimum, in case of unexpected employment issues.

I think I would need to call Pickfords if I had any "unexpected employment issues."

My office is a home from home. I sometimes even sleep there.

GwylimT

I had an induction for my job a few weeks ago, my lovely office is all on its own, I even have my own toilet!

Think open plan offices are bad? Try schools! Some of our classrooms only have three sides and open upto the corridor, as you can imagine its quite easy to hold a science lesson when 200 year sevens are sat eating their lunch and chatting away!

sillygoose

At our head office they apparently have a high tech system that gives out a constant background white noise that you are not really aware of. The purpose is your hearing adjusts to the level of sound to avoid being overloaded. In a quietish office someone on the phone even over the other side will be disturbing.

This noise system makes your ear 'turn the volume down' and desensitise so you don't hear the disturbances so much. I don't work there but I am told it does work.

Only catch is you might spend 10 minutes slagging your boss off to a colleague, then he sends you an email saying 'you know the sound blanking system is off for maintenance today don't you?' :rotfl:

daveyjp

Gigervamp wrote: »

Hey, be grateful that you have your own desk! Where my husband works, they're talking about hot desking, so no-one will have a desk to call their own.

By far the best environment I have ever worked in. About 100 sharing 65 desks. Choose a desk, set up and start working. No clutter in the office, no desks covered in paperwork, mascots, photos etc.

Despite the fact there appear to be too few desks the number was chosen after extensive desk surveys which showed on average 30% of desks were empty every working day. It also meant a 50% reduction if the office space the company needed to rent.

It was also much much cleaner as cleaners didn't have the excuse of not moving things away to clean desks. With only a monitor and phone on every desk it was obvious when they didn't clean properly.