@Lorne Kates said:
... to move first, into the half-finished building, where you will be the forerunner in experiencing the delights of- constant drone of jackhammers and power ratchets
- a wide variety of fumes and odors! Industrial cleaner! Paint fumes! Mixing agents!
- thin layers of drywall compound dust on everything. Your computer. Your lunch. You lungs.
- Eastern AND western exposure before the blinds are installed. How shiny is your monitor?
- outages in one or more utilities each and every day. Worried you won't be able to wash your hands because the water's out? That's okay! The power's out too, so you couldn't even find the bathroom if you wanted to!
- once everything is finally past the "canary" stage, and you've settled into a nice corner office with a view-- THAT'S when the well-dressed team and the sells-stuff team comes in, congratulates your team on a job well done-- and then "rewards" you with a brand new office in the basement. Sure, the office isn't quite completed yet (so get ready for all of the above joys again, minus the windows), but Sales does need a spacious place to set up shop (because their team actually makes money), and CEO needs a view to impress the clients / gaze upon while he mulls over the fate of the peons.
It's not so bad. :) Once, though, when still in the Netherlands, I worked in an office when they were removing asbestos. That was not a lot of fun, especially since the extraction fan was pointed straight at our door. And those things are
loud.
In fact, the building has been finished for a while, and it's already occupied by some other tenants. There's a rather nice coffee shop downstairs, and shops selling electronic gadgets and such.
And no, we won't be sent to the basement. In fact, there are only two categories of employees that will have a fixed desk:
- The CEO
- The software developers
The reason for this is fairly simply: everybody has a laptop, but developers have desktops because we need the computing power. And so, we have fixed desks. Everybody else, including department heads, will have "hot desks" in an open-plan office. Or if it's not too hot, you could take your laptop outside on the terrace and work there.
The people in charge of the move made a count of what percentage of desks is occupied on average, and organised it such that there are just enough desks for the average number of employees present on any given day. I pointed out that this means that you won't have enough desks 50% of the time, but maths is not their strongest point. Oh well, what do I care: I have my own desk.