silk and spinach

(During my New Year clear-out today I found the notes for this post. So I dusted them off and here’s the result. Over a year late, but timeless.)

I’m currently working in a vast building, filled with thousands of people on two enormous floors. I’m part of a team, and our desks are all over the place (albeit on the same floor). I’m the type who gets much more out of face-to-face meetings than I do over the telephone, so I spend much of my time walking around the building from desk to desk. But I’m convinced that I waste less time walking than I would if I chose to work alone and then rework in response to review comments.

Our desk locations are allocated centrally, and in fact the task of desk allocation employs one person full-time because personnel changes and department reorganisations seem to be in fashion this year. And today there’s good news! Someone has seen sense, and my team is being moved together, to a set of adjacent desks. Adjacent to my current desk, in fact. Which is a shame, because in the same shuffle I’ve been allocated a desk right across the building, on the other floor. Still, only one place to go now when I need to talk to someone.

Update 9-jan-06
After three months of spending hours each day walking the stairs and corridors to talk with my team-mates, I was finally moved to a desk in their group. By an amazing coincidence, I left the following week.