The Hutt Came Back
I've now worked for my employer for a staggering 11.5 years. The first few years my team was moved around from seat to seat, but since shortly after my promotion to team leader back in 2006 I've had the same seat overlooking the lobby. It's a pretty good seat; I have lots of natural light and a big U-shaped desk with lots of room to store random toys.
For my first anniversary with the company, I went and bought pretty much the only Kenner Star Wars toy I didn't have as a child: Jabba the Hutt! He was used and a little beat up, but good enough. He sat on a pile of books on my desk and lorded over the other toys. Dead batteries from my headphones ended up in the dungeon.
Alas for Jabba, all good things come to an end. Earlier this year my employer purchased the fitness center across the street. The extensive remodeling is almost complete, and all the technical departments, including mine, are moving into the new buildling. My department moves later this month while I'm on vacation. I haven't been in the new building yet (the first tours are when I'm gone) so my first experience will be the day I get back when I sit in my new seat.
What I do know is that my desk is going to be a lot smaller. The big U-shaped desks take up a lot of space that we need to fit in new employees, so the new building won't have them. I don't rate an office (yet) so I get a corner shaped desk. This means that a lot of the stuff on my desk has to go.
Fortunately, I actually got fed up with how much useless crap was on my desk earlier this year before I knew I was moving, so I'd already hacked down the amount of paper and tech books. This new restriction made me cut a little deeper though. Virtually all of the tech books are gone; after all, is there anything as useless as a three-year-old book on a technology that you never cared about in the first place? Some of the lesser toys were put in the swap pile. Old training materials were tossed. The big bucket of Duplo that I bought off a coworker for a $1 was given to another coworker with a one-year-old kid.
However, even with all of these reductions, it looked like I wasn't going to be able to fit my stuff easily on a corner desk. So Jabba the Hutt has migrated east to my house. He's set up on the built-ins, hookah in hand and Salacious Crumb paying court. I may have to break out some of the members of Jabba's court that I have boxed up in my basement to keep them company. After all, Jabba doesn't have those toys to pay him obeisance any more.
For my first anniversary with the company, I went and bought pretty much the only Kenner Star Wars toy I didn't have as a child: Jabba the Hutt! He was used and a little beat up, but good enough. He sat on a pile of books on my desk and lorded over the other toys. Dead batteries from my headphones ended up in the dungeon.
Alas for Jabba, all good things come to an end. Earlier this year my employer purchased the fitness center across the street. The extensive remodeling is almost complete, and all the technical departments, including mine, are moving into the new buildling. My department moves later this month while I'm on vacation. I haven't been in the new building yet (the first tours are when I'm gone) so my first experience will be the day I get back when I sit in my new seat.
What I do know is that my desk is going to be a lot smaller. The big U-shaped desks take up a lot of space that we need to fit in new employees, so the new building won't have them. I don't rate an office (yet) so I get a corner shaped desk. This means that a lot of the stuff on my desk has to go.
Fortunately, I actually got fed up with how much useless crap was on my desk earlier this year before I knew I was moving, so I'd already hacked down the amount of paper and tech books. This new restriction made me cut a little deeper though. Virtually all of the tech books are gone; after all, is there anything as useless as a three-year-old book on a technology that you never cared about in the first place? Some of the lesser toys were put in the swap pile. Old training materials were tossed. The big bucket of Duplo that I bought off a coworker for a $1 was given to another coworker with a one-year-old kid.
However, even with all of these reductions, it looked like I wasn't going to be able to fit my stuff easily on a corner desk. So Jabba the Hutt has migrated east to my house. He's set up on the built-ins, hookah in hand and Salacious Crumb paying court. I may have to break out some of the members of Jabba's court that I have boxed up in my basement to keep them company. After all, Jabba doesn't have those toys to pay him obeisance any more.