The Office

Although it is now clearly an insult to some unfortunately giant percentage of the country to complain about my employment situation, I did want to update the previous post about the move. The move is complete. I am cozily ensconced in my new office, where my new office mate busily clacks away on her keyboard some four feet to my left. And although, on a go-forward basis, as people used to like to say in the sorts of meetings that made attendees pantomime suicide methods to each other, I will make every effort to not complain about my job, I will say that the first week in the new digs was really pretty difficult. There were so many changes, all at once, and none of them felt like good changes.

Our free coffee went away (Wah, I know, but you get used to things...). Our kitchens (four of them) are now one teeny kitchen, with one tiny microwave. The parking ramp near our building is too full, so some of use have been assigned to the one at the very farthest end of the office park (or whatever these places are called). Naturally, I am one of the fortunate far-parkers. I could never find the bathroom, and I spent the first week walking all the way around the outside of the building (2/3 of the circumference) to get to the kitchen, when in fact, it was only 1/3 the circumference away from me in the other direction.

Our office was horribly clogged with the furniture from our previous offices, and the overhead flourescent tubes were not that cheery. Finally, and pathetically, the disparity between the good offices and the bad offices is GIANT. The good offices have windows, and are large and laid out in such a way that it is possible to have two distinct work areas. The bad offices are internal, and often have a post on one wall that makes it impossible to arrange furniture in any logical way. I was feeling bad for being such a baby, then a coworker asked how I was doing with the move, and when I said, "Ehn...", he said, "Yeah, I really felt like crying. The good offices are so much better than the bad offices!" Just knowing I wasn't the only one who felt like shedding some tears about my sucky office made me feel ever so much better.

OK, so, now the good: I have gotten rid of ALL of my furniture with the exception of one corner table and a rolly file cabinet. We have both plugged in our lamps, and no longer rely on the tubes to light our little cave. Now that I know the right way to the kitchen, I no longer have to walk past the REALLY good window offices, the ones that look across Lake Washington to Seattle. (The ones on my side give the much more boring view of the rest of this swanky office park.) The new toaster is SO MUCH BETTER than the old one. And there is a new coffee machine that is fifty cents a cup, which is reasonable. I had my first two cups today- not bad. Oh- and I figured out how to enter the top floor of the parking ramp (which is where we are instructed to park upon pain of death or something) directly from the street, bypassing the fifty office park crosswalks and endless slow driving through the bottom parts of the ramp. It's like the secret Batman entrance, except it's the nice, out in the open one...

Also, my office mate is really nice. She talks to herself as much as I do (though she does it in Chinese, which livens things up). And she brought me a white turnip cake for Chinese New Year (she made it herself), which, in case you find the name troubling, is actually a savory treat that you fry up in a pan and eat with chili sauce, not a desserty, frosting type of cake. She changes her cell phone ring all the time- first it was Mission Impossible, now it's some tropical island music. Fun! Also, someone finally got the joke that it was two Jennys in one office, though of course our temporary signage says Jennifer and Kwok, which kind of kills the humor a bit.

Last but not least, the new office is right on the shore of Lake Washington, and it is not for nothing that this is where the filthy rich in the area choose to inhabit their fantastically beautiful homes. Thanks to the lengthening days, when I leave the far flung parking ramp on days that aren't completely cloudy (two or three since the move), I get to enjoy the sunset over the sailboats in the marina. It's pretty nice. And just yesterday a belligerent raccoon kept me waiting to get across the street to my office (I am not willing to mess with a raccoon that wanders around in broad daylight) in the morning, so, yeah, a nice, natural setting. No raccoons in the building thus far, I'm happy to report.

I'm settled in. I'm done complaining. I am super grateful that I have a job. Amen.