Should I be miffed about this? [workplace seating seniority issue]

[DrCube]

I asked about getting a window cube occasionally for the entire five years I was at my previous job. Then I quit and my next job gave me an office with a window. Don’t give up the dream!

[Omar_Little]

@DrCube

I asked about getting a window cube occasionally for the entire five years I was at my previous job. Then I quit and my next job gave me an office with a window. Don’t give up the dream!

Is a username change imminent, DrOffice?

[JcWoman]

Well, an unexpected followup: simply because I was the one who asked about it, my manager executed a swap of seats between Susie and I. It still “bucks” the seniority thing because Bob and John are staying where they are. Manager wants them to stay together because they collaborate so much, so they have to stay put until two side-by-side cubes come open.

It’s rare that the squeaky wheel principle works for me, so even though I wasn’t very emotionally invested in it, I’m kind of happy about the end result. Keeping in mind that the next time people get rearranged I may lose my window seat. But cest la vie.

(Fun story: in a previous job we had offices with doors but because I was the newbie, they put me into a two-person interior office. After a few years I wrangled to relocate myself to one of the exterior single-person offices with a window. It was actually an odd-shaped office in the corner of the building with a support pillar in it, so hard to fit furniture in it. But I loved it. It didn’t last long. AFter a few months they executed a very large reorg, moving more than 10 people, and when the dust settled, the only thing that was really different was that I was back into a 2-person office with someone I didn’t really work with, and my lovely corner office was left unoccupied.)

[Asimovian]

Thread title edited; please try to use more descriptive titles.

[Pai325]

@JcWoman

Well, an unexpected followup: simply because I was the one who asked about it, my manager executed a swap of seats between Susie and I. It still “bucks” the seniority thing because Bob and John are staying where they are. Manager wants them to stay together because they collaborate so much, so they have to stay put until two side-by-side cubes come open.

It’s rare that the squeaky wheel principle works for me, so even though I wasn’t very emotionally invested in it, I’m kind of happy about the end result. Keeping in mind that the next time people get rearranged I may lose my window seat. But cest la vie.

(Fun story: in a previous job we had offices with doors but because I was the newbie, they put me into a two-person interior office. After a few years I wrangled to relocate myself to one of the exterior single-person offices with a window. It was actually an odd-shaped office in the corner of the building with a support pillar in it, so hard to fit furniture in it. But I loved it. It didn’t last long. AFter a few months they executed a very large reorg, moving more than 10 people, and when the dust settled, the only thing that was really different was that I was back into a 2-person office with someone I didn’t really work with, and my lovely corner office was left unoccupied.)

I’m happy you got the window! you deserve it. Enjoy it for as long as they let you.

[Dinsdale]

Congrats! Now Susie, Bob and John will all be pissed at you!

In most of my jobs, there have been very strict systems for assigning seating. The only wrinkle was that each move would not result in changes all the way down the line. For example, in your situation, if Bob was given the window cube, they might have put Susie in Bob’s old cube, rather than giving John the option of moving into Bob’s old cube, and then giving you the option of moving to John’s old cube.