Worst place to have a desk in a traditional work setting

In My Humble Opinion
41

I have a corner cube right now, so there are aisles on two sides of me. The aisle behind me is the main thoroughfare across the whole long building, so there’s a ton of traffic and conversations behind me all day. The other aisle leads to the lunch room, so yeah, more traffic. There’s a T-type intersection that meets at the cube next to me.

People like to chat as they walk, then when someone needs to go down a different aisle, they sit in the intersection and talk. I have 2 very major intersections right by cube. I’ve learned to tune out most of the chatter, but then I sometimes tune out people actually coming to see me and it scares the crap out of me.

42

I once had a desk in one of those stupid open-office cubical farms that was right at a T-intersection of 3 hallways; 1 went to the conference rooms, 1 to the managers offices, and the 3rd went to the main door. People were always meeting at the corner just behind and alongside my desk, and having their impromptu conferences right behind me. Really distracting. And we had those half-height cubes, so the walls were just the right height for people to lean on, sticking their elbows inside my desk space. Worse, these usually included one of more managers, so telling them to “Move the hell along!” wasn’t an option.

I found that piling computer listings (old ones, that I didn’t really use) quite high & quite fragile alongside that half-wall helped – when they leaned over the wall, they would knock the whole pile of listings down – that usually got them to move elsewhere (like to their offices – all these managers had big offices with conference tables inside, but they didn’t like to use them). Also, putting something wet & sticky along the top of the half-wall where they leaned their elbows tended to discourage that. But they’d still stand there & talk. I got yo hiding out in the tiny, isolated reference librarty room when I needed to concentrate on some designs. But that had no comouter terminal in it, so it was harder to work there.

43

Mine is similar to many of the others here. We moved from a normal cubicle farm (5 foot individual cubes) to one of those awful “open” work spaces with low walls and no real privacy. I was placed with my open cube along a busy corridor, so everyone who passed by felt the need to say “Hello, snowthx!”. I appreciate the friendliness, but at times I was trying to concentrate and it went from minor annoyance to major irritation. I started having feelings of ignoring people and lashing out when I got interrupted (just because I did not have my headset on doesn’t mean I am available to chit-chat). I usually eat lunch at my desk and people would comment on what I was eating as they passed by. I asked to be moved, but it took some weeks, during which I telecommuted. Now I am at the back end of a dead-end corridor with my back to a window. Much better!

I think companies know these open work spaces suck balls for the people who have to endure them. Thankfully, we have telecommuting as an option, so it’s not too bad. They must be more economical for businesses to continue pushing them as a good thing. No, they are not a good thing.

44

Next to the microwave where the big boss’s snippy personal assistant would nuke fish every day for lunch - check.

At the intersection of two busy aisleways where people would always ask me where so-and-so sat - check.

Now I’m right by the bottom of the stairs where everyone seems to think it’s a good place to stop and chat. I’ve said I’m going to put up a “No Stopping Standing or Parking” sign. It gets so bad sometimes when I’m on the phone that I’ve had to ask people to please move along so I can hear the person I’m talking to.

They like to move people around a lot so I’m hoping I won’t be at that location much longer.

45

I feel very sorry for an employee I see everyday when waiting for the buss. Their back faces the busy street and bus stop, and they are at ground level. Really, if there was no window, they are about five feet from the bus stop. I can see both computer screens and their entire desk.

That must SUCK!

46

The newbies get the classrooms nobody wants instead of where they need to be. Bad move, I agree.

I once got moved from my nice classroom in a good location to the Ghetto Room: pealing paint, drooping curtains that looked like they’d been in a knife fight, and a big puddle on the floor after every rainstorm. TPTB didn’t want to put any money into fixing it because they were building a new wing. I was moved because the principal thought I could calm tensions between two teachers. I couldn’t. Eventually, one got a restraining order, and I got to move because they couldn’t be within 150 feet of each other.

47

In an old appartment building repurposed as an office building. Something that was originally likely an hallway/landing was large enough to be turned into an office. But it was still the only communication between what was obviously originally two different parts of the building. So, the poor guy had people going from the offices one side to the offices on the other passing in front of his desk all day long. It also was just under the sloped roof, along the external wall, guaranteed to be super hot in summer (no air conditioning). The only light was a small old style roof windows, so artificial light all day. I guess there could be much worst, but it still was pretty bad.
This guy (I didn’t know people who worked there before or after) had been a promising young manager, but was demoted to a lowly position (it was the public sector so they couldn’t fire him arbitrarily) for not terribly clear reasons (officially for an unbelievable reason : an error in the page numbering of a report, in reality probably because he had been too arrogant with too important people). Even though he retained rank and pay, his actual duties went from heading a team of highly qualified people reporting to the uppermost level of the company to executing operations at the request of lowly staffers such as me. I’m convinced that they assigned him this office on purpose for extra humiliation (note that he was one of the managers I have disliked the most in my life, so it’s not like I was shedding tears for him).

48

I think I may have shared this here. A long time ago, to a beloved colleague, we did this as a prank…

While he was away on a vacation, we cleaned-out the supply closet in the men’s room and moved his desk in there, along with the computer, file cabinet, chair, and even ran an extension for his phone and LAN. We placed everything exactly as it was in his cubicle (desk decor, poster, calendar, etc.), into his new “office”. It was sorta like that scene in Office Space where Milton is moved to the basement.

Everyone much enjoyed viewing that office each time we visited the men’s room. We even had to escort some of the women thru there since there was so much interest. When he came back, there was much hilarity - he was duly impressed. It was there for at least a day, and he had to start his vacation dig-out while sitting in there. We all chipped-in to restore him to his regular habitat.

49

In my first job, I had a desk way in the back by the emergency exit.

The business was “document coding,” which is a terrible business. The coders were to go through box after box of legal discovery documents, reading for key words and concepts, and then enter certain data manually onto paper forms using block capital letters. The forms and discovery documents were then shipped overseas, where people who did not speak English would enter the data into computer software.

The purpose of using people overseas for data entry was that they could pay them much less than the dirt-cheap rates for data entry in the US. The purpose of the coders I worked with was to be smart enough to recognize key terms and concepts for a legal case, observant enough to spot them in the endlessly dull metaphorical haystack…while being desperate enough to accept the pay set by an employer unwilling to pay for data entry.

When you are hiring smart people to do drudgery for low pay, you are getting the emotionally damaged.

An endless stream of them would shirk work and sneak out the side exit by my desk. There was a grocery store across the parking lot, among other attractions. Management locked the door from the outside so they couldn’t get back in (it couldn’t be locked from my side because it was an emergency exit). I was told to refuse to let anyone back in – management expected that guilty employees would then grudgingly have to report to the front office and be caught shirking.

Of course what ACTUALLY happened was these emotionally damaged people would threaten me with violence if I refused to get up and open the door for them, many many times a day. Because my obeying management would forced them to get into trouble. Their friends would join in too. And everyone worked on plans to trick me or force me to open the door.

So here I am, a kid brand-new to the workforce, finding myself the most hated and schemed-against person in the building. Not backed up by management, who never came back to deal with the door or the shirkers, but nevertheless expected to perform the duties of a supervisor and surrogate bouncer.

It was a horrendous working environment. All day long people ditching work (that I had to help make up) were hissing threats, looming angrily, crying and begging, wheedling, pounding furiously on the locked door, on and on.

50

My experience is nearest the entrance where every walk-in who comes in will bug you about the location of someone who’s at least 3 floors from your office. Drives you crazy when analyzing financials. Picture me as your crusty, ruffled-shirt numbers cruncher who likes being surrounded by four walls.

51

I knew someone in such a desk location, who had walk-ins from the public coming to her desk instead of the information desk.
She ended up putting a sign at her desk:
“Deaf Employee. Please see Information desk ===>”.

It relieved her of a huge number of distractions from her work. About the only visitors who bothered her were those who couldn’t speak English. (Which was a situation, since she spoke nothing else.)

52

I posted a more blunt “Direct Questions to the Secretary” (there was none.) The sign went down in only a few days.

53

I have the cubicle closest to the boss’s office, so whenever he isn’t in there people ask me, “Where’s Nick?”

This goes on all day long, sometimes. Nick hardly talks to me and certainly doesn’t report to me. I have no idea where he is. Stop asking me.

I also sit next to the plotter, a large printer that prints architectural/mechanical plans.

Whenever someone comes by to check on their print job only to find some other job printing they turn to me and ask, “What are you printing?”

Just because I’m physically closest to a printer you assume I’m the one using it? What are you, 6? It’s on a corporate network. Go away, please.

54

The only desk location I genuinely can’t stand is one that’s too close to the building’s HVAC/other heavy machinery: if there is the *slightest *amount of vibration under my chair I’ll notice it, and it will eventually make me feel nauseated. I’ve never met anyone else with this particular sensitivity, and sometimes I’m the only person in a room who can feel any vibration, so asking for relocation without sounding like a snowflake can be a little tricky. Luckily, it’s only happened twice in my career (so far).