It seemed like the week had just begun, and here it was already Thursday. I guess a holiday and two days where working was just plain impossible will do that to you. Even though the past two days I had gone home from work very early, I had made it a habbit to come into work anyway. Thursday was no different. Naturally, I was hoping that I'd be homeward bound early again; but unfortunately that wasn't about to happen.
We met at about 10:00 or so, after a good majority of everyone had arrived and we were all told the good news.
"We have to get out of here," our human resources director told us. "They've decided that they need to pull up the rug and re-sheetrock the entire place and they can't do it while we're here." Silence filled the room, most people probably remembering the two weeks it took to move into this office space in July of 2002.
"Now here's where everyone's going," he continued. "With the exception of Lisa, Scott and Kathy, who'll be working from home and Darwin and Joe who'll be holding down the fort down here, everyone will be squeezing into Grasse Mount."
Squeeze was an understatement. Grasse Mount is the name of a 200 year old building where the other half of our staff was housed. It was about three miles away from our office and it was, for the most part, filled to capacity. Moving into that building was going to mean some major lifestyle changes, as we all had nice and roomy 8'x8' cubicles where we were now.
I went and packed up everything in my cubicle. I made two piles; stuff I wasn't going to need at a temporary space, and stuff I needed, no questions asked. Fortunately, I was able to condense anything I needed into only two boxes. Everything else was going into storage while they fixed up our office space.
So I had two boxes and my computer. I decided I was only going to bring one of my computers, and my 17" LCD screen instead of my bulky 19" CRT. A moving truck was supposed to come by and pick everything up, but I wasn't about to trust my stuff to them, so I pulled my car up to the door and loaded in everything I needed, including my office chair.
By the time I got up to my new office, surprisingly the room had been cleaned out and lots of the junk that was there had been taken away to storage. I instructed the movers on a few more things I didn't want there and then commenced to set my computer up. It didn't take me long to set my computer up and the rest of the was spent helping the few other people who decided to cart their own stuff get eveything set up.
Come to find out, it was probably a good thing I brought my own stuff over because the movers didn't show up until Monday morning. Everything since then has been hectic as could be. I haven't stopped running around to keep everyone up and running in their temporary spaces. Everyone seems to be uncomfortable, especially those now working on banquet tables and those packed six to an office. Only now, near the end of the week does it seem that people are settling in to their new atmosphere.
So soon things will return back to normal -- until we have to move back.
