In sum, I can no longer tolerate the stench of microwaved frozen lunches in the break room.
From factory to truck to store, frozen dinners melt and freeze and melt and freeze, and so microwaved frozen dinners smell of warm freezer burn. This, under a thin layer of cellophane glued to a plastic tray, melts in the presence of microwaves. The agitated freezer burn steams the food, and the steaming freezer burn clouds the break room.
Our cubicles line the path to the break room and to the rest rooms. Said more accurately, we work in a hallway. My window is the Internet, though as stricter and stricter policies are rolled out, my window gets smaller and smaller. One can imagine the shareholders demanding that the board enact policies to shrink window sizes, perhaps in an effort "enhance shareholder value". If they calculated, they would find that such policies stand in an inverse relationship to employees' corporate contentment.
In the early days, the hallway was far more cluttered. Seven years ago, I sat next to the printer. It was a hulking heap of a thing, shared by a dozen people scattered through this and other hallways, with the exceptions of the more senior among us who sat next to windows.
For a year, I sat beside the hulking HP machine that spat out a dozen users' documents at unexpected intervals throughout the day. Sitting next to the printer has at least one fringe benefit: you get to know co-workers a bit quicker. Still though, they have no idea what I do. To an outsider, my job description would include responsibilities like "curse meaninglessly at screens", "mutter neologistic obscenities when the screens turn blue", "complain about printers". To them, this is me. To me, they are people who sometimes print.
The early clutter included file cabinets. It was never clear what sorts of papers or other items belonged in the file cabinets. What was clear was that occasionally a person who did not usually print would visit the almond steel drawers to retrieve folders from the Pendaflex jungle. When the file cabinets were finally moved some years later, many of the documents were thrown away, as no one could quite clearly say why we had saved so many in the first place. Or perhaps it's simply a slighter burden on corporate resources to move an empty file cabinet.
The ubiquitous supply cabinet, a staple of any office environment, has never really been present in the hallway, for cast-off file cabinets are a cost-effective solution to the need for a dedicated supply storage resource. What is a supply cabinet but another lockable steel shell, but with shelves? Instead, we have supply drawers in file cabinets whose dented sides and chipped almond do not usually impede the action of the drawer runners.
Article comments
1 - Elvira Black
Brian, I can relate, as my office used to be directly across from the breakroom. I had the advantage of being able to close my office door, however. The microwave aromas didn't bother me too much (not too many micro users) but sometimes the inane lunchtime conversations did. I feel your existential pain!