A few months ago my department at work moved into a new office. It was a big move for us since it was a different building from the rest of the company, and none of us were sure this move was going to be a positive thing. What can I say, we are a group of people that do not handle change well.
After being in this new building almost three months, I have to say it is really nice here. We no longer have to deal with the drama of the break room, the temperature in this building is much more comfortable, there is no excess traffic of people tromping through the big corporate conference room. It is not perfect mind you, but it is really pretty pleasant.
Now there are a few minor annoyances. Our cubes only have three walls which no one is happy about. You see when I first started working here we actually had doors on our cubes. Complete privacy. Then we moved to a different floor and had no doors and were forbidden to cover our little doorway in any way even though other departments were hanging curtains and using folding screens for privacy. Now there is not even the semblance of a fourth wall. It is uncomfortable, and no one is adjusting to that well.
Also there is only one restroom in the building. If it is being cleaned or broken we have to hike to the other building. That is more than a little inconvenient. Hopefully I will never have to trek up the hill because that would be really annoying.
My biggest complaint really has nothing to do with the building at all. My biggest complaint is my new next-cube-neighbors. You see my job is really boring and involves me scrubbing a lot of data. No one in my group talks much. We like the quiet. A lot.
Through the years people have been sat in our area as a temporary solution and they all have commented on how quiet we are. They all went out of their way to be as quiet as possible so as to not disturb us. It was very polite of them, and we always appreciated it.
For some reason when making the seating chart for this new building the powers that be decided that they should sit one of the groups that are constantly on the phone on the row next to our group. There are only 30 people in my department. There are nearly 60 cubes in this office. They easily could have sat this group of 4 over with the other group that is always on the phone. They did not have to put the loud group with us. Yet they did.
Them constantly being on the phone with consumers is annoying. They work on disputes so it is a whole lot of them trying to talk down really angry people, or trying to explain things to incredibly dense customers, either way it is a lot of talking. Add on top of that these women are all very loud and very chatty and I want to shoot someone.
They apparently have no idea what the interoffice communicator is for, think that talking to each other over the cube wall is completely acceptable, and think when they aren't on the phone with a client or shouting questions back and forth about their job, that they have to talk about something in their personal lives. I know all about these women and I couldn't tell you their names if I had to. This is ridiculous.
The worst part is I really can't say anything. I could ask them to keep it down, but their job requires them to be on the phone. I have worked in customer service over the phone, I know it is impossible to always be quiet when talking to a customer, I get that. Even if they stopped the personal conversations and learned how to IM a question to one another, I would still have to listen to them talk to customers all day long. I can't ask to move because they want us sitting with our groups, and there is no way they will move an entire group.
I really really dislike these women. They have very poor attitudes and are pretty obnoxious. They make me want to poison their desk plants* and hide rotting meat in their cubes to annoy them as much as they annoy me.
I am not going to do anything rash. I am going to sit here and silently fume about it, because that is what you do in an office. I will turn up my iPod, I will try and ignore them, and I will be as neighborly as I can...for now.
*The first two weeks we were in the office I had to listen to the woman directly on the other side of my cube wall complain loudly about her plant because someone was watering it and she thought it was dying because of that. She then would bitch about how she didn't even want the plant and someone had given it to her when they left. Then the damn thing started attracting gnats which started swarming my cube. I want to kill the thing and make everyone happy.
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