Thursday, September 13, 2007

Old building, new building

About 3 weeks ago, we packed up our old office and moved into a new one 6 blocks away. I have never been a part of this kind of shift before, and so there are lots of small culture shocks I have to get used to.
Today, for example, when I got in the elevator, every single button for every floor was pressed. Had this happened in our old building, I would have considered it a very bad sign -- our old building had 14 floors, and that would have meant there were at least 13 people in the elevator. Our new building has 6 floors, and there were 7 people in the elevator - it was a short and comfortable ride.
Another good example is the bathrooms: Old Building: genders alternated floors, there was only one per floor, everything was manual, there were two stalls per bathroom, entry doors didn't lock, and each had either windows or those squirty smelly air fresheners blasting out canned scents every 10 minutes. New building: both genders on every floor, 3 sets of bathrooms per floor, automated everything -- flushing, sinks, and soap (!) -- three or more stalls per bathroom, keyed in codes for the bathroom entry doors, no windows (at least in the one we we use most frequently), no air fresheners. For some reason the soap is the kicker for me -- automated soap? Who does that? New building does.
There are large things that are different too -- the fact that we have twice as much space, the fact that we moved into a Class A building (i.e. really really nice), the fact that I have my own office -- but those were all known changes. It's the little things that truly reinforce that we moved on -- and up -- in the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment