I’ll have a number 4 please Bob

We are moving offices in January, no February, no maybe……well some time in the New Year anyway. This is due to the massively expanding (careful) departments in the company and we’re taking on 70+ new people. So we’re off to the far away lands of the building next door.

This will be my second move since I started here; the first occurred a couple of months after I started - over Christmas. That was also from the building next door (the other next door, we’re not moving back), where our department lived in the bowels of the building with hardly any natural light and on the quietest floor known to all human kind (you could hear a mouse fart at the other end in the kitchen). Yes even with Kirstie working there. Luckily we are moving to the 2nd floor of the new building in a corner so we will have natural light, how nice. No SAD in this office, no siree.

Anyhoo, why am I regaling you with all this crappy dull information I hear you cry? Who cares where you sit?! We don’t want to hear about the natural sunlight Nancy! Well, thank you for taking such an interest in my general well being and I do have a point.

The point is that with moving a company the size of this it requires a lot of planning, technicalities and money. Plus lots of burly men in matching t-shirts hoiking desks and chairs and cabinets about. Wheels seem to have been set into motion already and they are in the meantime trying to ram these 70 new people into the existing space we have here. Just over from where we sit is a space that up until now has had some empty desks in it. Today it has about 40 empty desks in it and we have dividers going up, phones going in, computers being installed and chairs being rolled about.

Chairs. Ah yes on the subject of chairs we had a little chair debate yesterday and I got to fill in a survey. A chair survey. Two of the girls from EHS were wheeling about 4 potential chairs for everyone in the building to try. These will be where we park our bottoms in our new home next door. They asked that we all give the chairs a go and then score them all on areas such as comfort, ease to adjust and appearance. As you do. This created a flurry of excitement in the office (we don’t get out much) and a small stampede for the chairs. They were labelled imaginatively enough 1-4 and we gave them a good testing. Harley got so over enthusiastic he almost broke one. I picked 4 as my favourite as did the majority of people. Kirstie however didn’t like 4 at all and went for 3, which the rest of us didn’t fancy. Has to be difficult doesn’t she?!

CJ wandered back from a meeting (or it could have been Starbucks) with Saffa and they were grabbed to take part. Saffa jumped on the nearest chair and started yanking at levers while CJ stood there cross armed saying “Really? Really? You want me to test out chairs?” in her most patronising tone, as though she’d been asked to don a hair net and serve fries at Wimpy’s. Just join in you arrogant, boring twonk. She liked 4 as well.

I texted my friend to say what was occurring in the office and commented that this place is weird sometimes….well most of the time and she replied with “Er, all the time.” She may have a point. Anyway, it was a slight reprieve from the whinging old men, at least while they are trying to break chairs they’re not moaning at me about something.

I asked why we would be getting new chairs in the new office and not taking the old ones with us. Gunner quite rightly pointed out it was because “this company likes to waste money” but was corrected by an EHS girl who said the chairs we currently sit in are “crap and bad for you” so we’re getting all new healthier chairs! Think about it though, these chairs must be about £100 a pop and there will be 3 full floors of people in the new building….that’s a lot of chairs and a lot of money. And what about the old chairs? I hope they get new homes. I have visions of a wasteland somewhere in Slough with these little grey orphaned office chairs wheeling about amongst the tumbleweed looking for a backside or a friendly hand to adjust the height….. My mind goes to strange places sometimes. You may have noticed.

Kirstie informed me today that the people moving into the space next to us are the people who currently sit behind us. Er why? Well their department is expanding so they want the old people with the new people (I’m not being ageist innit tho, I mean the newbies and the staffies). Fair enough but you’re moving the people behind us to next to us for……3 months? And seeing as I am reliably informed by my sources that it on average costs £150 per person to move a desk (Really? Blimey I’m in the wrong trade here) that’s a lot of money spent for the sake of 20 yards and 3 months. Can they not just get up and walk round the corner to compare notes? Or pick up the phone? Once again, this company just seems to like to waste money. Recession? What recession?

I’m looking forward to my new chair, it’s very adjustable and has a high back (I’m banking on chair number 4 here unless Kirstie swings the vote with her low scoring for all but number 3) and will be perfect for some light afternoon napping. Simple things, simple things….