Bet you never would have guessed.
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The other day my boss was mentioning that people had told him this place seemed somehow less cheery over the summer; people were either looking kind of glum or too head-down busy working. I was surprised by that, because I honestly hadn't noticed. I said something about it to Wheat, though, and he agreed with the statement. Funny, really. I thought we'd had a decent summer overall. No real fireworks, and to me I'd sooner have calm and functional than overly exciting. Isn't the curse may you live in interesting times, or something like that? Ah. Here we go.
I'm not sure that I'd agree that the workplace is down, really, but one thing it is is less social. I figure a couple of reasons for this: more work space, and the internet.
When I started here, back in the dark ages, there definitely wasn't enough work space for the staff. There were, if I recall, three offices. My own "desk", which was originally just a table, was in the storage room, and in summer when I was full-time I used to spend an awful lot of that time working at our sister site. It was more pleasant than working in the hole.
We used to have pretty strict (or maybe regular would be a better word) breaks back then, and I really do think that escape from our cramped work quarters had something to do with that. Mid-morning coffee break, ostensibly fifteen minutes but more like thirty by the time everyone had gathered. Lunch breaks where we actually came out to the lunch tables to eat. Mid-afternoon coffee break, much a repeat of the morning. We sat, we socialised, then we went back to the dungeons.
This place definitely doesn't qualify as any sort of dungeon anymore.
The building was expanded about thirteen years ago, and a lot of thought was put into things like natural light. I share an office with a wall full of windows. It's pleasant, it's not cramped, and...
It has internet.
When I first came here we had, I think, three computers in the building. Not networked, of course, and only one was on a dial-up internet connection. It was easier to use books (remember books, boys and girls?) to do research, and there wasn't really anything to hold us at our desks during break times. That doesn't work in today's world, of course. We all have our computers and our high-speed internet, we do most of our work that way, and on breaks it's usually easier to eat at the desk and use our time to check personal e-mail or favourite websites or, I don't know, watch cat videos or something. We don't all wander to the front to talk to each other because we have other forms of entertainment.
That's not to say we don't talk, of course. Overall this is a pretty friendly place to work. We just do it more casually now. There's not a designated time to visit.
Does that make the place glum?
I have no answer, by the way, and having spent my break time typing a blog post I really should get back to work now.
What can I say? I'm a product of my environment.
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