Cubicle Life

Hi All:

Congrats on coming up with a project that has great potential. I can't make it tonight, as I've got a conflicting meeting, so I'll see you on Tuesday.

I've worked in several offices in my life, so I thought I'd narrate a character for you, as insipiration for tonight's decision-making.

* * *

Gordon is a short, squat man, with square metal-rimmed glasses and an odd demeanor for an administrative assistant. His desk is small and cluttered, with a window on the right overlooking a lazy campus street. His boss is the Director of Transportation Planning - his boss is also a total nut.

In his spare time, Gordon is a Canadian Armed Forces Reservist, a member of Her Royal Highness' 101st Airborne Rifles. He plays the bagpipes, and is often heard playing them in the adjacent field during his lunch-break. Currently, his pipes are hanging on a hook beside the window, though they'd normally go back in their case - the UV rays might damage them, you know.

Top drawer: pencils, pens, erasers. Post-its. Stapler. Paper clips. Organized neatly in a yellow tray. In the back, his wallet and keys, safe from thieves. And a stack of photos from a trip to Tofino last summer that he keeps forgetting to bring home. It was a great trip, though it rained 3 days out of 4.

This summer, he's going to Atlanta for his week's summer vacation to attend an international reservist's conference, where he'll play his pipes in the honour guard at the opening ceremonies. A neatly stacked pile of attendee's information can be found in the upper left corner of his desk, tucked behind the flat-screen monitor, a monitor he's fortunate to have, most others in the office don't, but his old CRT crapped out last week so he was first in line. Turning it on and off constantly for three hours one morning may or may not have aided its demise.

Second drawer: paper, dividers, empty files. Behind: labels, and those little plastic things that clip onto files. More paper clips. A film cannister. Wonder what's in it.

Third drawer: current projects, again neatly labelled. Gordon is a fastidious man, albeit slow at times. Projects include distributing employee bus passes; taking registrations for this year's Canadian Urban Transportation Association conference, to be held at UBC this fall; sorting through promotional material collected from bus-pass programs throughout North America; dealing with payroll and expense accounts for the 10 temporary and 4 permanent employees in the office, and sitting on the Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee for CUPE 3204.

On the desk, the aforementioned screen, and a computer at his feet. A back pad lines the chair, a futile attempt at mitigating back pain caused more by Gordon's expanding waistline than any poor ergonomics. Actually, his station is impeccably set up, according to his Committee's paraphanalia on work-station ergonomics. He's practically a poster child for it. He's got a foot rest, a properly set-up ergonomic chair, a wrist pad and a screen at a proper distance.

Also on the desk are dozens of post-it notes, Gordon's only organizational vice. Phone numbers, addresses, lunch dates long past. Four line one edge of his computer screen, with obscure keyboard short-cuts written on them. He's trying to learn them all. A photo of him, with his parents, ten years prior, is taped to the other edge. His father died last year. He's single, unmarried. A framed 5x7 of his Rifle Company in full dress regalia marching in a Rememberance Day parade is his only formal decoration, his pride and joy, along with a clip-framed Certificate of Acheivement from the military. His Microsoft certificates are pinned to the wall above, four in all. He favours Fineliner pens, and never leaves the house without his Weekender socks - there's a spare pair at the back of the bottom drawer for emergencies. A 38 year-old single man has to be prepared, you know.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_gan/52097958/
(check this one out, it's extremely well annotated)

-Jesse