Scared Bunny

I have come to a conclusion. The people that manage my work’s office space are excellent at making sure they will always have a job.

You may remember that I mentioned we are doing a restack. Basically, for me, this is because they want all of us real estate sales people together. I think this is because they can better keep an eye on us if we are all in the same place. I don’t trust sales people one bit, even though I am one. Because of that I understand what they are saying. That said, it doesn’t mean I want to be surrounded by these sales guys any more than anyone else does.

I kind of assumed they were just going to move some of us and do all they needed to do to make sure we had villas instead of cubicles, and that our sales assistants would have cubicles somewhere near our villas. That, however, is not the case. As near as I can tell they are moving almost the entire building.

The whole bottom floor is packed with these moving crates. Every single person on this half of the floor has sheets of stickers to put on their shit so they can identify what goes where. They even moved a whole villa somewhere, although I have no idea where it went. All I know is I came in and the villa was gone, and was replaced by 2 chairs and a small table. They even packed up everything in the villa next to me that was occupied by some top bank guy. I don’t know where he’s going but his stuff is gone.

This move is such a big deal that they actually hire a company to come and do it. It is so complex that they have to close the offices early on Friday and move stuff all weekend. It is so overwhelming that they can’t even have us in the building because we would get in the way. In short, what seemed to me to be a couple of us getting bunched together is actually a major event that will inconvenience the entire building for days.

The thing that gets me is that nobody besides me is the least bit phased by this. In fact, I am being told this is normal. For some unknown reason they find the need to, about twice a year, force most of the people in this building to pack up everything they have here and get moved. And believe me when I say you have to pack everything. There is a 20 page instruction sheet explaining everything I am supposed to do. I am more stressed about meeting all the moving deadlines than I am about selling so I can make money.

And the moving people have some rules that I don’t get. First of all they won’t move any personal items. They say they don’t want liability if they get lost, broken or stolen. I understand that, but this computer is worth more than all the personal items I have here combined, so if someone was going to steal something, I think they’d start here. They also won’t move plants. I don’t have any plants, but I can’t see why a plant is that big a deal. And the cabinets I have? They can’t just move them and all the shit in them. It seems the architects have dictated what goes where, so the cabinet I have here might not be approved where I am going. I am not sure why that would be such a big deal, but it seems it is. They seemed stunned that I even asked such a thing.

What it gets down to is that this move guarantees work for the people who run the facility. First they have the weeks of planning for the move. Then we have a few weeks to prepare for the move. Then they manage the move itself. The move will mean people need new cabinets and shit assigned, so there’s more work. Plus there will be things lost, misplaced and damaged, so taking care of all that means even more work. I estimate the whole process takes them about 6 months. My guess is that, whenever things seem settled enough that they start thinking they may be overstaffed they get all the managers to say they need more space, and reorganize again.

And the managers are all about reorganizing. As I have said, these villas mean power somehow. So if a manager has a shitload of people in villas under them, they must be some serious motherfuckers. They are always fighting to get more of their people in Villas. There are so many requests for villas that there is a complex policy for who gets them, and an exception policy for people they want to have them who don’t qualify. The facility people love this whole complex policy thing and manager power grabbing, because it makes them very powerful, and gives them lots of job security.

So I guess tomorrow I get to start boxing shit and putting little stickers on things. Then I will wait and see the magic next Monday.