downsized from cube to stall

[radfringe]

Our company has moved our department into a small building. My department is now jammed into space less than half of what we had.

Previously we had cubicals of roughly 8'x 6'. This is an engineering/drafting department, we need the room to lay out large drawings, and project books/ files.

ennywhoo, this week we were moved. we now have "stalls" - 4'x 6'.


I can equivically now say - it sucks

Right behind my chair, I have maybe a little over 1-ft space before I slam into a large post and computer/electric drop. So I'm constantly banging into it, or catching my chair on cords and cables

The office copier/printer is maybe 3 feet from me, thankfully the copierprinter is not loud, but I have people coming up behind me all day when they make copies or have printed something.

The plotter is jammed at the end of my "cube", with scant inches available to turn it when I have to change the roll of paper. This means I will have to lean over the plotter and lift the roll out and up to change it as opposed to being able to go behind it.

so how small is it? the middle seat of a 3-seat row in coach on a plane with sumo wrestlers on either side would be roomy compared to this.

did I say it sucks? if I didn't, let me say it sucks

[HopeHoops]

1. In which Catbert purrs...

[JVS]

2. Well at least you'll have something to be happy about when they announce they're firing half of you

More space!

[radfringe]

3. lol...there is that... n/t

[foxfeet]

4. And do you have a wide stance?

[kentauros]

5. What kind of drafting/design work do you do?

I work as a designer in pipeline mapping and pipeline design is still robust in Houston. Our company still has plans on explanding, but I don't know when that is. It all depends on some future contracts coming in.

How's the economy for drafting where you're at? I'm guessing with the company you work for, things are tight financially, but that may be just them and not the whole market...

[radfringe]

6. manufacturing mechanical

and graphic design

use acad mechanical and inventor for drafting. I mostly do plant layout drawings in 3-d for proposals

yeah, the companyis struggling - we have the orders, we have the customers - BUT the customers can't get the financing/loans

[kentauros]

10. Yeah, that sucks when the customers are struggling.

We had similar downturns in this city when first September 11th happened, then Enron collapsed. With 9/11, the owners of the gas pipelines panicked and started shutting them down, if temporarily. Of course, that halted some contracts, though not as bad as what Enron did. When they failed, it was difficult to find an engineering company that didn't either have a contract with them or a customer that had a contract with them. I got laid off because our one big contract at the time was associated by proxy to Enron.

However, the company I'm working for now has a great owner. He is constantly getting us contacts and contracts all over this country and others. We currently only have one piping designer and she's been helping myself and the other mapper out with all of the work we're doing. They are supposed to get training for her in Rebis AutoPlant. However, that program has major problems with Civil 3D so we'll see how that goes.

If you are getting the feeling things won't stabilize there, have a look at jobs in Houston. The energy companies are still pretty stable here, and in the past I have seen (and applied for) CAD positions at some of the medical centers here, too. I haven't looked at the job postings here in a while, but here's a couple to start with or just bookmark:

http://www.wrksolutions.com/
http://www.twc.state.tx.us/jobs/job.html

:)

[no name no slogan]

7. Gonna need you to move to the basement

[NJmaverick]

8. Could be worse, there could be a water filled porcelain thing in the middle of it

[radfringe]

15. actually...

the bathroom is less than 10feet from my "cube".

I'm considering putting up a sign on the back of the file cabinet that faces the restroom door: iCUP

and yes, I can hear the flushing....

[KatyaR]

9. Yeah, we're getting ready to do the same thing--

cramming an entire two-story building full of employees into one floor of the building next door. While we will still have decent sized cubes, we are losing our "common" space and several meeting rooms, which will be dreadful because all we do is have meetings. No work space for large projects, community meals for all the employees (there's a tiny break room, but nothing else), and the "lobby" where our receptionist will sit will be on an open second-floor landing right outside the elevator. There's probably room for two guest chairs as well, but that's it. No storage space, no filing space, problems with finding places for copiers, printers, and faxes, you name it, we don't got it. My cube is going to be crammed right up against my boss's door, and he's the freakin' president of the company!

Oh, and did I mention 4 stalls in the ladies room for about 125 women? Good times . . . .

[radfringe]

16. we have 1 UNISEX bathroom on our floor

for about 30 employees, and no lock on the door

and the bathroom is less than 10feet from my "cube"

[musette_sf]

11. is it better or worse than this?

i'm just asking because a few of my first jobs were like these.

ps, i am with you on this. i worked at one place later in my career where we went from sharing an office with one or two other people, to sharing the same office with 5 other people in what felt like a veal pen. 6 veal pens stacked up in this office.

there was an emergency alarm (fortunately a drill) soon after the veal pens were installed. it was a lights-only drill. guess who had no earthly idea that any lights were flashing in the doorway, obscured by the rows of veal pens.

future drills included sound.

[leeroysphitz]

12. I feel your pain.

I recently moved out of an upstairs office into an office down in the shop. I moved so I could oversee machining operations/ The trouble is I'm still responsible for quite a bit of the drafting and the plotter is still up one floor and across the building and somebody ALWAYS has the Arch c in when I'm trying to plot Arch d unless of course I hike upstairs just to check...


Things is tough all over I guess.

[kentauros]

14. Who the hell uses Arch C for anything?

We never use our plotter for anything but Arch D and sometimes Ansi D. On a rare occasion I have had to print out very large GIS maps for one client (36x72) but those are not the norm.

It's too bad your plotter is so far away. Is this a very large engineering firm and you have many people using the plotter? I remember Reliant Energy here (our electricity supplier through their subsidiary CenterPoint) put all of their plotters in the map room with all the flat files, but that was only for that one floor. They had rooms like that for each floor. Then again, they owned and used the whole 42-floor building.

[RagAss]

13. They'd hang us upside down in the shithouse to save a buck !

Heartless fuckers !

[radfringe]

17. ran over the boss's foot with my chair....

late yesterday afternoon, the boss popped in to take a look at the office space

he stepped into my "cube", and because I was working, I didn't hear him come up behind me. Startled, I pushed back on my chair and ran over his foot. He, jumped back and banged into the "computer/power" drop pole (which hasn't been secured to the floor or ceiling) and knocked it over - then he caught his foot in the cables and power cords. While trying to untangle himself from the cords, he hit the copier/printer output tray with his hand and knocked the tray to the floor.

"how's it going?" he finally asked

me: "a bit tight"

I went on to explain how it's going to be a problem loading new rolls of paper in the plotter, and when he tried to manuver around my chair to see what I was talking about - he banged into the large support post and almost landed on the desk of the co-worker behind me.

[baldguy]

18. I guess Storage Room B wasn't available?

[radfringe]

19. lol...

the office area we are now in WAS storage room "b"....