Employee checkers.

Written way back in early September of last year...

My current gig is winding down so I find myself a bit melancholy about it. There are a few people I really enjoy seeing and certainly I’ll miss the opportunity to see them and also of course there is the scramble to line up another gig(s) so the idle period isn’t too long.

In the meantime, there is a lot of sturm and drang as it is because the game currently being played is what I refer to as employee checkers.

Employee checkers is a bit of an insidious game and what it entails is shuffling people around in an office to shake up the status quo. I can’t ever remember seeing it work, at least not in the way it’s supposed to – people who are generally happy in their job and their neighbors stay happy and people who aren’t as content usually come out on the losing end.

Today was the day the walls came down, quite literally too. In an effort to encourage an open office, cubicle walls were removed and overhead storage was removed too. This means instead of having a semblance of privacy, you can now look out across the vista of the floor.

I’m a bit of two minds on this but since the gig is winding down I don’t really have to worry much about it. I like having a little bit of privacy myself. To be blunt, I’m a guy and getting to be an older one at that and the poking or scratching that I do discreetly isn’t the kind of thing I really want to share with my co-workers. Call me silly if you will, but I would rather spare other people from that.

This has kind of been on a incremental rollout as well - while the walls came down today, it was the finish to a process that started a few months back. The first thing I noticed when it happened was the noise level went up. Suddenly, you can hear conversations three and four desks away. It got louder and the ironic thing I noticed was the people who were the most vocal in breaking down the walls were also the same people who found it necessary to spend the bulk of their day with noise canceling headphones pasted atop their heads so they could shut out the background noise and concentrate. Since I’m already subject to advance hearing loss, I don’t especially want to be spending hours with headphones on if I can avoid it.

I also noticed there were two distinct camps in terms of reaction to the whole open office event... people under the age of 35 or so, were quite happy about it and people over the age of 35 were pretty happy with the way things were and not especially looking forward to the new order.

And then I was talking to a friend about it and she pointed out something to me that made the most sense...

We have a generation now that lives their lives publicly, for better of for worse. There is no filter and even the smallest most inconsequential aspect of their lives compels them to share it, I don’t know if it is a matter of looking for approval or what but think about it this way - this is a generation that has embraced, wholeheartedly, social networks like Facebook. And what is a means of interacting in Facebook? People post things and then their circle ‘likes’ them, gives them their approval, it’s the whole aspiring for fame and notoriety...

Please! NOTICE ME! APPROVE OF MEEEEEE!

So I can hardly be surprised.

Now, that gig did wind down and as fate would have it, right after that go-round I was out of the office for a few months (three I think). And the game of employee checkers didn’t affect me altogether that much.

When I came back, I came back to a brave new world albeit an empty one as most everyone had moved to another floor but there were a few stations or desks that did not and the station I sit at was among them.

At first I was genuinely put off by this but it was only supposed to be a week’s worth of work and that later turned in to another couple of months and then something funny happened...

I was freed.

See, because everyone else got moved to another floor it meant I was more or less left to my own devices. Truthfully, I often wondered why I simply wasn’t allowed to telecommute because the truth of it was there were days that went by when I didn’t have a need to go to the other floor and the way things were set up I worked on specific projects with specific deadlines that had little or nothing to do with anyone else.

It was glorious.

So, walls down and everything else and it didn’t matter in the slightest because no one around me was anyone I answered to and the reality is I am a responsible person meaning if I need to stay late to get something done on time, I do and if I need to ask I question, I ask so things proceeded quite nicely.

Now, that was awhile ago too now and in the interim there have been a few more rounds of employee checkers.

I was back recently at this gig and I have to say I love the place... not like, LOVE.

And the reason I really enjoy it is because there are a lot of people there that I like and the fact is, people know me. And because they know me, I get cut an extraordinary amount of slack or maybe a better way to put it is people give me the credit to not needing to be micromanaged. So, I come in, do my work and go home.

It is one of the easiest gigs I have ever had. Even when it gets hairy (and believe me there are times when it does get a little hectic, lots of work, tight deadlines) it doesn’t matter because I am comfortable.

But they are playing employee checkers again.

I’m an outsider though, a contractor and I have a different perspective on what works and what doesn’t. There are so many talented people doing so much good work I wonder sometimes if maybe trying to fix things all the time isn’t really the solution as much as recognizing all the good work being done.

Who knows.