Bay City Blues

For proverbs are the pith, the proprieties, the proofs, the purities, the elegancies, as the commonest so the commendablest phrases of a language. To use them is a grace, to understand them a good. -- John Florio, 1591

Friday, May 9, 1997

Like Lance uses a soundtrack, I think I'll use a proverb or saying with each entry. Bookshelf is great for this!

At work now, I am in what they call a "contractor bay," which in this case consists of a long rectangular room with doorways on either end (no doors in them!) with lab-style desks on either side. The desks have two shelves up above, and the desk height is only adjustable if you unload everything off the desk, and bring in a crew comprising two men and a mallet. There are around seven desks on either side of the room, with our backs to the center aisle. Luckily for us, most folks in the bay (all testers aside from me) have few annoying personal habits and understand the importance of keeping interruptions to a minimum.

Now, it was only a day or two after we moved into this building that the developers on the team (did I mention they all have offices, doors included?) got the idea that they wanted to have a ping pong table in the open area outside the bay. I think this open area was designed for informal conferencing and brainstorming, as evidenced by the large whiteboard that is installed there. Fortunately, my manager went to bat for us. The compromise: no use of the ping pong table until after 5 PM. If I have to work later during crunch mode, this may have to be revisited. (Did I mention that my desk is the closest to the table?)

So, there is a sign slung over the net on the table, "For use only after 5 PM" or some such. Last Monday was the first day the table was set up, and there were no problems until today. You would think these folks had never seen a ping pong table before! There is a line to play every evening! But today, twice, people walked by the table, picked up a paddle and ball, and started bouncing the ball on the paddle. Guess they thought the sign only applied to the table, or they didn't make the connection between the restrictions and noise abatement and thought the rules were to keep people working. (A restriction for that purpose would be entirely Un-Microsoft.) So I got the fun task of going out and asking them to stop. Way to get the rep as bitch of the hall!

In the third incident in one day, two guys dropped by at twenty minutes before five. This time I didn't act alone, but asked my colleagues in the bay to walk out with me and show the offenders that it wasn't just my idea. Several folks came out with me in a great show of bay solidarity, and the would-be table tennis players slunk away.

This whole bay set-up is really distressing!

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The other notable item for the day was a gathering organized by me of folks from the ms singles public folder for pizza and a movie. We saw The Fifth Element, which reminded me of The Dark Crystal.

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