Middle management

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Simon
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Middle management

Post by Simon »

'My' current office is outside of London, and until recently was our EMEA HQ. It's a fairly typical office, mostly open plan but offices for middle management, HR and the EMEA director.

When we built our new London office a couple of years ago the EMEA HQ element, along with visitor centre, NOCC etc moved to that. It was built to our new global 'open office' format, which didn't allocate offices to anyone, but rather had breakout rooms that you could use for a meeting, or if you needed to take an important call, or work on confidential docs. Really, that makes the most sense.

So we're currently completely refurbishing 'my' office building, which of course will lead to being in the new format. That means no offices for middle management.

So what I've witnessed whilst they''re doing this work is half the middle management team scrambling around and stealing the few small meeting rooms we have for their own offices, dragging their desks into them and sticking their name badges on the door with sellotape, all because they've lost their own allocated offices. It's _pathetic_ and infuriating. We have too few meeting rooms at the best of times, but these guys can not give up the little bit of recognition that they think they have for starting their climb up the greasy pole. You get the feeling that half of them were probably milk monitor in primary school.

When the refurb work is finished on half the office we'll all move over to it and then they'll rip apart this half, including those meeting rooms. They'll have to capitulate then, and frankly I might make a special trip to come in, rather than WFH, just to see the tears in their eyes.
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Gavin
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Re: Middle management

Post by Gavin »

It is a lot easier to play solitaire an minesweeper in your own office!
DaveE
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Re: Middle management

Post by DaveE »

Many years ago, I worked for a big utilities company

A middle manager had had his office refurb'd and somehow :roll: managed to have the whole floor carpeted.

This was apparently above his pay grade.

So the carpet fitters were called back and trimmed out a couple of feet all around the edge of the room, so it was only "partially" carpeted.

As more properly represented his position in the company.

Utter lunacy.
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Gavin
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Re: Middle management

Post by Gavin »

DaveE wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 10:15 am Many years ago, I worked for a big utilities company

A middle manager had had his office refurb'd and somehow :roll: managed to have the whole floor carpeted.

This was apparently above his pay grade.

So the carpet fitters were called back and trimmed out a couple of feet all around the edge of the room, so it was only "partially" carpeted.

As more properly represented his position in the company.

Utter lunacy.
Genuinely that has to deserve a huge belming! Whoever paid extra to have carpet removed needs a good slap!
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NotoriousREV
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Re: Middle management

Post by NotoriousREV »

The only people that get an office in our place is the CEO, the CFO, and the company lawyer. Everyone else has to slum it with the plebs, as is correct. I've only ever had an office once in my career and I hated it. I'd much rather be sat with people, otherwise you end up playing solitaire and minesweeper all day ;)
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JLv3.0
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Re: Middle management

Post by JLv3.0 »

I always thought I'd like my own office until I had one. Miserable! Put me in amongst it so I can distract my colleagues.
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Rich B
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Re: Middle management

Post by Rich B »

My company doesn’t have a single actual office across its 3 locations (and we build offices).
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ZedLeg
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Re: Middle management

Post by ZedLeg »

Aye, when we first moved to our new place the offices were a warren of tiny rooms, I hated it. We knocked it all through to make a big open plan office and it's much better. The only person who complained was our arsehole of an ops manager, he's no longer with us :lol:.
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RobYob
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Re: Middle management

Post by RobYob »

Open plan offices fucking suck. Your get half the people yelling into headsets and the other half wearing headphones to block out noise.

I'd kill over and over again to get a quiet office.
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dinny_g
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Re: Middle management

Post by dinny_g »

NotoriousREV wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 10:54 am The only people that get an office in our place is the CEO, the CFO, and the company lawyer. Everyone else has to slum it with the plebs, as is correct. I've only ever had an office once in my career and I hated it. I'd much rather be sat with people, otherwise you end up playing solitaire and minesweeper all day ;)
All of this...

(except the Solitaire and minesweeper bit - in case anyone's watching... :shock: )
JLv3.0 wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 4:26 pm I say this rarely Dave, but listen to Dinny because he's right.
Rich B wrote: Thu Jun 02, 2022 1:57 pm but Dinny was right…
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NotoriousREV
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Re: Middle management

Post by NotoriousREV »

RobYob wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 11:20 am Open plan offices fucking suck. Your get half the people yelling into headsets and the other half wearing headphones to block out noise.

I'd kill over and over again to get a quiet office.
Our office is segregated into pods so teams have their own area that is acoustically baffled, so they can be noisy or quiet as a small group. We also have quiet rooms that people can head off into. We also have a strict headphone rule: if headphones are on, leave them alone.
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Jimmy Choo
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Re: Middle management

Post by Jimmy Choo »

I had an office back in 2000. I played a lot of Civ. I came back from study leave one day and discovered that they had knocked all the offices into one big open plan office. It took me ages to find my stuff.

I also had the best of both worlds a while back. I had an open plan office all to myself. :lol:
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Orange Cola
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Re: Middle management

Post by Orange Cola »

We used to have an open plan office, desks allocated to every person and parking was all in the same car park. The directors changed this to retain the open office but make it all hot desking, kicked everyone to an off site car park except for the senior managers upwards and encouraged working from home as we only had 80% desks and car parking spaces.

The senior managers then acquired corner desks for themselves and because everyone had been kicked out to a car park - in some cases a mile away - the senior managers could now park just outside the front door. This resulted in the manager I used to work for saying there was no more working from home because the company had "fixed" the lack of desks and parking spaces, by this point due to extra hiring we were operating at 70% desks/parking to heads. So we the had the problem where people turn up for work, a third haven't got a desk and illegally park on the grass verges along the roads outside (if you don't park in a proper space in the employee car park you get a disciplinary! You stand virtually 0 chance of a policeman driving along and booking you) so they spill into the limited number of meeting rooms and break out areas or park two to a desk which is another disciplinary because it's a H&S hazard.

Senior manager got pulled up on it by his own employees and they're response was they can't see any issues with parking and desks because they them self don't struggle to get one, insinuating that his employees are making this shit up or trying to cause trouble and to just shut up and get on with it.

This went on for long enough for people to leave, now said manger is under immense pressure to deliver the same quantity of work but isn't allowed to hire any replacements of the folk they pissed off.

You dig your own grave.
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RobYob
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Re: Middle management

Post by RobYob »

Thank fuck I no longer work at a hot desking, offsite parking, shitshow. I had now idea how crap it was making me feel about work and life in general until I left.

The ironic thing was as an early bird starter I always has the nicest spot in the office over people who'd worked there a decade but had to do school run.
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Simon
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Re: Middle management

Post by Simon »

Our place is a mix. I only go in a couple of days a week so will just hot desk, but I'm always in early so will just sit where I like. That said, there are more than enough desks for everyone!

For those who choose to go in more often they get an allocated desk.

It works. But then again, my company is very casual about how, when and where people do their job, as long as the work gets done.
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unzippy
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Re: Middle management

Post by unzippy »

Simon wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:33 am
So what I've witnessed whilst they''re doing this work is half the middle management team scrambling around and stealing the few small meeting rooms we have for their own offices, dragging their desks into them and sticking their name badges on the door with sellotape, all because they've lost their own allocated offices.
Haven't you got an HR dept to give them a slap?
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Simon
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Re: Middle management

Post by Simon »

unzippy wrote: Thu Sep 13, 2018 6:37 am
Simon wrote: Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:33 am
So what I've witnessed whilst they''re doing this work is half the middle management team scrambling around and stealing the few small meeting rooms we have for their own offices, dragging their desks into them and sticking their name badges on the door with sellotape, all because they've lost their own allocated offices.
Haven't you got an HR dept to give them a slap?
Not really HR's job is it? It's management's job to say something. Never mind. I'm not in much over the next few weeks anyway.
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