by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2012/07/04 07:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2012/07/04/10326704.aspx
I once again am in a window office.
For the fourth time, in fact.
The first time was in Building 1.
Window #1.
It was early 1997.
I was a vendor (v-michka).
The window was one of those weird accidents where the admin had no place to put me.
So she put me in a big corner window office no one was using.
No one cared, and I had meetings with people all the time.
For three weeks, that was where I sat.
Until someone put my name on the door with crayons and construction paper.
Later that same day I was moved into the "Access Insiders" office, a small closet sized inside space....
It was unheard of for vendors to have window offices!
Nick Shulman taught me back then about stuff like how easy it is to compare office sizes by counting ceiling tiles.
He was concerned about the diagonal offices and how hard it was to compare them to the ones that weren't diagonals (my fancy window office was one of those).
I pointed out that trigonometry wasn't that long ago. :-)
Anyhow, for many years after that, I was put in various non-window offices.
I started working at Microsoft full time in the end of August, 2002.
Obviously vendor time didn't count, so the seniority clock starts on August 26, 2002.
Several years later, when I was working as a Technical Lead in International Fundamentals, I was once again assigned a window office -- in Building 24.
Window #2.
It had been an admin's office before, right next to a corner office that a General Manager was in back when the admin had been there.
Soon after that, the whole group got moved to Building 9.
I still had enough seniority on my team that I got a window office.
Window #3.
Then I became a Program Manager on the World Readiness team.
At least one of the reasons (that I wouldn't have to move again!) was shot down because on the new team, my seniority was not as high as others.
So I lost the window.
And we moved to 26N, and I had no window there, either.
Until the other day.
When our admin told me that I was next in line for a window, and we had one.
I was quite used to my old office, for what it's worth.
It was not on "the map" that the various signs in the building used to point to where offices were.
It made a meeting in my office into a little intelligence test, to see if people could find me without explicit directions!
Anyhow...
Window #4.
The new window office wasn't as wide.
Four and a half tiles across, rather than five.
Sounds silly, but that half a tile makes a big difference with the iBot, and moving up into Balance mode (on two wheels).
I'm basically in now, but I miss that extra half a tile.
I hate to be such a cliché thinking "size matters", but sometimes it really does....
Anyhow, I have a window again.
Just a few months shy of my tenth anniversary.
We'll see how it long it lasts this time.
Maybe until the iBot shaped hole is accidentally created in the wall behind me? :-)
Michael R. Schmidt on 4 Jul 2012 4:23 PM:
Naw, holes don't matter. During my first Microsoft employment I once put a decent sized hole in a wall while moving a lateral file cabinet. I put in a request for maintenance to fix the hole explaining how it happened, cc'd my boss and life went on, the hole was fixed.
People can always use an intelligence test, kinda like sending a new hire to building seven. They sent you there right?
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