This monday we finally moved the whole business out there and everybody was very excited bla bla bla... Some of us mainly to see if the relocation actually were as seamless as promised. I for one didn't have high hopes but sometimes you get surprises.
The building itself is more or less finished which is to say that people can work but some minor things still need to be done. The schedule is about a month with craftsmen working evenings and nights as soon as the offices is emptied of employees. But we can work. We have access to the inter- and intranet and much have been done to accommodate the usual fuss about finding the printers, toilets and colleagues.
So all in all things a fine - its a nice open welcoming building made to support networking across a big organisation with a high degree of transparency; knowledge sharing etc. Its cool to move to a newly build place where everything is thought through from the beginning. Or almost everything that is.
I was rather pleased to have my working place move closer to my home so I could start biking to work again without spending hours each day. And with a new building where everything is pondered in great depth of course we (as in those of us biking to work) had of course hoped for an appreciable improvement of the rather horrendous changing and bathing facilities of the old rundown place.
But my hopes were diminished to some degree even before we moved. When the floor plans where published the first tiny little suspicion arose that maybe there was something someone hadn't thought about. Then it was clear that apparently we had to change on one floor and bath in another?!? Then I signed up for a locker and was told I was on the lottery list. That added at first a tiny bid of confusion since I had read on our intranet that thorough analyses had been made to establish how many lockers where necessary for the bike enthusiast. I inquired to what exactly this lottery list was for and was politely told that there was at this point - a couple of weeks prior to the relocation - 90 people signed up for 80 lockers so they had to draw lot. Enter more suspicion and a slight hint of resentment - thorough analyses my ass: 80 locker rooms for 1600 employees of which a 1/3 are living within reasonable biking distance (less than 10 km) Even a drunken dingo could come up with a better assessment!
Well - it turns out when I arrive monday morning that I have of course lost the draw. But at least acknowledging the problems more lockers have been put up. Only there is not room for them close by the others since they were not supposed to be there in the first place.... Actually not even remotely close. So here's my deal:
1) Arriving by bike
2) Down in the cellar and out in the farthest end of the south wing to find my locker
3) Off with the sweaty biking clothes
4) Retrieve towel, shampoo, deo etc.
5) Walk halfway through the basement floor, up the stairs to the ground floor and walk to farthest end of the east wing to the baths (all in all approx. a 3 min walk)
6) And after the bath a return trip to the basement and the locker room to get dressed
This seems slightly not-so-fucking-Lean (the latest management fad in the company). But wait, it gets better - the walk from the basement locker to the baths goes through not only the reception area but also right past the class rooms. So not only are half-naked sweaty cyclists supposed to be waltzing through the main public area of the company twice, the place all guest are 100% sure to pass through, they also parade past the rooms specifically reserved for external courses, undoubtedly to restrained joy of all who happens to be attending a high-end business course that day. NOT VERY PROFESSIONAL!!!
Anyway - in my opinion this particularly part of the relocation has not been handled with due diligence (another management fad). It's not only an annoying solution for those of us biking to work, it also compromises the company's professionalism. And it does nothing to support that neo-green we-want-to-cut-CO2-emissions-by-convincing-employees-to-use-public-transport-and-cycling-to-work profile. Lip-service or just plain lack of brainpower in the planning group?well, the next couple of months will prove that when the willingness to remedy the situation is tested.
