There's a lot to figure out when you move into a new office

 

My (relatively) new digs at Materion.

A month or so ago, I moved out of the office I had occupied for nearly four years. It was a literal upward move, as I went from the first floor of our building to the third.

I wasn't particularly looking to move, but my boss Uli wanted me to be closer to many of the people I support and/or work with directly. My first-floor office, you will note, was in the middle of a ghost town with only two co-workers located anywhere near me.

I liked the peace and quiet there, but as is almost always the case, Uli's instincts were correct and my move to the top floor has been a really good thing.

Still, like any office move, there was some work involved.

For one thing, I had to get all of my stuff up to the new place. That included a wide range of knickknacks and sports bobbleheads. I packed everything away, threw it on a rolling cart, and managed to transport it all in an hour or so.

My new office is larger than the old one, with plenty of space to display all of my stuff (as you can see in the photo above). It also includes a little conference table, which I didn't have before.

More important, though, is the area around my new office and what it has to offer.

For one thing, the neighbors are excellent. Next door to me on one side is Galina from our tax group, and on the other is Rich from the finance team. Both are great, and I can say with confidence that none of us makes any noise that would disturb the others.

Then of course I had to scope out the coffee situation. Down on the first floor, I was usually the first or second person to arrive in the morning, so I would always make the coffee.

It was Starbucks drip coffee stored in a pump-dispensing carafe. It was good, but it was also the only option. You either drank what I made or went elsewhere if you preferred another type of java.

On the third floor there is a Keurig machine with lots of k-cup choices, almost of all of which are caffeinated. There are usually a couple of Dunkin decaf cups laying around, and those are what I drink after being told by my doc to limit my caffeine intake.

You take the good with the bad.

Near my office is also a table on which there are always snacks and a jigsaw puzzle for anyone who wants to spend a few minutes there putting a few pieces into place.

The last thing I need is the snacks, and I am not a puzzle person, so I steer clear of that table when I can.

Other things you have to account for when moving into a new office include proximity to the restroom, access to a reliable printer, the amount of space in the fridge for your lunch, and the location of stairwells for quick building entrance and exit.

I will say my new pad scores well on all of these factors,

As long as I keep my own personal stash of decaf k-cups, I'm in business.

The long, long days I wouldn't trade for anything

It was a pretty typical Tuesday in mid-June, if a somewhat exhausting one.

Up before 5am, get dressed for the gym, have some coffee and do my New York Times puzzles, then head out for a lower-body workout with trainer Kirk.

Lift, grunt, suffer a little. Legs feel like jelly, but I get through it.

Head home. Shower and dress as quickly as I can, then hop in the car for the 15-minute ride to the office. Resting on the passenger seat (and the floor) next to me are my laptop, my lunch, my PA announcing bag, and a separate bag with a change of clothes.

Get to the office, go right into meetings. Rip through my to-do list as best I can over 9 hours.

At the end of the day, I head to the men's room, lock myself in a stall and change into more casual clothes in preparation for announcing that night's Lake County Captains baseball game.

I get to Classic Auto Group Park two hours early to prep. Go through lineups, pronunciation guides and game scripts. Put my pregame and in-game reads in order in the thick three-ring binder handed to me by Jason, the Captains' game operations manager. He's good at what he does and very funny, but he also runs a tight ship. We all want our game production to go as well as it can.

As game time approaches, I exhort the fans in the stands to get loud as I read the Captains' starting lineup with all the energy I can muster.

The game itself goes pretty well. I don't miss a cue, and there's good chemistry between me and Liv, the talented on-field host.

After the last out, I pack up my stuff and head back to the car. I get home a little after 10pm. I brought my dinner to the ballpark and already ate, so I jump right into the shower.

Once I'm out, I move to the kitchen to pack my lunch for the next day. Then I shave, brush my teeth and climb into bed. I've been texting Terry throughout the day, but we chat for a few minutes and catch up on our lives.

By 11pm we turn out the lights. I plan to walk my normal 2.3-mile loop first thing in the morning, so I won't get more than 6 or 6 1/2 hours of sleep. That really isn't enough, but it's something I accept. I'll catch up tomorrow evening.

This can all be a little tough on my 55-year-old body, but here's the thing: I choose to do it. I control my schedule, and I love it all.

It is maybe the ultimate freedom to be able to determine how your days are spent. I have a job I really enjoy. I have the ability to exercise and take care of my body four mornings a week. And I have a supportive spouse who allows me to pursue my PA announcing passion on many an evening (more than 100 events a year).

There are ups and downs, of course. Some days feel better than others. My mood fluctuates like anyone else's, often because I fail to be grateful for everything I have.

Still, it's all perfect. Or maybe "perfectly flawed" is a better way of saying it, because problems and issues still come thick and heavy. But they're only so bad.

After a day like this, I worry whether I'll have the energy to pop out of bed the next morning and do it again.

One way or another, though, I always do.

I couldn't begin to ask for more.

A Room of One's Own

 

When Terry and I were first married in 1992, one of the upstairs rooms in our house was designated "the computer room," but it was in most respects really "Scott's room."

Oh, we both used it, but I was the one who "decorated" it, if you want to call it that. It had hockey and music posters on the wall. It featured stuffed Bill the Cat and Opus dolls from my favorite comic strip of the time, "Bloom County." It had a little nook in which I placed the Yamaha keyboard on which I would doodle from time to time.

As I was just 22 years old at the time, it was in some ways the college dorm room I never had.

It was the only room in the house over which I had (or wanted) any real say when it came to what we put there and how it looked.

Fast forward 33 years to our current house and this tradition of giving me one room to play with has continued. Terry uses our upstairs office all the time, but most of the stuff there is mine.

There are, for example, three bookshelves to hold my personal library, including this one devoted largely to my military history books:

And on top of that is a little shrine to our dearly departed cats Fred, George and Charlie:

The music theme continues in this little corner with the inclusion of two instruments (a keyboard and guitar) that I technically cannot play, though that never stops me from trying. Note that the room also contains my alto saxophone, which for the record I can play.

On the walls are various photos reflecting my interests, from a large autographed image of Sting to an autographed Lake Erie Monsters (our local hockey team, now called the Cleveland Monsters) layout. I also have a map of the Appalachian Trail and these two pictures of my mom and dad presumably taken on Parents Night when I played high school football:

Above those are my undergraduate and graduate school diplomas from John Carroll and West Virginia universities, respectively:

There's also a closet containing music and sound equipment and a large bin of sheet music I won't even bother showing you.

The point is that, while this room will never win any interior decorating awards, it's my room, and I love it. Terry does a wonderful job putting together the other rooms in our house, but I'm very grateful to have one to myself.

After all, I have helped us make a lot of mortgage payments over the years. It feels like I've earned a few square feet of my own.

The guy who almost never works from home is working from home

My company's headquarters building is undergoing some pretty extensive renovations, so they kicked us all out and told us to work from home for a couple of months.

That makes it sound harsh, but the renovations are very much welcomed, and we're already an organization in which office-based employees work from home two out of five days each week anyway.

Or at least most people do. As I've mentioned here before, I go into the office every day, even on Mondays and Fridays when only a relative handful of people are there. It has nothing to do with being anti-work from home. I just focus better and prefer being in the office environment.

What happens when you do that, though, is that you kind of forget how to work from home when you have to. And by that I mean I have trouble getting into the right mindset when it's time to head upstairs to my office and start the workday.

All of the things that are so convenient about working from home are the things that distract me from my work tasks.

Like, for example, you can do laundry when you work from home! But on laundry days, I mostly think about when it's time to put the clothes into the dryer and when I can fold them rather than the things I'm supposed to be doing for my job.

You can also see your spouse/housemates when you work from home! Yes, but while this is enjoyable, it's also distracting. And while I know my wife loves me dearly, when I'm working from home, I'm invading the space she's used to occupying alone Monday through Friday. I totally get where she's coming from here after 32 years of marriage.

You can run to the store if you need something or schedule an oil change when you work from home! Again, yes, but again, distracting. I lose focus.

I realize this is a me problem, and that most people are mentally strong enough to be productive when they work from home. I'm simply not one of them.

So while there have been certain conveniences during this extended period of the office being closed, there is admittedly part of me looking forward to January 20th, which is the day our building is supposed to open back up and I can return to some semblance of a routine.

Somehow I think Terry is looking forward to that day, too.

Just because I go into the office five days a week doesn't mean anybody else has to

This is my office at Materion. I spend a lot of time here (and I like it).

Back in December I had a post here about how much I enjoyed my company's hybrid arrangement of working three days in the office and two days at home each week.

Let's pretend I never wrote that.

Actually, I still stand behind every word I said, particularly how smart it is for companies to give their employees flexible working options that make life a little more manageable, at least when compared with the old non-negotiable approach of five days in the office for those of us in the white collar world.

For the last five months, however, I have been coming into the office every day, Monday through Friday, of my own volition.

There have been a couple of exceptions, but the most part, I commute to work five days a week like it's still 2019.

This is completely my choice. I do it for me and not as an attempt to suggest to others that they, too, should be back in the office full time.

They shouldn't be. They should be doing whatever works best for them and their employers.

It's just that, for me, the office is the one place where I am most focused on the task at hand. It's not that I can't be productive from my home office, but that, on balance, I get more done at Materion corporate headquarters than I do working upstairs at 30025 Miller Avenue.

The one person I supervise, Courtney, knows I do this, and more importantly, she knows I don't expect her in any way to follow my lead. She has a little boy at home to take care of. It's just easier and better for everyone involved when she can work from home at least a few days a week.

(It doesn't hurt that she's very smart and talented and would be just as productive if we gave her a laptop, a rechargeable battery and a tent and sent her out in the middle of the woods to work.)

The point is, my Materion office is my favorite place to work. I love it on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays when my co-workers are in the office with me and I can collaborate and converse with them, and I love it just as much on Mondays and Fridays when the parking lot is nearly empty and only a few of us are onsite.

My work schedule, my choice. Your results may (and really should) vary.

The kids move out and suddenly you have rooms to spare

One corner of the haven that is my home office. That's our new-ish cat Cheddar in the lower right corner.

One of the things that attracted us when we bought our house in 2003 was the fact it had five bedrooms.

At the time we had five children under the age of 10. A three- or even four-bedroom home probably wasn't going to cut it.

For the next several years, three of the kids would have their own rooms while two others would share the large upstairs bedroom, which the people who owned the house before us used as more of a family room.

Then, one at a time, our children started leaving the nest. When Elissa exited, it was one kid to a bedroom.

Then Chloe fled the coop, allowing Terry the craft room she had so long desired.

The next thing we knew, only Jack was left and I found myself with an upstairs office. And we even had a guest bedroom.

The height of luxury!

Nowadays Jack occupies the big bedroom by himself while Terry and I remain downstairs in the master bedroom. The craft room, office and guest room remain.

Terry and I have talked about the possibility of downsizing, but this setup is just too good to walk away from. (Well, that and the fact that we have the best neighbors in the world on both sides. You can't take something like that for granted.)

My "office" is really more a combination office/music room/library. There I keep all of my books, my sheet music, my saxophones and other instruments, and almost every other item that is undeniably Scott's. Even though I rarely work there anymore – since I drive to the office five days a week – I still love having this room to myself.

It feels like a reward for the years we spent raising children and cramming all of our stuff into closets, attics and storage rooms.

As much as I miss having the kids around, I think I can get used to this.

This is the point when I get really tired of wearing sweaters to the office

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with "white guy in a sweater" and I love the result. This fake person perfectly conveys the feeling of angst (and frostbite) I'm trying to convey here.

If you choose to live on the southern shore of Lake Erie like I do, you have absolutely zero room to complain about snow, wind, cold, or really anything weather-related.

One way or another, you have options. You can move south. You can go someplace where your face doesn't hurt for extended periods of time during the year. You can become a snowbird.

So when I start complaining about the weather five seconds from now, please understand I have no right to do so.

That said, this whole "winter" thing has run its course, as far as I'm concerned. I respectfully request that my local government, or whoever is in charge of flipping the switch from one season to the next, do so now.

By the time we get to this point in March, even with the sorts of mild winters we've had the last couple of years, I feel like we've paid our dues. Enough of this, let's move on to something resembling spring.

And while we're at it, let's make it possible for me to start wearing only button-downs or thin pullovers to work. As it is, I've run through almost every combination of sweater and shirt I have in my closet. Time for something new.

The problem is that, in my office anyway, it doesn't matter what time of year it is. It's always cold. Always. February, July, September...doesn't matter, it's cold. And thus I need to wear layers when I'm working.

There is a thermostat in my office. It's located under my desk near the floor. Really, that's where they put it.

But its location isn't the problem. The problem is that the thermostat itself is fake. Either that or they simply haven't connected it to the HVAC system in any meaningful way.

Whether I set the dial to 85 degrees or 55 degrees, the conditions in my office are perpetually chilly. As  my dad Bob Tennant would have described it, "colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike."

The point is, I would love to have at least a few months of the year in which I can wear, say, only a polo to the office and feel fine. But it's impossible. I start showing signs of hypothermia by 10 in the morning if I do that.

So I will continue with the sweaters from now until...well, indefinitely, I guess. I could submit a maintenance ticket to have the issued fixed, but experience suggests the chances of success there are about as close to zero as you can get while still accurately calling it a "chance."

In the end, I'm not complaining about the weather so much as the artificial climate in my office. There is, I would say, solid justification for that.

Holy cow, I'm the oldest person in this meeting

I don't know exactly when it started, but these days I regularly experience work meetings in which I am the oldest person in the room.

I find myself surrounded by young professionals – smart, talented professionals, mind you, but undeniably young – who never worked in an office without email. Who never had to fax press releases to journalists. Who never typed something on a green monochrome computer screen and sent it to a gigantic dot matrix printer shared by 60 people.

I really like my co-workers, but yikes, some are younger than the pair of gray sweatpants I have kept in my closet through six presidential administrations.

I knew this would eventually happen, of course, but I thought it would be more of a gradual thing. And maybe it has been gradual and I've simply not been paying close attention since 2003.

I remember being the young guy in the office back in the 90s. I was the one with the fresh ideas, I was the one explaining technology to the old folks, and I was the one experiencing all the young guy milestones (marriage, first house, first baby, etc.)

There's no reason I still can't be the one supplying fresh ideas and teaching technology to anyone who needs to learn it, but the young guy milestone days are without question well behind me.

Apart from the specter of ageism, there's nothing wrong with being among the most seasoned people in the office, either. You bring a perspective others lack. You have "been there, done that" experience that can help others avoid nasty pitfalls. And you apply lessons of history your team members simply haven't had the opportunity to learn quite yet.

Still, the first time you realize most people sitting at the desks around you are half your age, it's disconcerting. No one can explain why your company is suddenly hiring 12-year-olds. You lack common cultural touch points with them. You have kids who are almost as old as (and in some cases decidedly older than) them.

That's when you have to step back and say those inspiring words to yourself:

"I may be older, but I am just as creative, just as innovative, and just as valuable as anyone at this company. And man, my back hurts..."

Dress pants and khakis are way more comfortable to me than jeans

When I began my career, I worked at a newspaper. My summer office attire was a t-shirt and shorts. If I was feeling fancy, it was a pair of jeans and a polo.

When I transitioned to the 9-to-5 world in the mid-90s, the bar was raised to wearing a dress shirt and tie most days. For my first PR job at the Cleveland Clinic, it was a full suit every day, apparently on the off chance that as a hospital spokesperson, I might unexpectedly be asked to go on camera if a TV crew showed up and wanted a statement (which never actually happened).

Nowadays I have a formula when it comes to dressing for work: If the weather is warm, you will see me in a button-down shirt and a pair of solid-color pants (either dress pants or Dockers). If it is chilly, I wear the same thing with a sweater over top of the shirt.

I rarely stray from this approach. As a 53-year-old suburban dweller, I feel it is my right to dress in a boring, formulaic manner.

Here's what I don't get: Why do office workers treat "jeans days" as some sort of bonus? Over the years at the various organizations where I've worked, there has always been a desire for Friday jeans days. Or in the case of certain office competitions, one of the prizes has often been a jeans day.

I do not understand this. Maybe I'm buying the wrong jeans, but to me, jeans are not the ultimate in comfortwear. I would much rather wear my looser-fitting dress pants or those good old, dad-approved Dockers. They just feel better, especially when I'm wearing them for 9-10 hours at a stretch.

Office dress codes have evolved to the point that – at my place of employment, anyway – you can wear jeans just about every day of the week if you want. And I have done that before, but it only served as a reminder that jeans are not the sartorial delight they're cracked up to be.

Of course, your perspective on this may vary greatly. I'm someone who honestly never minded wearing a suit and tie every day (it greatly simplified the process of picking out clothes in the morning, I'll tell you that). So maybe my definition of "comfortable" clothing doesn't necessarily match that of the rest of the world.

There's also this: I'm a man. Maybe women value jeans more highly than the office-approved alternatives they're given.

Jeans were originally developed in the 19th century for mineworkers, weren't they? I'll you what, then...the next time the Materion Corporation asks me to descend 300 feet underground to search for gold, I'll throw on a pair of Levis.

In the meantime, my closet full of patterned button-downs and black, blue, gray and brown pants serves me just fine, thank you very much.

Going back to Cubicle World

This just made me laugh.

As an employee, I'm about as low-maintenance as they come. You don't have to worry about much if I'm on your team, except to hope that I can keep my apple obsession under control while in the office and that I won't say "yes" to absolutely everything anyone asks of me and thus find myself drowning in work.

Apart from that, though, I'm fairly self-sufficient and almost devoid of the self-promotion gene. The same is true of my boss, Doug, who is one of those people who is extremely good at what he does and does not feel the need to remind you of that fact.

(NOTE: Any time I refer to Doug when talking with Terry, I have taken to calling him "New Doug" in honor of Korg from the Marvel movies. This never fails to make us both laugh.)

Anyway, as I said, I'm pretty low-maintenance.

Which in this case is a good thing because one of the interesting dynamics in my new job at Goodyear is that, after having enclosed offices in every job I've held for the past two decades, I now find myself sitting back in a cubicle.

And I am in no way kidding when I say I'm fine with it. There are disadvantages, sure, but all I need is a place to put my computer, a phone, some space for my books, and a place to hang my Lake Erie Monsters 2016 Calder Cup Champions banner. I have all of that in my new little work home.

In fact, what I have now may not even qualify for "cubicle" status. It's more of a workstation that opens out onto a wide carpeted walkway among a sea of similar workstations. It is only enclosed on two sides, which is fine because, honestly, unless I'm dealing with sensitive information, I don't care who can see my computer screen.

I also don't equate workspace with power/prestige/status.

Some people do, I realize. I just don't care.

I know this sounds crazy, but I would rather co-workers judge me not by my desk, but by how well I do my job.

How radical is that?

Full disclosure: I do miss the convenience of having my own personal conference table. That I'll admit.

It's August and I've been wearing sweaters for a month.

I've dropped some weight over the past few months. Nineteen pounds as of yesterday, to be exact.

I won't get into the weight loss thing, as I've covered it to death on this blog over the years. I shouldn't even have to be worrying about it right now, given that I achieved a healthy weight back in 2016 and had no real reason not to maintain it.

But I didn't, so here I am.

Anyway, if you've ever lost weight, you know there's a point where you start feeling the effects yourself but no one else yet really notices. That point varies from person to person, but for me it's right around 15 pounds.

Pants and shirts are looser. I have more energy. I'm walking faster in the mornings with the same amount of effort. That sort of thing.

What also happens around 15 pounds is that my temperature tolerance shifts, and it shifts dramatically. I go from wearing thin dress shirts to multiple layers, even in July and August.

Most of the time when I'm at Goodyear, I wear a fleece pullover or sweater. Otherwise I almost freeze by the time the day is half finished.

It doesn't help that they really crank up the air conditioning there (which I think is uniquely an American office thing, though I can't be sure). I would be fine if they weren't constantly pumping Arctic air into our work environment.

But as it is, I'm always cold. So I bundle up and look like Nanook of the North when others around the office are wearing polos and short sleeves.

It's a small price to pay to be healthier, I know, but I'm kind of looking forward to that September-ish transition when we go from AC to heat.

And the inevitable trip to Kohl's to buy some new winter clothes, one size down.

Being the new guy in the office

Today is my first day of work in more than four months. I am, as you may have noticed, extremely excited about this fact.

Part of the reason is that I am very good at being The New Guy.

Having worked at eight different places over the last 20 years, I'm well acquainted with finding my way through a new office, from figuring out the internal culture to exactly where they keep the coffee.

It's a process of constant adaptation, deference and friend-making.

It's also mentally exhausting, because it takes months to really get everything down. But it's worth the initial effort.

For example, I make a point of being proactively friendly when I start a new job. I'll aggressively seek people out and introduce myself.

Even if, as is the case about 20 percent of time, that person is just a visitor who doesn't even work there. In those situations, they're more frightened of me than anything else.

Mostly, though, you're able to make a good first impression by doing this.

Good first impressions are useful, because your co-workers are more likely to help you if they think you're a pleasant person. It also helps to project an aura of competence, especially if the way you do your job affects the way they do theirs.

I'm pretty good at projecting competence. That doesn't mean I have competence, only that I'm excellent at seeming as if I know what I'm doing.

I also go after what the professional self-help books like to call "low-hanging fruit." I find some relatively easy project to tackle early on, and when I complete it successfully, I make it seem as if it was a great problem I have solved to the long-lasting benefit of the organization.

People always seem to be impressed by this. Or maybe they're just taking pity on me and want me to feel good.

Either way, I feel like I've pulled one over on them.

Another great New Guy trick is the come-early-leave-late approach. Everyone knows you're going to be gung-ho when you first get there. And they'll expect the long-hours routine to fade out quickly.

But if you keep it up, people will start to think, "OK, this guy isn't going to bail on us. He's dedicated. I like that."

Or at least that's what I assume they're thinking. They may actually be thinking, "What a total suck-up. This guy will flame out in less than a year."

I choose to believe the former.