Haven’t offices changed a lot in the last few years? If you have worked in one for a while then you might not even have noticed some of the exciting things which have changed during your working life.
My Colleagues Sleep While I Work
When did global outsourcing start? I can clearly remember that in my first jobs I sat beside people who all lived within a couple of miles of my house. They all knew people I knew and some of them even remembered me from the days when I wore a nappy and had a snotty nose. Then one day I realised that half my team was in London. After this the floodgates opened and now I speak to team members from all over the world, some of whom are fast sleep during my working hours. This is actually pretty exciting and I get to learn a lot from them. Even better is the fact that none of them knows about the embarrassing things I did in primary school.
The Coffee Is All Fancy
One my first ever tasks was to clean out the office coffee machine, so I well remember what it contained. There was coffee without our without sugar, tea with or without sugar and some sort of tomato soup like concoction. The place went all modern when we got in a new machine with hot chocolate but when did the switch to cappuccino and mocha happen? I really don’t know.
Meetings Involve the Phone and PC
We used to have an old meeting room which for some reason had an old bike in it. We passed some long, rather miserable hours in here looking at graphs and sipping tea with or without sugar. Back then the phone would ring a couple of times a week and I don’t remember ever actually phoning anyone. Now I spend a good part of the day on conference calls on the phone and PC. Sometimes I rather daringly speak on my mobile phone and desk phone at the same time.
Emails Rule
Do you remember a time with computers but before emails? I can vaguely recall this time; I think it was after man landed on the Moon but before the Berlin wall fell. I genuinely can’t remember using email for the first time although I do remember a colleague mistakenly sending a rather risqué joke round the whole company by mistake. Now I spend a good part of my time looking at emails or writing them, and I sometimes do this while talking on two phones at once and drinking a mocha latte from the machine. I guess we all need to be multi skilled these days.
The modern style of conference call service has been a great help in bringing us a slicker and more exciting type of meeting.