The Shelf

Sorry for the shadows here, it's the first sunny day we've had in weeks and it lifted my spirits enough to warrant an office rant post. This seemingly innocuous shelf has been in my workspace for a couple weeks now. Prior to this all the binders and such you see there were stashed under my desk, providing lovely foot rests, but not so nice access to the information stored within them.

Like many office sagas, this one started many months ago, and I am sure I have but a portion of the information. It has become obvious in the past few weeks that there was a lot of behind the scenes activity when I changed my work status to part time and started grad school. One of these is that some information may have been misrepresented to the Queen Bee. Her Hiveness was apparently operating under the impression that I was only going to be here a few hours per week, thus she did not think it reasonable to approve my request for a corner shelf upon my move to my new workspace. Uh huh, I see. Seeing as this denial occured on the heels of the fountain incident, I was left with no choice. I marched my butt over to her office and upon referencing the two incidents asked if there was a problem. She assured me that no, there wasn't she just didn't want to invest in furniniture for someone who was here on such a part time basis. Now, friends, let me give you one more piece to this puzzle. In the weeks prior to this statement, I had been in the office every workday for at least 6 hours. She was here about 6 hours per week. No, I'm really not exagerating this.

Imagine my surprise when upon the arrival of the latest shipment of furniture (because we apparently have some extra money laying around and thought this was a good way to spend it, never mind the fact that we never entertain clients here) a strapping young lad referencing his office map asked me where I wanted my shelf. Wow, the drama. It's amazing what a little thing like this will do for your perspective. It has buoyed me up to a whole new level of work appreciation. Appreciating the asepcts of not working here, that is.

For reference, I believe my request was the smallest made by anyone in the office. Everyone got at least one piece of new furniture, and several got more pieces than were in my last apartment. I was too chicken to try to sneak a picture of one of the deluxe offices, but we'll see if my boldness returns one night when no one is around.