Conference 7.286::digital

    
    
    I don't get the secretary joke. Please explain!
    
    You forgot a group:
    
    PROGRAMMERS:	On the shelf: Language manuals, VMS manuals
    				      Dictionary (we can't spel)
    				      "Common Lisp" by Guy Steele (the
    Bible)
    				      Stacks of unneeded but "can't
    be thrown away" outputs.
    			              
    			On the wall:  Rock posters (Grateful Dead
    preferably)			      
    				      Doonesbury/Bloom County strips
    
    			On the desk:   Coffee stains
    			               more outputs
    			               three or four terminals
    				       plants
    
    			In the desk:   Nothing but listings and outputs
    
    				      

    Re .1:
    
             A quick stroll around the department here indicates
    "Garfield" in either poster or clipped-from-the-Sunday-paper
    form in roughly a third of the secretarial stations (or cubicles
    or whatever you call them). The messages are either "I hate my
    job" ("I'm allergic to Mondays" is typical) or "I'm on a diet
    and I hate that, too" ("I'm not overweight - I'm undertall!").

    Well, I guess I fit in the Garfield-Secretary majority (minority?).
    
    I have a Garfield poster in my office that explains, "Do it to me
    now, Monday!!!"
    
    But I also have a little magnet outside my office next to my nameplate
    that states, "Beware!  Attack Secretary!"
    
    					*** Kristy ***

    
    
    "If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what
     does an empty desk mean?"
    
    Have you ever compared a programmer's/SW Engineer's etc. desk to
    a senior mgr's desk...
    

    A neat desk is a sign of a sick mind ...

    Another good one is "It's my mess and I love it!"  I've used that
    one my CC Mgr many times... besides compared to his office, mine
    is SPOTLESS!!!
    
    					*** Kristy ***

    Unless customers regularly look at your desk, how neat you keep
    it (or don't keep it) should be YOUR business only. 
    
    Managers should have more important things to do than worry about
    your desk. [Mine does - I make sure she does - but that's another
    story.]
    
    -Bruce

    A clean desk means I've got at least ONE thing under control!
    
    An office environment should avoid the two extremes of 
     stirile << health hazzard, but most of all avoid the 
    			<< avalanche danger!
    
    
    RMM
    

    I am a neatnik.  I admit it.  However, I do not visit this particular
    hangup on others--that is, I don't insist that everyone else be
    neat too.
    
    But I am CONTINUALLY catching all kinds of crap from the sloppy
    types out there for being neat!  They assume that I'm going to come
    in and dump on them or something.  I recently had a discussion with
    another neatnik (do you read this file, Regina?) and we discovered
    that our "Significant Others" do the same thing: they are slobs
    but get after us for being neat!
    
    So who is really the one with the hangup here?

    "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly
    making exciting discoveries."
    
    		- A. A. Milne

Two coworkers at a group I used to work for, after a bit of discussion of their
respective office organizing principles, posted signs outside of their offices.
One said:

		Any collection of papers is immediately rendered organized
		when placed in folders.

The other said:

                Any collection of papers is immediately rendered organized
                when placed in piles.

In response, I threatened to post the following:

                Any collection of papers is immediately rendered organized
                when placed in this office.

(I never did it because my office was so far away that no one would have gotten
the joke.)
							-- Jerry

    >UPPER MANAGEMENT:    At this level, the only typical signs of
    >                     individuality are a picture of the family
    >                     (framed) and some sort of sporting motif
    >                     in one of three accepted styles: golf,
    >                     tennis, or sailing. Pick one. Awards or
    >                    trophies in one of these are a plus.
    
    there was a program once on TV about offices of big managers a while 
    ago, and how the office of the big manager supposed to reflect the 
    atmosphere of the company itself, i dont think myself there is a 
    relationships between the 2, it depends on the mode of the boss really.
    i never seen in the real life an office of a big managers in DEC, 
    like a VP or a senior VP, i always wondered how they looked like inside.
    i bet they are big and has lots of chairs in them and nice window
    seats, all the important people in DEC get the window seats, the less
    important people you see them crowded in the middle of the isle
    near the coffee station usually or near the elevators , why cant
    they design the cubes so that every cube looks at a window? any way
    iam digressing here.

    \bye
    \nasser

    
    Nasser, digressing is an understatement. A year or so ago, I sat a few
    cubes down from Bill Strecker. Yup, common or garden cube. nothing
    fancy. It was near a window, but there wasn't much of a view.  Many of
    DEC's senior management have fairly innocuous offices. Me, I hate
    windowed offices, you always end up with sun glare coming in the
    window.
    
    q

I'm reminded of a recent trip (June 92) I took to Japan to present at a Digital
CIM-seminar.  My office then was in HLO and the window looked out over the 
construction area.  I was planning to mention the "window office" in my
presentation but had to modify the content.   As explained to me by the folks
who did the interpretion, in Japan getting a job with a window office is the
same as saying the manager got his walking papers.  (Out the door, retired in
place, in charge of grooming the plants.....of the flower variety not manufacturing!

In any case, one of the managers that overheard me preparing my slide approached
me with a a grievious look on his face and said...."I did not know that you
and Kerry-san (my supervisor, who has the office next to mine...) had been given
a window office.  Was there anything he could do to help us out ....!!! 
So sorry that this has happened to you, and on and on.   Luckily, my puzzled
look and the quick thinking of the translator (mentioned above) helped me to
clairify that windows mean different things to different DIGITS :^)

    In Switzerland the government requires that all employees have a view
    to the outside from their office in permitting any construction. Some
    buildings have a center hole to accommodate the requirement. The view
    is limited in many cases but you can see out.