Inhale, Exhale...

They fixed my computer at work, it turned out to be a faulty ping number. I feel much better now.

I didn’t know how vital being in my own space was until I was forced out of it. It was like being a temp again, a few hours at this desk a few hours more that that desk, half a day there, fifteen minutes here. It was unsettling.

I also never thought about how important keyboard placement is to my productivity. It genuinely upset me that the keyboard I spent most of my time on was in the wrong place. I mean, really wrong. My keyboard is on my desktop where it belongs. I can move it to the right, left, up under my screen or into my lap if need be. It’s in the right place. The office I was squatting in belongs to a co-worker who kindly scheduled her kidney stones for the same week I was without a working computer.

This co-worker inherited her poorly designed work space from a past employee who must have been extremely, cripplingly far sighted. I don’t know how the current occupant stands it. I hope when she gets over being the new kid she says something about it and asks to change the set up. I don't think she had kidney stones, I think she was really suffering from a full body cramp from dealing with her rotten set up.

She inherited a desk with an under desk keyboard. Which should work, and would work if the keyboard under the desk was not the most bulbous keyboard ever manufactured. It looks like a Ford from the early 90s, puffy, swollen and bloated - Which would be great if you were hoping to use it as a raft and float down the river on it or had plans to fill it with goose down and take a nap, but it is not something that is designed to fit under your desk. It's supposed to sit top side and look ergonomic.

If its in it’s stowed position, sure you can comfortably work on the desk top, you can’t use the keyboard but you can read your screen, although you will be seeing a lot of 6's, as when the board is under the desk the 6 key is nudged and it makes 6s until the computer itself beeps in frustration. If it’s locked and loaded state the user is forced back to sit against the wall from where you can’t actually see the screen or reach the phone or even comfortably use the keyboard, it does wonders for your posture. It’s also like the most useful, if hard to clean, airplane tray table ever. Every time I had to pull it out I looked for someone to come by with a drinks cart and slam into my knee. There is a middle ground but you have to be very careful to not touch it in any way less it slides under the desk or pops up and out and knocks your teeth out

I just hate everything about being away from my desk. Pens for instance. My pens are where they belong. Everyone else keeps their pens in the wrong place. My co-workers staplers , uniformly, were in the wrong place, they don’t have their own date punch or letter openers or label makers... You don’t know how happy I was to find a label maker at the reception desk! I was afraid I was going to have to hand write all my address labels, if I was afraid, the state of North Carolina was terrified.

There are documents on my computer that I thought since they are on the “share” drive, that we all shared them. We do not. I do see the wisdom in not letting two hundred people have access to survey schedules but it really put a crimp into my day to not be able to pull them up when I needed them. I wasted a lot of time going upstairs to search for a manager that had access to them and would print them out for me. It took forty-five minutes to get a few lines of type it would have taken me forty-five seconds to look up if I was at my own computer. It was one crimp in the schedule after another. I spent two days suffering from full body crimps.