Because Every Office Needs a Little Sophistication

Last night, BusyDad posted this picture to Twitter with the caption "Wednesdays at work." (Go ahead, click on over and pop on back. It'll be worth it. And it will make what follows far more comprehensible.)

So I responded with some silly tweet about how professor's offices used to look like that pretty much every day -- except without the swank ergonomic mesh chairs and with a whole lot more dark wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and tweed jackets. Of course, I had to say all that in 140 characters, so I'm pretty sure the word "ergonomic" wasn't in there. But the point was clear.

He, because he's funny like that, immediately wrote back that I was forgetting about my obligatory pipe.

And I'm telling you all of this because it was the PIPE that got me thinking. More correctly, it was my having forgotten the pipe that got me thinking. How had I missed that obvious accessory? (Apart from the also obvious fact that I don't smoke at all.) It didn't take long to find the answer: my real office is so bad that even the fantasies with some details missing seem extravagant.

In trying to describe my office (my abysmally sub-standard office as per the romantic vision of professors in hand-carved-wood-paneled havens with threadbare Oriental rugs and deep window seats in which to read while the snow falls), I realized three things:

1) I want the offices my undergraduate professors at the University of Vermont had (seriously, wood paneling and built-in bookshelves in a building that was nearly 200 years old);

2) my office is laughable not just by those standards, but really by ANY standards of actual professional work (it would be fine for the office of a volunteer, perhaps, or a graduate student);

3) my office needs more scotch.

Our building is in fact about to receive a renovation, and there is an upcoming meeting with architects to discuss what we are hoping might happen to the classrooms and offices of this aging seven-story hunk of1960s concrete. Do you know what my fondest dream is? The thing that ALL of us professors want most? The ONE thing (in case we can only have one thing) that will make our lives better, our offices more welcoming, our days brighter?

I'll give you some hints:

* it's not windows, though most of our offices don't have those, and the ones we do have don't open;

* it's not new furniture, despite the fact that we have 1960s green Steelcase pressed metal furniture -- giant behemoths of desks, industrial bookshelves, filing cabinets that would have been at home in a newspaper room during the Eisenhower administration;

* it's not an airier floor plan, less prison-like corridors, or room numbering that makes sense by going in order down the halls -- though of course all of those luxuries would be lovely.

It's this: we want them to remove the five inch square metal boxes that protrude from the center of our floors and contain the only electrical outlets in the entire room, and we want new outlets installed in the walls instead. We want this so that we can arrange our office furniture any way we like, instead of in the only configuration that allows access to the outlet. We want this so that our desk chairs no longer roll over our computer cords and disfigure the plugs every time we try to pull up to type. We want this so that we no longer trip over the boxes while talking to a student, thereby removing the last shred of dignity we might have had. We want this so that we no longer sprain our ankles when we go to answer the door or bruise our ankles when we wear heels and then bang into the metal boxes.

We will continue sharing phone lines, so that we never know whether the phone is for us when we answer it. We will subsist without a cleaning staff so that we have to vacuum our own offices. We will stomach the "retro" furniture, the grim lighting, the institutional cinder-block walls, and the prison-like hallways, if only they will get rid of the damn box full of outlets (and its sorry step-sister, the smaller box full of phone jacks) sticking up out of the center of the floor.

It seems pretty modest doesn't it? We have been told, however, that it might not happen because that much electrical work can be mighty expensive. *sigh* A woman can dream...

And now you know why I pine for those two-hundred-year-old, high-ceilinged, wood-paneled enclaves of erudition that were my professors' office when I was an undergraduate. Sure, I bet their windows were drafty, the heating system clanked (it was surely radiators), and they had to bring in their own Oriental rugs if they wanted to cover the vast expanse of wooden flooring. But I'll take those problems any day.

Also? I think my office needs to be closer to BusyDad's for scotch Wednesdays. Do you think the architects can arrange that too?

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What's the best or worst part of your office? Got a picture to share? Leave a story or link in the comments, or email me the photo, and I'll do a follow-up post next week so we can all see where you work. I'm working on a prize here; can't say what it will be yet, but there will be something...and it might involve scotch.