5 ms·
On the meeting room thing: I worked in an office a number of years ago where the name of the person who booked the meeting (and its time/duration) was shown on
by ProxCoques 3y ago
On the meeting room thing: I worked in an office a number of years ago where the name of the person who booked the meeting (and its time/duration) was shown on a small touch screen by the door.
To start the meeting, that person (or their proxy) had to swipe the screen with their badge. If the swipe had not been completed after 10mins, the room would become free and accept anyone's swipe to start that meeting. Their name would then be displayed for the same duration as the original.
The kicker was that after the 10mins (and if no swipe), the system would send an email to ALL EMPLOYEES saying "Room XYZ, booked by [name of culprit], is now free".
To this day I still fondly think of the genius of the person who got that system approved!
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoPersonally the local coffee shop has always been the best meeting room. Don't have a local coffee shop? Move offices
- c12 3y agohaha, many years ago when I worked in a large office the three meeting rooms where constantly busy so my team would grab a laptop and pop down the road to the pub for our meetings.
- lifeisstillgood 3y agoMuch harder to justify on the expenses claims report :-)
- yieldcrv 3y agothese days
- xnorswap 3y agoThe pub lunch is the thing I miss most about my first job. Every Friday almost the entire office would decamp down to a local pub for lunch and a pint or two. The quality of the food was always very hit-or-miss (unless we went down the king's arms*, but that was seen as a bit pricey and fancy), and for many places if there were too many of us would get arsey for not booking ahead. But it was a great opportunity to just hear what everyone was up to and have a good chat in an unstructured way. I don't know if it's changing attitudes over the past 20 years, the particular companies I found myself at, the price of going to the pub, but it hasn't really been a thing at any of my places since. Now with WFH of course there is a complete absence of unstructured conversation. Every meeting has a purpose, every interaction there's something someone has in mind they want from the conversation. And while it's not impossible to chit chat still, it is impossible to overhear chit-chat, which is an underappreciated thing. Overheard conversations are a gold mine of knowledge sharing, many an interesting idea has come about because, "I couldn't help but overhear...". Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to suffer an hour long commute for that benefit, the cost-benefit skews all wrong. But I would like if everyone lived a 5 minute walk from the office. * might have been the king's head, memory plays tricks.
- _nalply 3y agoI am Deaf. I never ever have overheard anything. That's a serious handicap if there are many people thinking random unstructured conversation is important.
- xnorswap 3y agoI'm sure most people would agree that deafness is a serious handicap.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- euroderf 3y ago> a complete absence of unstructured conversation So you replaced "watercooler talk" with "beercooler" talk. Sounds enlightened.
- gemstones 3y agoLiving a 5 minute walk from the office is how most humans have lived throughout history, and what most of Europe’s most pleasant cities to live in were designed to support. I know tech changes things, but if I had to guess, the era we just lived through was the weird one, and living a 5 minute walk away from work and amenities is the norm we’ll revert back to the moment that tech adequately supports it.
- 3y ago
- kashyapc 3y agoWhile I love working from coffee shops, one thing I really get grumpy about is people taking meetings out loud. If you're taking a meeting from a quiet corner while not disturbing others, it's fine. What drives me up the wall is people sitting at a large community table or sitting in the vicinity of many others and speaking loudly. It's elementary common sense to not do that. Mercifully, it doesn't happen too many times. (I'm located in Belgium; so the real-estate is usually small in coffee shops.)
- smcleod 3y agoMost of the officers I’ve been in in Melbourne I like that. But you know what’s even better? Not having meetings in an office at all.
- Gigachad 3y agoMeetings on video calls are a hell twice as bad as meeting rooms.
- smcleod 3y agoNot a chance! Maybe you need a better setup? Or perhaps you haven’t had to commute? Or deal with office aircon? Or hot desking?
- rikroots 3y agoI much prefer video meetings. Being face-blind, logging onto a meeting has the added benefit of seeing people's names under their little images - no more trying to guess who's saying what! [1] [1] Except for those people who go to a meeting room and (eventually!) join the meeting as a group; those people remain the bane of my working life.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago> [1] Except for those people who go to a meeting room and (eventually!) join the meeting as a group; those people remain the bane of my working life. That and the crappy microphone in the meeting room preventing me from understanding half of what the in-office group is saying.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago"Room XYZ, booked by [name of culprit], is now free" "Dear All, there will be a 5 minute silence to commemorate the untimely passing of [name of culprit] over the weekend"
- jareklupinski 3y agoRoom XYZ was innocent!
- diogenes4 3y agoI would immediately book all available rooms. How was that not instantly abused? It only works for people capable of feeling shame.
- rainonmoon 3y agoBecause most people are trying to uphold some baseline of professionalism and aren't actively seeking to make the lives of the people around them harder?
- diogenes4 3y agoCounterpoint: they're making everyone come into the office. That seems like the definition of making people's lives harder.
- LadyCailin 3y agoThat’s the overly wealthy CEOs, and they aren’t most people, and yes, they do make people’s lives harder to a large degree.
- Gigachad 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
- diogenes4 3y agoI'll admit, this is a great example of a workplace i'd rather be tortured than work at myself.
- jorlow 3y agoMeta has more or less had this for many years -- besides the public shaming aspect.
- Ferret7446 3y agoI imagine the email was intended as a shaming tactic.