workaday Wednesday

Sometimes my workplace unintentionally gives me a reason to laugh, and I figure, why not embrace that?

A companywide email went out yesterday in the middle of the day, and contained the following information:

*The 'visiting office' has moved.
*The new visiting office has space for two (2) people. (When, and I quote, "the seats are located in the assigned taped areas.")
*The office has one (1) phone, and one (1) computer docking station.

Even without a photo, this text raises so many questions. Why announce a visiting office when current company policy forbids anyone from visiting? Did they really put tape on the floor? What is the second person supposed to be doing, that apparently doesn't require a phone or computer?

I really want to share the photo we received along with this email, but in the interests of avoiding trouble, I will not. Instead, know that YES, they really put tape on the floor, AND it gets better.

Here is a did-it-myself diagram of the room's layout, with the hyphen indicating the doorway, and the Ds indicating the two desks longways against opposite walls, and the Cs representing the two chairs. (Couldn't figure out how to indicate the taped squares they are trapped in!)

     -
D       C
D       D
D       D
C       D

A conundrum instantly becomes clear. Each chair only has access to one of the short sides of the desk, making only a tiny portion of each desk actually able to be used. (Note: The room is not large, but definitely big enough that if you were sitting in one of the chairs, you could *only* reach the desk along your same wall, not the one across from you.)

Awkward, sure. Instantly making me wonder if the visitors were supposed to use airplane rules or movie theater rules in order to exit the office, yes, definitely. But not totally unworkable, right? But wait, IT GETS BETTER.

     -
*        C
D       D
D       D
C       D

The asterisk represents where the ONE computer docking station in the room is located. Yes, that's right. The front corner, where NEITHER employee can actually access it.

The more time I spent thinking about this yesterday, the more I absolutely could not stop laughing about it.

And THEN, almost two hours later, we got another email. 'Ah,' I thought. 'Fun time is over. Clearly this must have been an error, and this email will clarify things.' (Seven years with this company, and I still have such optimism!)

This is the entirety of what the second email said: "My mistake - there is no phone available in this room."