A first: gig cancelled due to air quality

[bill5]

On 6/29/2023 at 11:30 AM, Stokely said:

That's the only thing good about covid, it got us all working from home and it became permanent when they realized we were just as productive, doing what we do.   Now our team has several newer hires that live in-state but hours away, so the horse is not going back to the barn.   I am WAY more productive being out of that crap "open and collaborative" office environment they went to a few years ago.   Every dev and admin had to wear noise-cancelling earbuds to function in there, it was ludicrous.   And I get an hour or so back that I used to spend commuting, win!

And to relate to "air quality", the one woman with eye-watering perfume the next row of stalls over (you can't call what we had "cubes") is far, far away from where I am.  
 

Not meaning to sidetrack too much but amen to all of that. Hated that "open/collaborative" BS, which finally companies are realizing everyone hated and was a complete crock. These are the same "experts" probably who came up with all that "architecture" and "TQM" BS years ago that companies pissed away decades of money on.

 

Re air quality, I just checked and it's odd that it looks worse in more southern VA and the Carolinas vs up around DC and PA, even most of NY. Stop blowing it our way!  

[Stokely]

The open and collaborative fad is one important thing--it's cheap.  That's the draw to management.  More people in less space, and less furniture to buy.  It also looks great in a movie (and to a visiting vendor/VIP), and any time you see an old-school cube farm it's to show how dystopian things are (Matrix being a great example).  Open offices have a buzz and are noisy, which is exciting as long as you don't have to get any work done.  The reality is, the Matrix cubes are far better to work in than some open hub of fancy tables and concrete floors and steel open ceilings--at least if you are like me and need to be able to concentrate without auditory and visual distractions, lest I accidently update or delete the wrong records in the database (no undo!).

I'm not sure it's going away, all I know is that I don't intend to risk it and want to work from home until I retire...taking less money (to a point) to do so!

Our gig Friday had clear air and only a spot of rain, thankfully before we had unloaded.  That's a win for a Florida summer day.  I think I lost 10 pounds in water weight sweating, that's while under a roof with a drying fan pointing at me.  I'm really better suited for the cold, always have been and I'm retiring up north   Though maybe not if you all are going to be under a smoke haze all the time.