Work Locations Continued

In this post I continue a previous summary of places my current project has been located. The places listed in my previous post were sites leased by the client. They varied from good to bad. In this post I will review some other places our project has been located, including sites leased by the contracting company (my company).

An executive came to one of the bad sites we were located at. He decided this was no place for people in his company to work. So he pulled the project into a building owned by our company. This was quite an upgrade. You could tell the difference. There were people who made sure any problems we had got resolved. Phone not working? Somebody would take care of it right away. The network speeds were great. If I needed hardware, my boss could get it for me. An IT staff made sure all network printers were always up and filled with toner. The employees on the project felt good.

All good things come to an end. My company lost the maintenance contract on the project. I joined the new company that won the contract. However we went back to work at the client’s site. They did not have any cubicles for us to work out of. So we got placed in a big lab. I got the feeling that we were not invited guests there. People screamed whenever somebody pulled a network plug out of the jack. The door to the lab was locked, and it took forever to get access. So I spent a lot of time banging on the door to have someone let me in. There was a lot of noise in the lab. And it was either freezing cold or burning up. The only reason I stuck around was that the promised this was only temporary.

Once again my company came through for me. They relocated me to an office site leased by my company. I was required to dress more formally. But I can put on a tie for a good office. At the new location I have an office with a real door. And I have a window to the outside. I do share an office with one other company employee. However he must be away because I have not even met him yet. I have a lot of desk space in this office. I have a lot of room to put my books on a bookshelf. And I think I can request things for the office like a white board. This is the high life. I am expecting my morale to skyrocket. Parking is plentiful here. Sometimes being a contractor is not too bad.

Work Locations

When you work on a government contract, you work location is usually decided. I have been on my current project for a long time. So far we have moved six times. Some locations have been decent. Most of the locations were not optimal. When I talk about a location, I am talking about the physical environment. I thought I would share some of the places I have been stationed for my current project.

My first site for work on my current project was in a bad part of town. I guess they liked it because it was in the cheap rent district. However there were some advantages to it. Even though it was a building leased by our customer, there was hardly anybody from the customer organization there. We did have to go through metal detectors every day. But the atmosphere was relaxed. I brought in a bunch of toys to keep at my desk. I ran around without shoes most of the time. This environment allowed me to get a lot of work done for the project.

The second site for my current project was on site at the customer’s main building. It allowed quick access to the customer staff which was good. But it also meant that we were available for the customer to drop by our cubicles. We had to be on good behavior. The client did not want us making any noises that would disturb them. However we had a lot of noise pollution from other people. I will say this about the site – it had a darn good cafeteria. And even though we were in cubicles, the cubicles were decent.

We started to fail on a big new project for the customer. At that point we got moved to another site leased by the client. They put us in the basement of a remote office. The network was painfully slow there. People complained that nobody cleaned the bathrooms. We were still in cubicles. However they seemed smaller. We had trouble getting access to conference rooms. These were the gloomy days on the project. I don’t know if this location was chosen to punish us for failing on the big new project. It sure felt like punishment.