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.
