Our Electronic Friendship

So, I work for a nonprofit. I'm not sure how that works because we do make money from subscriptions to our magazines, but we are considered a nonprofit. Since we are "tax experts" I'm sure our board members and executives know how to utilize tax credits and all that good stuff to the fullest.

None of our higher-ups drive fancy cars or, I assume, live in mansions. Our "culture" is laid-back and casual, we get to wear what we want and our managers are pretty flexible, most of the time.

The downside is that most of us work in a centuries-old building, with at least 30 decades of dusty old volumes of past issues and supporting documents. (Last week, I got to pour through some issues from the year I was born!) Some very nice men come and take out the trash every night, but they only vacumn every 11 months or so. We have spiders and ants, nasty looking centipedes, and due to the volumes and volumes of old issues, silverfish.

Also, the offices are kind of a bullpen where 6 or more people are crowded into a room with open-air desks, no cubicles, no privacy. I guess it works well because we all kind of holler questions to each other about commas and hyphens and all that fun stuff. And it keeps us social, I suppose. But it does get a little awkward when you need to make a phone call about medical issues or something.

But all of that is soon to change. We are moving in November to a new fancy building, one that is still being built. We have to share the building with another company, but there will be a Starbuck's on the first floor and somewhere to eat, too. And hideously over priced condos that none of the employees can afford are being built next door.

Hey, does "over priced" need a hyphen?

Sorry, I was yelling at my co-workers.

Um, does "co-worker" have a hyphen?

Sorry again.

We will also be getting new workstations, which is good because some of us have old teachers desks with very low knee space and mine has "Pickle mora is a loser" and "Amy is a dork" carved into the drawer. We were invited to walk down to one of our buildings (all 200 of us are currently housed in 3 buildings in two cities, hence the need for a new and fancy and large building) to see these new workstations. They are huge! They are so big, they curve, in an L-shape! They have low walls so we can still holler and nice drawers and a thingy that your phone rests on in mid-air so you have more desk space. There is a drawer over head with frosted plastic in the front, very fancy. I'm thinking they are going to shove two proofers into one workstation....we don't deserve all that room. Rumor has it, though, that we get our own. I'm overwhelemed. I feel like a peace corps volunteer come home from Africa, shell-shocked in a Target.

Guys, "shell-shocked" has a hyphen, right?

We are also getting new chairs. These chairs have a name, and the name is Zody. These babies are the "first chair endorsed by the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)!" We were emailed a link for the "instructional video" which I will include here, for your viewing pleasure: http://www.haworth.com/Brix?pageID=169&catpage=168&category=110. But I sat in it, and it is fairly uncomfortable. I was not impressed. I'm going to see if I can take my chair with me, because it is very comfortable and I just got it in September.

We have been reassured that our "culture" will remain the same, that we certainly won't have to tortue ourselves with the question of "what exactly is business casual again?" or cram our feet into pointy heels or ugly flats. Our company must love us to spend all this money on a new building, new chairs for 200 people and new workstations for the 178 of us that don't get offices!

Of course, none of us are fooled by the offering of a new building and desks and chairs and our old "culture" in lieu of actual monetary raises.

But we are a nonprofit....we have no money for raises!