Patrick's Rants

This shize has hit the fan. I came back from driving a route on Friday to find that the radio desk had been rearranged. It had previously been set up in a close to ergonomic fashion. I had the telephone at the close left corner nearest to my left elbow when sitting in the chair. Just beyond that in the far left corner was the monitor. It sits with its back to the window so that glare from the sun doesn’t obstruct the view. The computer keyboard sits slightly to the left of center on the desk in line with the monitor and the mouse is just to the right of the keyboard. In a slight arc, the microphone sits to the right of the mouse with the radios in the far right corner of the desk. Our radio logs sit just to the right of the microphone. I put the paper substitute logs up toward the middle of the desk where it’s not directly in my way, yet I can still read it from the chair. When I finish with the AM logs they go behind my “incident log” which normally just has whatever has been written down from the radio traffic. The whole thing flows. Not only does it flow, it was a collaboration with our senior dispatcher.

As you can see, the office if quite small. Desk 1 is for #2 (I’m not calling her number 3 anymore – she’s definitely #2). Desk 2 is the radio desk. You can see the way it’s spread out… fairly neat, but full.

Desk 3 is basically a small table with notebooks containing our routes a few letter trays and one of those desktop calendars. Desk 4 is “mine”. It’s narrow, just barely deep enough to fully contain the monitor that sits on the upper right hand corner (bottom right in the drawing). Desk 1 and 2 are the old teacher style deep desks. Not that long ago the surge protector and power cord that run around the corner to our coffee pot went bad. The coffee pot got moved to my desk. Pretty soon the coffee filters, creamer, a small plate and napkins made it to the desk. #2 had started to use it as her lunch bar.

I tolerated it as long as I could.

When the office was rearranged like this:

with all the radios shoved to the left on the radio desk so there is open space on the right, we have to reach over the computer keyboard to use the radio, the buffer zone reduced by three feet of desk space so #2 doesn’t have to get off her ass to take over the radio and has another surface to put dirty plates it was the last straw. I went into the office on my day off to move the radios back where they belong and to secure the power and antenna cables under the desk. I also got a new extension cord for the coffee pot and found a surge protector in a cabinet so the lunch bar is no more. It’s now a working desk again. Desk 1 is still like drawing 2, but desk 2 is back to the way it belongs.

I can’t wait to see that stupid hyena grin fall off her face Monday morning.