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Monday, June 30
Vacation, interrupted
I was intending to take a vacation in a couple weeks—take a week off and stay home, that sort of thing. I probably also would have taken a day or two to go explore someplace interesting. But I somehow just today remembered that this is the least relaxing part of the year possible, at least for me. It's hot, and I just don't deal with heat well, despite living in a warmer climate for most of my life. Even with air conditioning it's not very comfortable to be home. I'd rather work, 'cause if I stay home anytime soon, it's not going to be relaxing, and if I'm not relaxing, I might as well not burn vacation time. So, maybe in a couple months.
I was planning on having a kitchen remodel coincide with my vacation at least partially, since I'd be more free to stay home and monitor the work, pick out countertops and cabinets, and all of that kind of stuff. But I think I'll postpone that too. Maybe I'll start the remodel in September or so.
I was planning on having a kitchen remodel coincide with my vacation at least partially, since I'd be more free to stay home and monitor the work, pick out countertops and cabinets, and all of that kind of stuff. But I think I'll postpone that too. Maybe I'll start the remodel in September or so.
Wednesday, June 25
Punishing success
One thing that I'm having trouble getting over is the feeling that, at work, success and completion is rewarded with... more work. It sort of feels like a punishment. The pool of available work is essentially infinite, so when I finish one thing, there's always plenty more to do. Those who are productive or lucky and get ahead just get assigned more to do. It's kind of depressing, but it makes sense.
The idea is to reward those who are willing to work extra hard and get more done, which certainly makes sense from the company's perspective. I suppose that you can look at it a different way—another possible reward for getting work done is having extra spare time. One could, in theory, work thirty hours a week, get as much done as an average person who works forty, and take the rest of the week off. Or, you could use the remaining time in the week to get more work done. In the former scenario, your reward for working hard (or just being really smart) is time. In the latter, your reward comes in the form of bonuses, pay raises, and promotions. It's up to each person to find the balance between the time rewards and the pay rewards. I guess that makes a lot of sense from the human perspective too.
I don't know why I have any trouble at all getting the idea that there is infinite work to do through my head. I should be very used to it by now. When I'm working on my own stuff at my own pace, I always decided when I was done with each chunk of work, and I always knew that there was an infinite amount of possible future work on each project. It was so obvious I didn't even have to think about it. Why would it different when it's my job? It's actually very similar. Maybe I just had different expectations from the career life, and I haven't fully corrected them yet. Maybe subconsciously I expected to be handed, drone-like, a chunk of work, and then I would complete it and go home.
Like in school. Maybe I was brainwashed by school. Most assignments had an obvious point of completion, and the idea was to be done with it as soon as possible so you could do something else that was fun or interesting. Even tasks without an obvious end, such as reports and papers, had an implicit one—you worked on them for as little time as possible to get the grade that you expected. In school, the time was definitely the reward. Well, there's also the vague possibility that working hard might get you a future financial bonus in the form of scholarships—so it's another tradeoff, between (gasp!) money and time. I hated doing the work, so it was blissful to be done with it and have time to do something I wanted to. But I don't hate my job. I don't love it like I love the random tinkering I do when I'm not working for The Man, but I certainly don't dislike it. Maybe that's the difference—I mostly hated school (at least the school part of school), but I don't hate my job. Maybe I'm still approaching work from that hate-angle.
The idea is to reward those who are willing to work extra hard and get more done, which certainly makes sense from the company's perspective. I suppose that you can look at it a different way—another possible reward for getting work done is having extra spare time. One could, in theory, work thirty hours a week, get as much done as an average person who works forty, and take the rest of the week off. Or, you could use the remaining time in the week to get more work done. In the former scenario, your reward for working hard (or just being really smart) is time. In the latter, your reward comes in the form of bonuses, pay raises, and promotions. It's up to each person to find the balance between the time rewards and the pay rewards. I guess that makes a lot of sense from the human perspective too.
I don't know why I have any trouble at all getting the idea that there is infinite work to do through my head. I should be very used to it by now. When I'm working on my own stuff at my own pace, I always decided when I was done with each chunk of work, and I always knew that there was an infinite amount of possible future work on each project. It was so obvious I didn't even have to think about it. Why would it different when it's my job? It's actually very similar. Maybe I just had different expectations from the career life, and I haven't fully corrected them yet. Maybe subconsciously I expected to be handed, drone-like, a chunk of work, and then I would complete it and go home.
Like in school. Maybe I was brainwashed by school. Most assignments had an obvious point of completion, and the idea was to be done with it as soon as possible so you could do something else that was fun or interesting. Even tasks without an obvious end, such as reports and papers, had an implicit one—you worked on them for as little time as possible to get the grade that you expected. In school, the time was definitely the reward. Well, there's also the vague possibility that working hard might get you a future financial bonus in the form of scholarships—so it's another tradeoff, between (gasp!) money and time. I hated doing the work, so it was blissful to be done with it and have time to do something I wanted to. But I don't hate my job. I don't love it like I love the random tinkering I do when I'm not working for The Man, but I certainly don't dislike it. Maybe that's the difference—I mostly hated school (at least the school part of school), but I don't hate my job. Maybe I'm still approaching work from that hate-angle.
Wednesday, June 4
Productive member of society
As of today I've worked at Microsoft for four years—four years of having a real job, being a productive member of society. That's longer than I spent in high school, longer than I spent in college.
It hit me an hour or so ago that, in a capitalistic society, couldn't you theoretically pinpoint the time at which your impact on humanity has been a positive one? It would be something like the time at which the amount of wealth you've generated (for anyone, not just yourself) was greater than the value of the resources that have been used to keep you alive, educate you, and so forth. Does that work? Realistically, you could never calculate that time because there would be an infinite or near-infinite set of numbers to add and subtract. But it seems that if everything in the world could have a dollar value associated with it in terms of resources and services used versus consumed, you could find exactly when you became a worthwhile investment.
But then again, I don't really get theoretical economics.
It hit me an hour or so ago that, in a capitalistic society, couldn't you theoretically pinpoint the time at which your impact on humanity has been a positive one? It would be something like the time at which the amount of wealth you've generated (for anyone, not just yourself) was greater than the value of the resources that have been used to keep you alive, educate you, and so forth. Does that work? Realistically, you could never calculate that time because there would be an infinite or near-infinite set of numbers to add and subtract. But it seems that if everything in the world could have a dollar value associated with it in terms of resources and services used versus consumed, you could find exactly when you became a worthwhile investment.
But then again, I don't really get theoretical economics.
Thursday, May 22
A sense of loss
I used to have two recycle bins in my office: one behind me, and one at the door. This stems from back when I had an officemate: my officemate and I drank so much Diet Coke that we ran out of room for our cans halfway through the week, so we were given a second one. A couple nights ago "they" replaced my old bins with a single new blue one. It's doubtful that I need two anymore. But I really miss having that recycle bin behind me. After I finished a can I could triumphantly deposit it. It was a natural part of Diet Coke consumption. Now I have to hurl it toward the window hoping that it makes it into the can without splashing on my blinds (bad idea) or wait until the next time I leave my office (good idea).
Labels: work
Thursday, May 8
Painful experience
As obnoxious as it can be sometimes to be on the homeowner's association board, after last night's emergency meeting (I won't get into the details publicly) I think that this is probably going to be pretty good life experience in the long run. At work I make the occasional important decision that has a significant impact on our product. But it only impacts people who use SharePoint Designer, and they're not financial or business decisions. In the homeowner's association I have to consider the needs and situations of everyone in the association, but more significantly, I'm playing around with real dollars. I own (well, in 29 years I will) about 5.3% of the association, but I have 20% of the voting power. That 20% is a lot of money to be responsible for.
Thursday, May 1
Screw annuals
I took a day-vacation today, and it was pretty refreshing—it's like a bonus half-weekend, smack dab in the middle of a week. I spent the day buying and planting flowers and decorative grasses for my miniature front yard and my carport. It all looks pretty nice now, if a little sparse—I'll have pictures soon, I'm sure. I still don't like touching flowers, but I'm getting much better (less ridiculous) about it. With latex gloves on I wasn't bothered at all today.
I was sure to only buy perennials, so I won't have to do all this again next year. Screw annuals and their needy passive-aggressive plant-me-every-year nonsense. I don't need another extremely mild sunburn next year, thank you very much.
Anyway, that's one more project down. Now I just need to get that ceiling fan up in the stairwell, and in a couple weeks I should have the last tool I need to wire my "office" and living room for Ethernet.
I was sure to only buy perennials, so I won't have to do all this again next year. Screw annuals and their needy passive-aggressive plant-me-every-year nonsense. I don't need another extremely mild sunburn next year, thank you very much.
Anyway, that's one more project down. Now I just need to get that ceiling fan up in the stairwell, and in a couple weeks I should have the last tool I need to wire my "office" and living room for Ethernet.
Monday, April 28
Bad jobs
My benchmark for how bad a job can be is when I worked at Gallup. (An odd number of people have never heard of them. They're the world's most famous polling organization.) In hindsight it should have been obvious that I'd hate the job—I don't like talking on the phone, and that's all you do at Gallup. But that wasn't even why.
It's not that the work itself was hard. I was pretty good at the technical aspects of the job. I could stick to the script without improvising, I knew what I could say to coerce people into answering questions properly without tainting the results, and so on. It was air conditioned, and it paid pretty well. I didn't have to lift heavy vats of oil or stick my hands into 400-degree fryers or mop floors. But it was kind of emotionally traumatizing. It didn't take long to realize that I would never be good at the job. I never even did well enough at the job to get paid on what I did; I always had to be bumped up to minimum wage, as we were paid on commission for surveys completed, and I never completed enough to make more than the minimum.
It's not that I was bad; it's that I wasn't being paid based on how hard I tried. I was paid based on how many people liked the sound of my voice. You could tell that the women who worked there were far more successful in terms of pay than the men. If you sound like a hot young girl, you can make a pretty decent amount of money at Gallup; almost everyone is willing to talk to a hot young girl for a few minutes. It's like phone sex that calls you. Sadly, one or two of the surveys I'd complete each night would be with people who apparently didn't hear when I said my name was Travis, and then would start hitting on me, assuming me to be a hot young girl. I actually had someone hang up on me once when they found out I was a guy.
Now, there were ways that I could have gotten more money. I could have lied to people, or bent the truth, to get them to take the survey. Or, I could have completed surveys with people who didn't actually meet the qualifications of the survey. For example, often our criteria for who we could talk to would be something like "the youngest male over the age of 18 who lives at the house." I imagine that there were people who would accept a survey response from a different guy in the household, or someone who was almost 18, or something similar. The chances of being caught are pretty low (they did randomly listen in on our calls to try to prevent that sort of thing), and as long as you played it off as a mistake it probably would end up being fine. You'd probably get a lot more survey completions if you were dishonest.
But mostly I think it was my inability to sound like a hot young girl. And that feeling that no matter what I did, I wasn't going to improve much; that most men who worked there were doomed—that was really depressing and crushing. The women were all more experienced because turnover was lower, and they just did better. I imagine that a lot of women and minorities must feel that at some point in their life, that they were pretty much just screwed. I had to get out of that job. I stuck with it for the summer because I needed the money and didn't want to start someplace and then work there for just a month, but it depressed me more and more. They spend a solid week training their interviewers (phone grunts), and because of this everyone signs a contract promising to work for them for at least six months.
But I couldn't do it. At the end of the summer I said I was going to transfer to the downtown call center so I could work during school. Once school started and I first walked into the call center to meet my new boss, the feelings of doom and gloom were stronger than they'd ever been. I walked up to the manager, introduced myself, and said that he didn't know me, but I wanted to resign effective immediately. He was understanding and wished me well. I handed him my security badge and walked out.
The feeling I got when I walked out of that call center was one of the best shifts in morale I'd ever experienced. That was the only time I'd ever really quit a job.
Currently listening: Bill Brown—Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, USA theme
It's not that the work itself was hard. I was pretty good at the technical aspects of the job. I could stick to the script without improvising, I knew what I could say to coerce people into answering questions properly without tainting the results, and so on. It was air conditioned, and it paid pretty well. I didn't have to lift heavy vats of oil or stick my hands into 400-degree fryers or mop floors. But it was kind of emotionally traumatizing. It didn't take long to realize that I would never be good at the job. I never even did well enough at the job to get paid on what I did; I always had to be bumped up to minimum wage, as we were paid on commission for surveys completed, and I never completed enough to make more than the minimum.
It's not that I was bad; it's that I wasn't being paid based on how hard I tried. I was paid based on how many people liked the sound of my voice. You could tell that the women who worked there were far more successful in terms of pay than the men. If you sound like a hot young girl, you can make a pretty decent amount of money at Gallup; almost everyone is willing to talk to a hot young girl for a few minutes. It's like phone sex that calls you. Sadly, one or two of the surveys I'd complete each night would be with people who apparently didn't hear when I said my name was Travis, and then would start hitting on me, assuming me to be a hot young girl. I actually had someone hang up on me once when they found out I was a guy.
Now, there were ways that I could have gotten more money. I could have lied to people, or bent the truth, to get them to take the survey. Or, I could have completed surveys with people who didn't actually meet the qualifications of the survey. For example, often our criteria for who we could talk to would be something like "the youngest male over the age of 18 who lives at the house." I imagine that there were people who would accept a survey response from a different guy in the household, or someone who was almost 18, or something similar. The chances of being caught are pretty low (they did randomly listen in on our calls to try to prevent that sort of thing), and as long as you played it off as a mistake it probably would end up being fine. You'd probably get a lot more survey completions if you were dishonest.
But mostly I think it was my inability to sound like a hot young girl. And that feeling that no matter what I did, I wasn't going to improve much; that most men who worked there were doomed—that was really depressing and crushing. The women were all more experienced because turnover was lower, and they just did better. I imagine that a lot of women and minorities must feel that at some point in their life, that they were pretty much just screwed. I had to get out of that job. I stuck with it for the summer because I needed the money and didn't want to start someplace and then work there for just a month, but it depressed me more and more. They spend a solid week training their interviewers (phone grunts), and because of this everyone signs a contract promising to work for them for at least six months.
But I couldn't do it. At the end of the summer I said I was going to transfer to the downtown call center so I could work during school. Once school started and I first walked into the call center to meet my new boss, the feelings of doom and gloom were stronger than they'd ever been. I walked up to the manager, introduced myself, and said that he didn't know me, but I wanted to resign effective immediately. He was understanding and wished me well. I handed him my security badge and walked out.
The feeling I got when I walked out of that call center was one of the best shifts in morale I'd ever experienced. That was the only time I'd ever really quit a job.
Currently listening: Bill Brown—Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, USA theme
Labels: work
Thursday, April 17
Oink
My office is adjacent to a conference room, and I think that that contributes somewhat to my trashcan being more of a public entity than it otherwise would be. I often come into my office and notice a variety of Starbucks cups, candy bar wrappers, and other food detritus in there. I occasionally wonder whether the very people who add trash to my trashcan see the contents and think to themselves, "Good Lord, this guy's such a pig."
Labels: work
Wednesday, April 9
Deer in headlights as a business tool
I've discovered that the "deer in the headlights" look is a great business tool. Someone just stopped by my office and I used it to great effect.
Bob: Hey Travis... do you know: to apply fine-grained permissions to a list item, do—
Travis: [silent, terrified look with eyes wide open]
Bob: Okay, that's a no. [leaves]
The whole conversation was over in ten seconds. Great success!
Bob: Hey Travis... do you know: to apply fine-grained permissions to a list item, do—
Travis: [silent, terrified look with eyes wide open]
Bob: Okay, that's a no. [leaves]
The whole conversation was over in ten seconds. Great success!
Labels: work
Thursday, April 3
Office socks
It's pretty well-known that if you're in college and you want to let your roommate know that you're having sex and therefore he or she should not enter the room, you put a sock on the door handle. At work, when people are busy with an interview or just won't want to be interrupted, they put a sticky note on their door that says "EMAIL ONLY." I wonder how many people would get it if I just stuck a sock on my door handle instead.
Labels: work
Thursday, March 27
Rickrolled
I was just Rickrolled by a news station on TV. I was sitting at lunch, and Never Gonna Give You Up started playing, and then a few moments later the smiling news anchor said something about Rickrolling.
It was awkward.
It was awkward.
Saturday, March 15
A fairly unlikely supervillian
[This post contains minor Heroes spoilers if you haven't seen more than a couple episodes of season one.]
The SharePoint Designer team is far from large enough to take up its own building, or even its own floor in a building, so we share space with various other teams. One nearby team is Project. They've got a world map up on the wall with pins and strings and peoples' faces to show just how international the team is, which is kind of cool.
Of course, in the wrong hands, that information could be very dangerous. Imagine what could happen if Sylar got a visitor badge and found that map. If I wake up some day and read in the news that some engineer on the Project team was found with his or her skull opened up and their brains removed, I'll immediately know what happened. Be on the lookout for a telekinetic villian with the superhuman ability to create Gantt charts.
Currently listening: 50 Cent—In da Club (hey, at least I'm honest)
The SharePoint Designer team is far from large enough to take up its own building, or even its own floor in a building, so we share space with various other teams. One nearby team is Project. They've got a world map up on the wall with pins and strings and peoples' faces to show just how international the team is, which is kind of cool.
Of course, in the wrong hands, that information could be very dangerous. Imagine what could happen if Sylar got a visitor badge and found that map. If I wake up some day and read in the news that some engineer on the Project team was found with his or her skull opened up and their brains removed, I'll immediately know what happened. Be on the lookout for a telekinetic villian with the superhuman ability to create Gantt charts.
Currently listening: 50 Cent—In da Club (hey, at least I'm honest)
Superheroes happen here
I dreamed that I was at a team-wide meeting at work, and one of the program managers was up in front of everyone arguing that we should change the UI styles of the feature I'm working on.
Him: What font is it using?
Me: Um, Segoe UI 9.
Him: That's so boring. Everything uses that font. What colors?
Me: Um, black, white, and blue.
Him: That's stupid. We need something exciting.
He complained that it wasn't sleek enough. For a demonstration, he logged into World of Warcraft to show us his UI (WoW lets you replace the UI with your own), which was minimalist and futuristic, with a superhero theme. He had added a lot of mods that made the game look like a comic book—when he attacked monsters or they attacked him, Batman-style "BIFF!" "BAM!" starbursts would appear on his screen. During this "presentation" my own program manager just yelled out "come on, this is bullshit!" which was fairly awkward.
He played for about five minutes or so, and never got to the thing he wanted to show as inspiration for our UI. At that time, he got a Facebook notification popup, and it appeared over his WoW window. I don't remember the exact text, but it was somebody's status update, and it was pretty offensive, at least as things that appear in popups while you're giving a presentation go. It was something very close to this:
At that point, my manager's manager stood up and told him that that was enough. He was pretty annoyed that he never got to show his idea, but he sat back down and shut up. Then the dream ended.
Him: What font is it using?
Me: Um, Segoe UI 9.
Him: That's so boring. Everything uses that font. What colors?
Me: Um, black, white, and blue.
Him: That's stupid. We need something exciting.
He complained that it wasn't sleek enough. For a demonstration, he logged into World of Warcraft to show us his UI (WoW lets you replace the UI with your own), which was minimalist and futuristic, with a superhero theme. He had added a lot of mods that made the game look like a comic book—when he attacked monsters or they attacked him, Batman-style "BIFF!" "BAM!" starbursts would appear on his screen. During this "presentation" my own program manager just yelled out "come on, this is bullshit!" which was fairly awkward.
He played for about five minutes or so, and never got to the thing he wanted to show as inspiration for our UI. At that time, he got a Facebook notification popup, and it appeared over his WoW window. I don't remember the exact text, but it was somebody's status update, and it was pretty offensive, at least as things that appear in popups while you're giving a presentation go. It was something very close to this:
At that point, my manager's manager stood up and told him that that was enough. He was pretty annoyed that he never got to show his idea, but he sat back down and shut up. Then the dream ended.
Monday, March 3
Misaddressed mail finally pays off
My email alias at work is very frequently mistyped by other people, so I end up getting a lot of peoples' mail. Sometimes it's weird personal stuff, like information about someone's kids' upcoming cheerleading competitions (this one has happened three times or so already), or someone's travel itinerary, and rarely it's particularly confidential, like some corporate strategy in some area of the company that I didn't know existed, and the sender will follow-up with what I call the "holy crap please destroy that mail immediately and don't share it with anyone" email. (Serious business is serious business.) I get some sort of misaddressed mail on average about once a day.
Today I got another misaddressed package delivery. It turned out to be a box of hardware for Microsoft Game Studios. I informed the person it was supposed to be for, and he came and picked it up from my office a couple hours later. For my troubles I received copies of Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties for Windows, and Mass Effect for the 360. Finally, misaddressed mail pays off!
Now I just have to decide whether it's worth waiting for the PC release of Mass Effect (May 6) and making a trade.
Today I got another misaddressed package delivery. It turned out to be a box of hardware for Microsoft Game Studios. I informed the person it was supposed to be for, and he came and picked it up from my office a couple hours later. For my troubles I received copies of Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties for Windows, and Mass Effect for the 360. Finally, misaddressed mail pays off!
Now I just have to decide whether it's worth waiting for the PC release of Mass Effect (May 6) and making a trade.
Wednesday, February 27
Brutalized by a coffee-wielding marauder
Well, it finally happened. I knew it would happen sooner or later, considering how little people pay attention to where they're going while they powerwalk through the hallways to their next meeting. (This guy had to be a program manager. I'd, like, bet money that he was a PM. You can tell PMs apart from developers and testers by the way they walk: PM-dar.) Today I was brutalized by a coffee-wielding marauder. I was walking straight, and he turned a corner quickly and, fearing for his life, lashed out at me with a coffee-based attack. I've gotten enough of it out that I might be able to fix my shirt later using Shout, but I'll be smelling like coffee all day today.
UPDATE: I think that the shirt looks okay. Maybe in bright light you can tell that it's a little tinted, but there aren't bright lights in my house.
UPDATE: I think that the shirt looks okay. Maybe in bright light you can tell that it's a little tinted, but there aren't bright lights in my house.
Labels: work
Monday, February 11
Clear and present danger
Late last week we got an email at work warning us of increased police presence around campus starting soon (I thought today; I don't recall), and to be sure and follow traffic and safety laws since citations would be issued. It probably has something to do with all of the construction. On the way home from work I saw six violations that could have resulted in serious injury or death. Either nobody reads their mail, or nobody cares...
Labels: washington, work
Tuesday, February 5
Business cards
Three and a half years of working at Microsoft down; about 400 Microsoft Office FrontPage business cards to go. I mostly use them as convenient little scraps of paper that I can keep in my wallet. I have a feeling that I will still have business cards that say "FrontPage" on them when I've been here for ten years.
Surveillance
When I first started working at Microsoft (more as an intern rather than full-time), I remember that I was pretty paranoid about being under constant video surveillance. I'm not anymore, but for a while I was pretty freaked out. I don't really know if they have hidden cameras everywhere around the building, but it seems unlikely, even though all of the doors warn you that the area is under surveillance. (The entrances and exits certainly are.) Really what they have to fear is leaking of information and code, not theft of a monitor here or there, which I assume is pretty rare anyway. I guess that's, at least subconsciously, why I don't even really think about it anymore. They probably have much better things to do with their time than watch people... work.
Actually, I was probably under much closer surveillance when I was working at the grocery store.
Currently listening: Zack Hexum—Who Knew
Actually, I was probably under much closer surveillance when I was working at the grocery store.
Currently listening: Zack Hexum—Who Knew
Labels: work
Friday, January 25
Friday already
Well, it's Friday already. I really don't have much of a sense of time anymore. But, I can say that I'm doing better. The fever and chills were gone by yesterday, and as of last night I at least feel well enough to sit in front of the computer and write some code and some documentation. Not exactly firing on all cylinders, but doing well enough to get by. The hope is that I'll continue to recuperate over the weekend, and by Monday I'll be ready to return to work. Assuming that things continue at their current rate, I should be okay.
And next year I'll remember to go get that flu shot. I always intend to get it, but I'm always busy during the window in which it's available and miss it. With as much money as my illness has cost my overlords, you'd think that it would be worthwhile for them to incentivize getting that flu shot. I dunno; give people a Windows or Xbox game for getting it or something. Maybe it's not legal for companies to encourage their minions to be injected with chemicals.
And next year I'll remember to go get that flu shot. I always intend to get it, but I'm always busy during the window in which it's available and miss it. With as much money as my illness has cost my overlords, you'd think that it would be worthwhile for them to incentivize getting that flu shot. I dunno; give people a Windows or Xbox game for getting it or something. Maybe it's not legal for companies to encourage their minions to be injected with chemicals.
Thursday, January 17
Convenient, but weird
I'm somewhat convinced by now that the security system is in some way connected to the elevator system here. I think that when somebody swipes their badge to get in through the front doors, if there are any unused elevators at the time, one returns to the first floor. More than half the time when I enter the building, an elevator immediately opens for me as soon as I round the corner, even though there's no one around who could have pushed the button. It's weird. Convenient, but weird.
Labels: work
