Shifting Office Locations

I usually do not crib about things but I have decided to do that now since it would be a different kind of post and I have told a person or two that I am going to do this post.

All was going well at my office, the place was good and the tea breaks even better, till the time they decided to shift locations for my project. We shifted from a building called 'Cyber Pearl' to 'Cyber Towers"(which is what one could consider the face of the IT/ITES industry in Hyderabad, yes it is the round building which you must have seen on TV). Seems a good move? Wait till you hear my story.

It has been a little over a week since we shifted and I still haven't got used to the place and don't like the look of it .
The first thing which goes against Towers is the fact that it is an older building and seems to have been designed to use all the space possible for work.However a deeper inspection would reveal that even that goal isn't fully achieved due to the circular shape of the building which doesn't allow for baloncies on the outside so has to make to imitations of the indoor variety. THe structure being such that it lends itself to being very dark. So much for the architecture, I haven't yet come to the part where the shift has been an irritant and then there is a real tragedy lurking there too.
I am trying to be expressive and lucid but my horror at being in this place doesn't allow me to go through my limited repetoire of words efficiently.First, coming to the machines on which we work, they are the same but we simply don't have the same access previlege to same number of sites. Earlier our project had access to almost everything other than sport and even that could be got on a few newspaper sites. But now they have blocked newspaper, orkut anything you can think of. Even the proxy avoidance scheme doesn't work with proxy avoidance blocked. The height of it has to be "Philanthropies and Charities blocked", Come on , give me a break!(breaks are also a tragedy here as you are about to find out) This has to be a tragic blow for anyone but for someone like me it is an unmitigated disaster which falls beyond measurement by the Richter scale.

Now, if only the place were more convenient, this could have rankled less. But even to take a break and drink a cup of tea one has to hold the cup of tea in the hand and then swipe the card not once but twice, struggling to keep the door open(Try conjuring up images of someone getting to all sorts of shapes just with a cup in one hand, card in the other and the leg try to keep the door open). It is definitely not funny if the door consistenly bangs into the back as you let it go. Once I agree is funny, twice and thrice too but everytime?

And now to the real bad part. You have to swipe twice everytime you have to go to the toilet!!! I mean what about the poor fellow who is in a hurry. I guess I can't elaborate further without being crude so I stop this paragraph right here. And I just remember the facility here is also real poor and the quantity low. So leading to queues at particular points of time. Ok, I stop here. But give me Pearl anyday!

Now the cafeteria! The food is equally pathetic at both places but the resturant downstairs at Pearl was better for the small snacks(However I admit I am yet to explore this place fully).And I have to go to change floors to get there! The cafeteria in the company however is totally insufficient to even hold the employees. The Coffee Day Express doesn't have enough variety of snack. I guess those who know me will surely be feeling sorry for me by now.

And then there are the elevators(or lifts as some would call). They have to be travelled in to be believed that such a variety too exists. There is one which would qualify to be a compartment in the narrow guage railway and it feels that way too. The lifts, because of the number of people are usually crowded and even when you manage to get into the lift, it takes an age to reach the floor you want. There are friends for whom it takes less time to travel from home to the building than from the ground floor to the office. I would recommend the stairs especially during peak hours.

Oh there is still good coming out of it for me! Maybe I would lose weight! Maybe I would work!!!