He's actually kinda cute in a really intense way... kinda like Perry Farrell

[venta]

In a moment of unguided bargain-buying, I purchased a 50p drink from the Post Office bargain bin today. It is called Kitsch and comes in a leopard-print bottle.

It's perry and it's actually reasonably drinkable.

Pintwatch is not speaking to me.

Today, I received an email from one of our admin staff at work inviting me to join "the girls" for their Christmas meal this year."The girls" (not my label) constitutes the female "upstairs" staff - in our building there is a fairly strict divide between upstairs (management, legal, admin, accounting, people of uncertain function) and downstairs (programmers). I've occasionally heard remarks like "oh, all the girls went out last Friday" but never before been invited to join them.

I am, for people who don't know me, a girl but a downstairs one. When I joined I was the only female programmer, we briefly rose to three, then back to one, and are now two. I replied that I'd like to join them for lunch - many of the upstairs people I barely know to speak to, and feel I ought to make more effort - and would play along with the Secret Santa which appears to be involved. I fear smarter clothes and chardonnay may be the order of the day.

Rather belatedly, it occurred to me that if, for example, the engineers organised a Blokes' Night Out to which I wasn't invited I'd feel somewhat put out. Is it, therefore, hypocritical of me to join in with a Girls' Christmas Lunch to which I've been invited for my chromosomes rather than my charming and witty banter ? Why, in the workplace, are girly lunches considered acceptable while an outing from which women are excluded thought to be all kinds of bad ?

I suspect that, in a lot of cases, outings like this are organised and none of the excluded people are actually bothered. Few people will protest inequality if they don't actually want the thing they didn't get. The test would come if one of my company's male employees asked (for some reason) to be included. I remember a male friend of mine objecting bitterly that he wasn't invited to a hen night, even though he was close to most of the people involved and expressed interest. I, by contrast, thoroughly enjoyed undyingking's stag night.

I must admit, I'm looking forward with curiosity to a girly lunch. I've no idea what goes on at such things.

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Really? Why?

I didn't used to like the idea, but it works really well at Exony.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Why do I dislike it ?

In general, I dislike open plan rooms as I find them cold (they appear that way even when they're not), unfriendly, barnlike and slightly scary.

In this case, I think that each room at work has its own ethos, and without the boundaries it'd just be bland. Not to mention noisy and distracting. The discussions at present which start between two people and draw in the remaining 3 or so in the room would either never get beyond 2 (losing valuable input) or draw in far more (potentially wasting time).

I think humans (or a lot of them) like to hide in corners, like to have a wall behind them, like to mark out territory and like to have a community around them. Open-plan breaks pretty much all these rules.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

What appears to happen in practice is that what was once 'rooms' becomes 'tables'. There's still boundaries.

Things also aren't that much noisier, though I'm not sure why not! The discussions occasionally pull in people from other tables (like me, if I hear certain key words!), but that's to the good rather than the bad (an awful lot of problems get solved by someone random catching a key word and going, 'oh yes, I had that bug yesterday, you do this to fix it'), and they certainly don't pull in the entire office.

As for a sense of community... R&D are still one community, and Support are another, and Professional Services a third still, but there's much more interaction between them.

Because we also hot-desk (a practice whose theory I hate, but whose practice I love), you can end up sitting with new and interesting people, who can tell you new and interesting things about parts of the system. Because people are, after all, reactionary creatures, there is a tendency for certain people to sit in certain places; for example, I normally sit at a table with two other people, but the fourth spot on that table is whoever comes in too late to sit with the cool kids. Thus we get the benefit of both worlds; the novelty of new perspectives and information, but with a sense of continuous community from the three of us who are always there.

Try it. You might like it :)

[marjory.livejournal.com]

Open-plan is very noisy... Plus there are more people with a stake to disagree re level of heatimg/air-con (from she whose body thermostat runs on sollipsistic lines).