sci.research.careers

On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, Beladi Nasralla wrote:

> On Oct 6, 4:28 pm, Old Pif wrote:
>> On 6 Ott, 06:09, Beladi Nasralla wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Meanwhile, the manager of the other department came into my office and ...
>>
>> You mean cubicle?
>
> And your point is ?
>
> Our rooms and cubicles both are termed offices, are in the same
> numbering system, and are in the phone directory. Thanks God, in my
> cubicle I have walls from sides, and the manager has to _come_ to
> me for a discussion instead of just raising on his toes and shouting
> at an opposite side of the building.
>
> Now tell me if your office is room or a cubicle... or, God forbid, a
> desk in an open plane space...
>
>
>

During all of my "career" (meaning career plus postdoc plus graduate
school), I think I had a real office for only half of it.

In a job I would go back to (boring but high security low stress), I had a
desk in a large room with lots of other desks and one person per desk.
Halfway through that job, we got partitions ( . cubicles) with "walls"
about 4-1/2 feet high (BFD) and on three sides of each desk.

I knew tenured faculty at UMAB that had, just like me, a desk in the
corner of a lab. I read books that talked about faculty at colleges and
universities where some new faculty didn't even get a desk in a room.
Where I did half of my undergraduate work, most of the faculty had a desk
in a large room with other desks, all the departments, too. And at another
campus it was the same way. Psychology department had a large room and 50
desks in it. But, in the physics department where tons of grant money came
in, everyone on the faculty had a desk in an office and no more than three
desks per room (one prof/desk). Group leaders got a private office. The
chairs sometimes got a bigger office.

Anyone else with stories of grandiose-posh priviledges? Unless you are at
a high end lawyer or CPA office, you're going to probably be in
underling-proletariate-klingon quarters.