Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with office

Open plan offices: Do they suck?

Mike1024 — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:06:01 -0800

ArchitectureFilter: What evidence supports the use of open plan offices, from a worker productivity perspective? I recently went on a tour of a newly constructed office building. It's very open plan (picture) with several hundred people in one contiguous area spanning multiple floors.

Most of my past experience has been in shared enclosed offices (2-7 people in an enclosed space) and when touring the building, it struck me that the wide-open environment would be noisy, which would present a distraction that would negatively impact upon workers' productivity.

However, if the negative effects were as bad as they intuitively seem, the building would not have been built in this style. Clearly, there must have been rigorous studies performed demonstrating that open plan designs do not have a substantial negative impact on productivity.

Where can I find these studies?

I need inspiration for my new home office

carefulmonkey — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:13:29 -0800

Please give me home office inspiration I'm redecorating my home office and I need inspiration. I found a great one on lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/mccoy/) and I was hoping the hivemind would be able to show other neat offices. This might seem silly but I thought I would try. To help I'm also going to give a rundown of my likes.

Likes:
Apple
David Bowie
Iggy Pop
Batman
Urban Fashion

Does anyone remember a spherical cubicle?

tzikeh — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:28:30 -0800

I saw a website or read an article about an ergonomic "cubicle" that was actually a very large, balanced sphere. The person would lie down inside the sphere in a perfectly supporting "chair" (somewhat like a first-class recliner), facing upwards; the keyboard was at lap level, and the monitor hung from the top of the sphere. Now I can't find it. Help?

Need to lose office furniture in Widnes.

emperor.seamus — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:14:14 -0800

I know this question comes up once for every location on the globe now and again, but does anyone know anywhere around the Widnes/Cheshire area that would buy or take some (rather nice) office equipment off my hands? Delivering it would be very difficult as I'm working for a very small firm who don't really have the money or the time to arrange anything on a larger scale. Anyone know of anywhere suitable in the area?

Office Go Zoom Zoom Zoom in the Room Room Room

ian1977 — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:46:08 -0800

Why would a laptop+conference projection thing make MS office docs expand? During a meeting, my boss was having trouble with his laptop. It was hooked up to the in house projector. Anytime he would open an MS Office document (he tried Powerpoint, Excel and Word, 2003 I think) it would expand to the maximum zoom, but it would scale up through each step, like someone was dragging the zoom bar. If he dragged it back to small, it would just zoom back in. He mentioned that it had happened before, but only in this one room.

Anyone know whats up with that?

Distinguishing voice calls from incoming faxes

letitrain — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:17:53 -0800

I have two telephone lines going into my office. If I'm on the first line, the second line rings. I also have a fax connected to the second line. How do I keep the fax from picking up regular phone calls, but make sure it picks up incoming faxes? More details: the phone is this RCA Visys with answering machine. The fax is a Xerox 6115 multifunction. The line coming into the phone is a single wire "line 1 / line 2" and the line going into the fax is line 2 only. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

cocktail party near Irvine/Costa Mesa/Fountain Valley?

Joannalaine — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:33:46 -0800

What is a good office party venue in the Irvine/Costa Mesa/Fountain Valley, CA area? We are planning a small, informal cocktail party for the folks at the office. There will be about 30 people attending. We need a place that isn't too fancy, but has a separate room for us and can serve drinks and appetizers. The Yardhouse in Triangle Square would have been ideal, but that location does not have a separate room. We may be considering the location at the Irvine Spectrum if we can't find anywhere else. Our office is on the Costa Mesa/Fountain Valley border, so something within 10-15 min of here would be preferred.

Microsoft Exchange Server for Epsilon Semi-Morons?

loquacious — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:39:04 -0800

How do I set up Microsoft Exchange (or Outlook) Server for a small office? I'm providing basic knuckle-dragger tech support for a small office, and one of the things they want to implement and that I want to provide eventually is an Exchange or Outlook server.

Where do I begin? What should I watch out for? What about security issues?

I will be using Server 2003 and a primarily XP client base.

What's the best option for office chairs in the UK?

idiomatika — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:40:56 -0800

Does anyone have any recommendations for office chairs in the UK? When originally setting up my home office, I foolishly went for a cheap chair, and my back has suffered as a result. All the other questions I found on this topic were about chairs available in the US. I'd rather not go for something too expensive, but the cheaper end of the market probably isn't worth bothering with.

Thanks in advance!

Make my card-signings witty!

KateHasQuestions — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:53:20 -0800

What witty things can I write on co-workers cards? About once a month cards get passed around our office for everyone to sign. Writing "Happy Birthday!" and "Congratulations on your new addition to the family!" and "It's been great working with you, good luck at your new job" seems so lame, but I can never think of wittier things to write, especially on the spot, for people I don't know too well.

Help me come up with a few good things to write for all of life's occasions - birthday, wedding, baby, leaving the company, promotion, death in the family - so I would have a good stock to choose from next time I have to sign a card.

'Office Outings' and 'Team Building' ideas in the Seattle area.

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 07:25:33 -0800

'Office Outings' and 'Team Building' ideas in the Seattle area. I work with a fun, young company on the Eastside. We are brainstorming for fun, interactive 'team building' events.

THIS DOES NOT entail trust falls, ropes courses, or get-to-know-you games. We're talking about fun, adult, hang-out time.

What we're looking for...
- Something that can be done between the hours of 3PM-10PM (doesn't have to fill up the entire block of time) on Mon-Fri of any week.

Things you should know...
- This is for a group of 10-12 individuals.
- Average age: 28
- All but 3 are either engaged or married.
- My company has a very large (but not unlimited) budget.
- Alcohol is always served at other company events and placed on the company tab.

Dual-boot Mac: which version of MSOffice, 2007 or 2008?

bartleby — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:16:48 -0800

Dual-Boot Macbook; OSX (home)/ Windows (work). Need MS Office on both without rebooting. Office 2007 on the Windows partition + Parallels seems to make the most sense. Anything I should know about? This macbook is going to have a split personality as far as I can maintain practically. Most of the time it'll be in Home mode, booting to OSX, - but I will have to access its work personality daily, and I don't want to have to reboot to do so.

I will need functional access to Office, specifically Outlook (or Entourage, if I got Office:Mac 2008) to access work's Exchange server and/or sync with a WM6 smartphone (Outlook->MissingSync->iCal isn't cutting it for me).

Seems silly to pay for it twice, and it appears that with Parallels, I can run the Windows version in OSX while the reverse doesn't seem possible.

Any performance issues I should know about? Am I missing some crucial idea/hack/OMG NO I tried that and it gave me fits?

How can I get whiteboard or dry erase space, without paying a lot of money?

k7lim — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:34:35 -0800

>How can I have lots of whiteboard/dry-erase surface, without paying a lot, and without altering the walls/furniture of my apartment? I'm subletting a place this summer, to get a ton of work done on a collaborative project. We'd love to have the ample whiteboard space that tech companies have, but we don't have deep pockets.

Our landlord has asked us not to hang posters, so gluing dry erase sheets to surfaces seems out of the question.

Working from home -- tips and tricks?

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:13:56 -0800

Working from home -- tips and tricks? Starting next week, I'll be taking a job that will have me working from home 100 percent of the time. While I've answered email and such at home before, none of my past experience will have been anywhere close to the duration and degree I'll be doing now.

Everything about this company and position will be done virtually via Skype, Basecamp, Google Docs, etc. The team will be in the Pacific, Eastern and GMT time zones (Pacific for me and a few others).

I'm looking for your best tips, tricks, books, online resources, etc., to do this as effectively as possible. I've already got a nice, quiet, secluded work space to keep me away from the wife, kids and dog. I'm familiar with the major tech options. What else should I be doing, reading about, scheduling, planning and looking into?

Mac Office 2008 install Hell

mosk — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:18:11 -0800

How can I install the Mac Office 2008 Volume License (VLA) version over Mac Office 2008 Peronal License version without losing any user data? Long story short: I have an Intel iMac that has Office 2008 installed with a personal use license. It's on a local network with another, older iMac that also has Office 2008 installed with the same personal use license. Both computers are running Leopard.

Due to the restrictions of the personal license, only one machine can run Office at a time. I now have a volume license, and need to convert at least one of these machines to a volume license installation. I DO NOT want to lose the Microsoft user data on either machine!

I tried the obvious and deleted the Office 2008 folder on the Intel iMac, containing all the personally licensed Office apps, and installed the volume license versions, but this does not seem to change the licensing info: Office apps show the old, personally licensed product ID number on their splash screens, and behave as personally licensed apps (i.e., the older iMac running Office 2008 concurrently with a personal license prevents Office 2008 from launching on the Intel iMac).

What do I need to do to install or convert to the volume license version without losing my existing user data? Neither Microsoft's KB nor Google is giving me the nugget of info I'm looking for.

Can my employer paid everyone else overtime but me?

boognish — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:11:03 -0800

Everyone in my department at work (desktop publishing) is paid overtime except me (I'm salaried) and we all have the same job title and responsibilities. Is this legal? I used to be hourly but then was promoted to a salaried position about a year ago. Then around the beginning of 2008, my position was eliminated and I was placed back into my old department and given the same position as everyone else but I was never switched back to hourly. Then we got busy and I worked a lot of "overtime" that I never got paid for. Do I have to be paid hourly like everyone else since we all have the same position, and if so, am I entitled to the overtime money I should have received?

Does anyone know of any resources/suggestions on getting trapped birds out of office buildings?

BlackStrapMolasses — Fri, 23 May 2008 08:21:46 -0800

I work in a pretty large office building, and while walking the bi-level lobby floors I always hear trapped birds chirping and see them hopping around... I have no idea how they get in, there multiple sets of revolving doors, and are also regular side glass doors that are never left hanging open. The only other entrance is a subway entrance, with multiple revolving doors before anyone is able to access outside. More detail following:

I've overheard someone once say that he brought in birdseed and left it in some of the planters to feed them. But I was wondering if anyone has ever worked as a janitor in a building and had to address the situation. This can't be a unique problem, and I'm wondering if there are any resources that I can contact, or if there's anything I can do aside from throwing birdseed at them. I don't want to call Animal Control, that name just has a negative connotation to me, I associate "control" with "kill"?

I'm not really trying to take on solving the problem myself, just wondering what others have done in this situation/previous experiences.

Medialess

chuckdarwin — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:01:34 -0800

Can I actually buy an Office 2007 DISC? As in, the actual media? I have really struggled with this, since reinstalling Office 2007 on a reformatted 'Office-ready PC' is impossible: Reformatting obviously wipes out your Office install and the the trial version (which is the only thing available to download) is incompatible with (some of?) Microsoft's own license keys. The Indian support staff refused to help me with this issue (maybe because it's a known issue?). They actually sent to me a non-existent knowledge base article!

What is bookkeeping and how can I learn it?

DMan — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:55:51 -0800

What is bookkeeping as it relates to office/secretarial work, and how can I learn more about it? In job listings for secretaries and other office staff, one listed skill requirement is that of bookkeeping. What exactly does this entail in an office environment, and how can I learn more about it? I'd really prefer online sources but if you know of a great book on the topic, that'd be great too.

Thanks!

Office War!

Jofus — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:33:38 -0800

How do I start a good natured inter-office war? At work we have a life sized, pose-able foam mannequin with a storm trooper's helmet on. (Hey! Guess which industry I work in!) We leave him downstairs by the front doors- which we have open at the moment as the sun is shining.

The unit next door just posted a letter through the door, in cut up newspaper letters with a photo of our stormtrooper attached to it. It said that unless we buy them 10 ice creams, they're going to do something terrible to him.

So, great. They have a sense of humour.

We've had a lengthy internal meeting about this and decided to escalate this without hesitation or further thought.

Suggestions from the hive mind please on fun ways to get back at them. Your limits are, say a £50 budget and no one must actually be killed.

(Pics to follow)

Halogens hate me (and the feeling's mutual)

dinger — Sun, 04 May 2008 14:52:58 -0800

Help me find decent non-halogen desk lamps. So one of my six-month-old halogen desk lamps just went dark. Once again, a transformer fizzled. This is the third halogen desk lamp to bite the dust on me in about two years. I've gone from expensive (Tizio from Artemide) to midrange (powder coated aluminum from Costco) to cheap (this latest plastic pair from Ikea). No matter what I buy one of the pair always dies, and it's always the transformer. At the repair shop it's always the same story: It would cost more than the lamp is worth to replace the transformer. (Well, not always. In the case of the Tizio it seems that Tizio transformers are only available from virgin albino trolls and must be installed at a small shop on one of Saturn's moons). And no, it's not the bulbs, and yes, I'm aware that you should never touch them with your bare fingers. At any rate, I'm over halogens.

It's been about two years since the hivemind was solicited for desk lamp recommendations, and at that time the question specified halogens. Since then LED's have matured and entered the market, natural-spectrum fluorescents have become popular, and the ever-dependable incandescents have hung on. So, un-halogen me. What are your recommendations for cool, non-halogen desk lamps?

My taste runs to clean, sleek, and simple designs, what I guess you'd call modern or minimalist. I don't mind spending money for decent quality, and I'm not enough of a snob to turn up my nose to a bargain. Oh, and as for light output: when I turn them on I want to go blind.

Mesh-back ergonomic office chairs in Canada on a budget? (<$200)

tybeet — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:56:17 -0800

Mesh-back ergonomic office chairs in Canada on a budget? (<$200) Basically, I'm looking for an ergonomic office chair in the sub-$200 range that can be purchased in Canada, and on the cheap.

I've heard that mesh-back chairs offer the best support for the back (my concern is mostly upper/mid-back as I have a slight curvature of the spine and I tend to get problems around the shoulders) as they conform flexibly to one's back shape. As such I've been looking at chairs like this one from Costco, or these (one, two) from Staples, and finally these two (one, two) from Office Depot. I would prefer to purchase a recycled/used chair as the environmentalist in me would ideally avoid retail shopping, but Ebay turns up nothing in Canadian listings, and craigslist is likewise empty.

Any advice to aid my decision (or even suggestions for alternatives) is appreciated.

One form to rule them all...

freudenschade — Thu, 01 May 2008 11:57:21 -0800

Creating a form template for colleagues to use at work that needs to meet the following criteria: 1. Allow text fields and drop-down selection boxes. 2. Allow users to add additional text in should they see fit (i.e. doesn't disallow all input outside of form fields). 3. Will allow rows (the form will be arranged like a table) to be duplicated/copied & pasted, including the form fields contained within those rows. 4. Is formatted nicely enough to be passed along to a client and read clearly. 5. Is openable/usable by your average user who doesn't have access to super expensive/specialized software. What program/functions should I be using to create such a document?

I tried Word 2003, but it seems that using form fields requires you to "lock" the document, allowing no editing after the form structure is saved as a template. I had some success with Word 2007 (and its updated form functions), but everyone else in my office uses Office 2003, and even Microsoft's fix that supposedly allows 2003 users to open/edit/save 2007 files still won't allow for opening of DOTX (Word 2007 template) files. Acrobat seems out of the question because PDFs also only allow editing/input within form fields.

Is there something I'm missing in Word 2003 that would make it work for me? Other options? Help, please.

How to set up a server room with a 10 TB rack?

ShawnStruck — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:40:21 -0800

Going to be moving into a new office space, where will will get to redesign some of the space for our needs. We will need to set of a 10TB server rack-- need to figure out how much space should we set aside for a server room. If you were starting to set up one from scratch, what would you start considering? What sort of things do we need to worry about-- room temparture, or airflow or both? Cooling racks? How big would the room need to be?

Help me sell an office's furniture in SoCal.

The World Famous — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:12:43 -0800

What is the best way to sell office furniture in Southern California (Orange County)? I have an entire small office worth of office furniture that is less than a year old and needs to be sold within about the next month. The company we bought from is not being helpful. With Craigslist as a last resort, what is the best way to sell an entire office's furniture and get a decent amount for it? I realize we won't get anywhere near what we paid, but it's pretty nice furniture, including a big conference table, leather chairs, and several big, nice desks and other furniture. We also have a phone system to sell, a server, copier, and that sort of thing, so if you know who to sell that sort of thing to, that would be great, too.