Four Rooms; Four People

I haven't posted an update on my office goings on in awhile.

This past week, our office turned into a logic puzzle. First the set up...

Our office consists of four rooms.

Room 1: Monica
Room 2: Pat and I
Room 3: Keisa and our large (70 copies per minute) copy machine
Room 4: Storage and our lunch room

When we moved into our current office three years ago, I was in Room 3 by myself. That lasted about a week when I switched with Keisa because I didn't want to be in a room by myself.

Early last week, Pat requested that she and the copy machine be moved closer to each other. She is our Copy Coordinator and uses the copy machine the most. She is also our, uh, most senior employee - in her late 50's - and says that her feet sometimes hurt her. Plus, she has arthritis.

The obvious answer was to switch Keisa and Pat. Keisa didn't want to switch. She likes the solitude. Even though I'm the boss, I didn't feel it my place to force the move.

Our next solution was to move the copy machine closer to Pat's desk. We tried that for less than a day, but - because our building and electrical set up is from the 1930's - we kept blowing circuits.

Switching Pat with Monica was not an option. Monica's office has exactly one plug. See previous paragraph.

As we were having our third brainstorming meeting, I mentioned to everyone the puzzle about the fox, the goose and the bag of beans - and how our situation could be viewed as a logic puzzle.

After a few more moves, we ended up moving the copy machine and Pat into Room 4 - and are hoping the electrical set up supports our plan. I also advised Pat that she should keep her original desk in Room 2. I believe that she'll get "lonely" in Room 4 by herself. She's the type of person that needs to talk to someone all day long.

We'll see how this move evolves. For now, we have an office of four people in four rooms.