A PA's Perspective on Moving Offices

I have renamed our office block “Derren Brown House” as we are moving round offices yet again in the vain hope that we will then stop being 20% under capacity for space. I’m convinced that the Facilities people think that if they keep shuffling us around, we’ll either get fed up and leave, die through exhaustion or get lost in the scrum. Any of these options works for them as it leaves a free desk. Failing that, they will have to resort to Derren-style misdirection and psychological manipulation to get us to believe that we are now better off than we were. Quite how being moved from a very small but private space to a larger shared one on a floor further away from the kitchen means ‘better off’, I am not sure.

Bossie refuses to be shifted which means I have been spared the Green Crate Agony. Nearly all other PAs in our department have been busy packing, waiting about doing crosswords for half the day and then unpacking as it becomes obvious the timetable has gone pear-shaped. During this time, clients not heard from in nearly a century, have been phoning with queries necessitating the retrieval of files from the green crates. It’s at times like this you can understand why moving house is considered one of the most stressful activities we experience. It’s all about your territory and your space and, let’s face it, your status. Never mind that you are now sharing a tiny office space with a neat freak, what does it say about your importance to the organisation that you no longer have the window seat?

It’s easy to get office moves a little out of proportion as we don’t feel in control of anything very much. A bit of pre-planning doesn’t go amiss but still have your crossword to hand:

Chuck it out – don’t keep moving the same old dusty unused files, chipped coffee mugs and half-dead plant. Unless you need to keep paperwork for legal reasons, seriously consider giving it the old heave-ho. Is anyone likely to ask for the sales figures from eight years ago? Do you need a day file from 2002? What do you actually use and are likely to need? It may represent hours of work on your part but box files full of unused documents are nothing more than clutter. Get rid.

Number the crates – yes, obvious, I know but if you number them you can log where you put things and then it saves going through all of them trying to find it. Look on it as a chance to practice your Access database skills.

Pack it away – start packing straight away. You’re bound to have projects that are on a long cycle where the files are used quarterly or less. Unless that quarterly meeting or report is due within the next couple of weeks, put the files in the crate when you have finished this paragraph. Leaving it all until the last minute because you might need it is not clever and is the sort of behaviour that scuppers the moving timetable. Just like packing for a week’s holiday, it always takes three times longer than you think it will.

Emergency box – just like house moves, you’ll need to find some things pretty quickly. All your desktop furniture, as I believe it’s called, should go in a separate smaller box, along with files relating to the ‘live’ projects you are working on. Plus the absolute essentials such as coffee mug, photo of the dog, novelty Wicked Willie calendar and faded postcard saying” Take my boss….please!”

Label it – label everything with your name and preferably the number of the room where you are going. Label your desk, your PC, your chair, your fan, yourself. Assume nothing. It may only be 20 yards down the corridor but believe me, your stapler will have gone by the time you get there and unpack. It’s absolutely uncanny and worthy of Derren Brown himself. If you think it’s not possible to lose your chair, chew on this: I read in one of the Sunday papers about a couple who allowed the people who had bought their house to move in on the same day that they, the vendors, were moving out – and at exactly the same time. When the purchaser’s new washing machine arrived, they were already there with some of their furniture and signed for it. So far, so good. Unfortunately, when the vendors reached their new home, they discovered their washing machine wasn’t on the van. Why? Because the company who had delivered and installed the new washing machine at their old house had taken away their old machine which had promptly been scrapped. If moving can get so confusing that grown-ups can lose major items of household equipment, imagine how easily your chair can find its way into someone else’s junk cupboard, never to be seen again.

When the dust finally settles, don’t forget to treat yourself to lunch with your new room mate and a big bunch of flowers to mark your territory in the nicest way. Welcome to your new home.