Tea matters (130/365)

[white_hart]

The trouble with architects is that they seem to see buildings as primarily artistic, and not functional. Which is why every time we have a meeting about our new building it ends up overrunning with lots of people asking questions such as:

Where are people supposed to make tea?

Will there be a quiet space for people to sit and eat lunch?

If the kitchen is in the open foyer area, how do we make sure that people don't take other people's food, or personal mugs, or wine that's cooling for receptions? And who is going to tidy things up when (inevitably) people don't put their cups in the dishwasher?

Yes, but really, tea is actually important, and it just feels like it's been shoved in here as an afterthought. And no, saying "but there will be a cafe in the building" doesn't help, because who wants to pay through the nose for a teabag and some indifferently hot water?

And that is why this afternoon's committee meeting overran by 45 minutes and left me incapable of spending the rest of the day doing anything other than filing my email. Which, to be fair, did need doing.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

If the kitchen is in the open foyer area

Why on earth would anyone who has ever attended a school or worked in an office or met human beings think that was a good idea? Do the architects really send their secretaries out fo Costa every time they want a coffee?

[white_hart]

I can see that if you were in a trendy business's office then having the kitchen in a central space that people could wander out of their offices to might work. (There'd probably be a ping-pong table too.) But this is an academic building and it isn't going to work that way!

[nineveh_uk]

Come to think of it, that's how it worked in the Robert Hooke building and it was fine, but it was a smaller building and specific space, so when you wandered out to the pigeon holes and to the kitchen or the loo, you met people you knew to chat to, not random members of the public.

[white_hart]

Yes, I think it's different in what is basically an office environment rather than one that has teaching rooms and students wandering in and out.

[hilarita]

Yes. Our open plan kitchen space works, but then we don't have large teaching rooms (only stuff for small-group teaching), the building isn't really open to the general public, and the kitchen area is also upstairs. But that's because most of our teaching happens on the other side of the road.

[joyeuce]

The last library I worked in had the kitchen area in the basement (not open to the public), in a corner with the photocopier and the ladies' loo. Which was at least sociable, in a weird kind of way. However, the staff break room, which was the only place in the building you could go to eat your lunch other than at your desk, was on the fourth floor.

[white_hart]

I'm not sure the architects have really grasped that we are a large department. Their plans for the foyer had a table for about 8 people and they said "you could have Faculty meetings or dinners here!". Um, no we couldn't, we have 80 permanent postholders plus lots of fixed-term and college people!