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Peopleware, furniture police
Oct. 30th, 2012 08:08 amRe-reading Peopleware, chapter 7. "Furniture police" chapter. When I read the book for the first time ~10 years ago, I thought the chapter was funny and things described there normally do not happen.
They do. Peopleware was published 25 years ago, and it should have became common sense by now in the industry. It did not.
The most weird part of my encounter with "furniture police" is that people who's job responsibility is organizing our workspace are not involved. They are actually doing a very good job and are too busy to add "furniture police" tasks to their set of roles. "Furniture police" I met in the office is a hobby project of informal group of people. That group's charter is to improve our work environment.
How do you improve the work environment? One of their ideas was to give everyone a free ice cream once in a while. Right now on their agenda is to check if all work places appeal to their aesthetics feelings. As "furniture police" is comprised of non-engineers (lawyers, salesmen, secretaries), their aesthetic feeling gets the heaviest blow when they see a wired PCB on a work desk. Also they don't like coffee cups, but I am not guilty here because I would never place a coffee cup next to a powered embedded board.
So they found out that lawyers and secretaries have only phone and a laptop on a desk, and engineers have hardware they work on there. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."
As my management fully supports the cause of "furniture police" (and even agree to trade some engineer's productivity for complying), the only thing I can do is to make sure everyone in the office calls what these people do "furniture police patrols", not "Mr Clean project".
They do. Peopleware was published 25 years ago, and it should have became common sense by now in the industry. It did not.
The most weird part of my encounter with "furniture police" is that people who's job responsibility is organizing our workspace are not involved. They are actually doing a very good job and are too busy to add "furniture police" tasks to their set of roles. "Furniture police" I met in the office is a hobby project of informal group of people. That group's charter is to improve our work environment.
How do you improve the work environment? One of their ideas was to give everyone a free ice cream once in a while. Right now on their agenda is to check if all work places appeal to their aesthetics feelings. As "furniture police" is comprised of non-engineers (lawyers, salesmen, secretaries), their aesthetic feeling gets the heaviest blow when they see a wired PCB on a work desk. Also they don't like coffee cups, but I am not guilty here because I would never place a coffee cup next to a powered embedded board.
So they found out that lawyers and secretaries have only phone and a laptop on a desk, and engineers have hardware they work on there. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."
As my management fully supports the cause of "furniture police" (and even agree to trade some engineer's productivity for complying), the only thing I can do is to make sure everyone in the office calls what these people do "furniture police patrols", not "Mr Clean project".
