Circumnavigation

The building I work in is small. This is especially true for a campus building. Campus buildings, even here in second-floor-pancake-earthquake-zone-SoCal, are fairly large, multiple story deals. My building is not. It is one floor and has two entrances: one for my office and another on the south side of the building and a second entrance on the north side of the building.

The two offices on the south side of the building are busy student service centered ones. The north side of the building holds a number of community service offices.

I should also note that the building my office is in belongs to a college of which we are not a part. (My University, like many, is divided into sub-colleges, each with its own Dean, buildings, and money). I get reminded that the space is someone else's with some frequency when we have money conflicts. I control the money for a joint program administered by that college and my own. It's a good deal for me, actually. I'd rather have money than space. Anyway...

The north side of the building underwent a face-lift this summer. It looks really nice--new carpet, new paint, new furniture.

Standard pattern for south-siders is to park in the parking lot on the north side of the building, enter through the north entrance, and come through the rear entrance to our office. It's what I did. It's what everyone did.

Ok, so Other College and I are having one of our regular "let's all get along" meetings and they invite the guy who's in charge of the money and the space to come to the meeting. In a very roundabout way, he asks if we can stop using the north entrance. It's a reasonable request actually. They do counseling in that half of the building. They do work with children and adults with disabilities. They don't need 25 or 30 people walking through the lobby like it's a thoroughfare.

So, I get back from the meeting and write a very carefully worded request to my staff.

Keep in mind please that I am asking them to walk MAYBE 100 feet farther than they have been.

You'd have thought I asked them to run the L.A. Marathon. Or slog through a jungle on their knees. The hostility with which the request was greeted was palpable.

I made the request last Wednesday, when Office Manager was off. Monday when she came in after the holiday, the drama re-emerged. I'm talking coup d'etat level drama. Because they have to walk around a very small building.

I've been contemplating buying them all Table-Mate IIs so they can just live in the office. Or maybe Hover-Rounds?

Change can be hard. I admit as much. When minor change brings such consternation, imagine how they'll feel when we have to move our offices across campus. Actually don't imagine it, the horror is too much for the faint of heart.

Maybe Segways?