The Thursday Ramble: Offices

 The photo above is George Washington's office at Mt. Vernon, his home office. This gets me to thinking about some of the offices or work spaces I have had over the years. 

My first office I shared with a retired CIA agent, in Titusville, Florida overlooking the Kennedy Space Center, you could see the Vertical Assembly building. John was great fun and had a lifetime of great stories to tell. After a year or so, I moved up the street to another firm and didn't have an office for a year or so, then to a new office where we were all assigned cubicles. 

Then I moved to Orlando, and went to work for a home building company. My work was in the field offices of new communities under construction.  The offices were generally in a garage finished to serve as an office.  In the seven years I was with that firm I probably worked in a dozen offices. When that firm was sold, and I was not included in the sale, I moved onto another builder. The offices there were nicer, again usually garage spaces finished to serve as an office. I bounced around for a couple of years after that job ended, doing the same work for a couple of different companies - ending up being hired by the company that bought the first builder that I worked for.  Then moved back north. 

The house in Lexington had an open loft overlooking the living room, we shared that as office space.  The first job I had in Lexington was in retail, long hours on my feet and no office. Then I was hired as a credit analyst but the work was done in a massive room filled with desks, computers and phones. I left there to start law school. I spent thousands of hours studying in that home office during law school and preparing to pass the bar exam (on the first try, once and only once in a lifetime.) 

I received a job offer in about March of my last year of law school, the job started the Monday after my last law school exam. They allowed liberal time for me to study for the bar exam. My first office there was a converted hallway, they had closed over all but one door, put in a large desk and that was where I worked for a couple of years. We moved from there to larger and nicer office space. My next office was 14 feet by 14 feet with 10 foot ceilings and a large window that opened. It was by a far margin the nicest office I ever worked in. Large, bright, private, comfortable. I worked at that first job after law school for 9 1/2 years. 

Then I moved to DC.  My first office there was in a 100 year old bank building just around the corner from the White House. I was at the end of the hall, on I think the 6th floor, with a nice window. The office was long and narrow.  The furniture was terrible, most of my work was done on a small modern table in front of the window. There were five or six file cabinets filled with all of my predecessors old projects clustering the space. I loved the location and being at the end of the hallway made it quiet and private. 

A few years later, the organization sold the building, and we moved to leased space about 4  blocks northwest of there. The space was freshly remodeled with new or newer furniture. My office was tiny, 10 by 10 feet. And no window. The decision to not have windows in any of the offices was unpopular. I once offered to trade my office for a cubical backed up to a bay window, and she said, thanks but no thanks.  I retired from that office. 

Now my office, is a desk in the corner at the end of my bedroom. I have done a lot of work here, and continue to do so.  

What is your workspace like.