The Office (such as it were)

A FEW WEEKS AGO, THE LOVELY CES WROTE A VERY REVEALING POST ABOUT HER WORKPLACE, FEATURING TONS OF SCENIC PICTURES AND STUFF.

I was quite taken by this intimate look into her work-life. I thought it was daring, very open and told us a lot about her that we didn't already know, which I think is a good thing.

Unlike Ces, however, I don't have my own fancy-schmanzy office where I can just close the doors and take all my clothes off, if I wanted to. No, I work at a newspaper, in a wide-open newsroom.

By most standards, it's probably about a decade behind the times. We are all in pods, separated by silly little structures you could knock over quite easily, walls that are pretending to offer privacy.

On top of that, our newspaper, far more than a century old and the largest in our city of about three-quarters of a million people, was bought in the past few years and we have new management.

A recent and disturbing development has seen our management become panic-stricken, as everywhere else, by possible terrorism. We now have security cameras and must wear ridiculous ID badges.

People are fidgety all over -- even at our newspaper, which used to inhabit an historic building downtown but which several years ago moved into a new building way out in a god-forsaken industrial area.

That's sad.

What all this means is I do not and did not have the freedom to just take a bunch of snapshots, freely, in our newsroom. So I can not be as revealing as Ces was in her post.

On Wednesday morning, having brought my Sony SureShot to work, I looked around in all directions and couldn't see too many people taking notice, so I snapped the following shots.

Do not report me to the Homeland Security people or whatever they're calling themselves. I may be arrested.

This, folks, is basically my workspace.



Note the antiquated Apple machine that I am forced to work on when I'm in the office. It's being propped up on an old telephone book.

Note also my antiquated beige courduroy jacket, given to me by a former girlfriend before she dumped me. I get teased quite a bit about that.

I also draw your attention to the fashionable flooring, the WW garbage can, the reams and reams of books I keep on hand that I never have or will read and the posture-correct chair that gives me back pain.

Note also the funky white telephone cord going with the black phone.



This is simply the same workspace, showing my desk and cabinet in its impressive entirety, plus my cell phone, tape recorder, file cabinets I fear not looking in and the fantastic array of books, plus my bag.


The shot on the left, if it actually and miraculously ends up on the left of this type, is simply a closeup of all my books, such as Lacrosse for Dummies, the National Hockey League record and guide book and the Winnipeg phone book.

Note the tool of my trade, a pen, plus a big piece of white paper in case I actually am forced to take notes.

There's also a half-used packet of pepper there from some previous lunch, but I don't know if you can see it.



On the right, I think, is a closeup of all my most intimate work things...free coffee mugs and a blue football that I sometimes grab and throw at unsuspecting business and entertainment writers not far from where I sit.

I tease them all the time. We sportswriters have a reputation to maintain, after all.






This, really, shows nothing I haven't already shown you, except my barely operating computer mouse and a copy of today's paper.

But it gives the post physical balance, because I have only one more picture to show you. And it displays my unique phone from which I can neither transfer calls or accept transferred calls.






This photo shows two things: First, it shows, in the top half of the picture, the south end of our newsroom.

It also shows all the useless crap I have pinned to my screened artificial wall that I have to peer over to talk to my boss.






I hope you have enjoyed this tour of WW's workplace environment. As a parting note, I will have you know it is situated on Mountain Avenue in Winnipeg. There are no mountains in Winnipeg.

How did this come to be?

In Part 2, I will illustrate my home work environment, which is where I wish I could do all my writing. Please do not send any letters to the editor about this post. Just be glad you don't work in this building.