I love the motto: "The Standard is there is no Standard"....
Been there done that, moved on to my own practice where I draw
and understand everything I do. Screw the big firem all I want is a giant monitor...so when I get old I can still see everything I'm Drawing.

biggest annoyance. = shit architecture that i have to draft

i used to work with a fellow, nice guy, who had a a yogurt everyday for lunch...one of thise little 8 ouncers. anyhow, upon finishing he would literally scrape, and scrape, lick, and scrape, and scrape (LOUDLY), and lick, until every last bit of yogurt was gone. obviously we all know that the sopon is not meant for squared corners, which leads me to my inevntion...the yoon (ill let you think about it).

also he would tap the bottom of the soda can fro around 20 seconds to get evry last little bit. not one to waste anything i guess.

someone exploded the damn hatches
now there are a million little lines in the interior partitions.

^^ ha. I hate that too.

for bryan4arch, and anyone else experiencing office-music-helldom:
one solution (and perfect since it's a computer hooked up to the system) is to use www.pandora.com as your office radio station. Each of you in the office could contribute one or two artists to a custom radio station, and pandora will then play those and others on a random basis that is (perhaps) an acceptable cross-section of all your interests. YOu may still hear the occassional Alanis song, but might gain some sanity other times.
alternately, you could randomize it further by creating stations for each day of the week, with different people contributing to them, or else everyone merely adding different artists to each day (ie, eveyone picks 5 or 10 artists, and they're broken down to 1 or 2 a day for each person per station).
good luck.

up north we had a coat room for wintertime needs. people would not wipe their snow boots off before coming upstairs, and so the snow would melt onto the carpet and get it all wet. so when it was time to go home and i would come over to take off my regular shoes and put on my boots, my socks would get wet. gross.

thank god i work in TX now.

for the love of god, spell check every now and then. i just spent the last 30 minutes fixing

stoerfront glazing

and

additive alterntae

not to mention flourescent, carcase, and oposite

we once had an entire set of drawings go out to bid that said "roof crackle" instead of "roof cricket." our pm was so pissed off. i can only imagine the crap he got from the contractors on that one.

db

i just visited pandora.com under your recommendations. i think it's the most brilliant thing ever. it'll be put into good use in studio come september! i keep thinking, there must be some catch to it. this concept can't be this cool!

an annoyance nonpareil: smoking out the windows. this was another chicago problem, where on weekends or late at night people would open up the windows and try to blow their smoke out of the building rather than walking down to the loading dock. of course the cold wind from the lake would blow it right back into the building.

as a consequence of one of these nights...supposedly someone propped open a window with a brick that fell out and down 10 stories to the street below, but i don't know if that actually ever really happened.

There exist people who do not understand that using 'osnap' is not the same as switching it off, looking reaaall carefully, and clicking exactly where the previous line seems to end.

So when the drawings are passed on to me for something, for ex. hatching, or for a 3d model, i find these annoying .000000434 unit gaps EVERYWHERE, and have to pretty much do the whole thing over.

wardrobe malfunctions?...why are all of these annoyances coming from my chicago experience?

we had lots of women who would wear their running shoes with their suits when walking on their way to the office. but we had a couple of admins who would keep wearing them all day long. i thought it was kinda weird, but then again these were people who were ALWAYS walking down to the loading dock for a smoke, so i guess it saved them some time.

and the only tabasco that belongs on a tie is the tabasco you spill on your tie at lunch. not the kind that is silk-screened and on sale at marshall field's for $9.99.

i heard of this colleague at my friend's place who had a bachelors + master's in architecture and did not know that F8 was Ortho On/Off....Unbelievable

I have a bachelors + masters in architecture and yet I didn't know that F8 was Ortho On/Off until just now. I haven't ever worked in an AutoCAD firm yet.

One of the most annoying of the office annoyances that I experience here is new employees who start every sentence with "In AutoCAD it doesn't work that way...." and its close relative "In my old firm we didn't do it that way..."

We did presentation boards for a project where we labeled the public space "Pubic Space". Phew boy.

project managers that have never touched photoshop and don't understand that it doen't work like autocad (not that they use that either)

Aluminate, I can understand your skill-set and preferences, but when conciously applies to an office that uses autocad for all its drafting purposes, there is no excuse to not know the basics.

I never learned that either. I hate the F keys in general, and use the toggle or the type commands for those things. And I'm generally considered to be damned good at autocad. *shrug*

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions, guys. It seems to have calmed down a bit now- when I posted I was seething mad over an instance of it. Now that we've worked together a few days it's getting better. I think she's started to notice that while she frequently asks for my help, I have not once asked for hers, and she's calmed down a bit on her 'designer' attitude.

i have a b env des,. an m.arch and in another year will have a phd in something or other, and while i know about the F8 key i refuse to use it on ethical grounds.

A (wannabe) Principle always starts the day with, "Hey guys do you have a second to look at the set here?"
Same guy doesn't have a clue how to separate layers, he puts everything in the same layer, and just change the colors. As a result, drawings are hard as hell to plot with any decency. Geesh.

Spelling Burps: I once had to make the Spelling Correction on a Subdivision Plot Cover sheet from " WE THE UNDERDESIGNED TO WE THE UNDER SIGNED." Which was followed by the County Commissioners Signatures.

^^ the solution to that is to get him to learn to type really, really fast. I generally type everything, too. I know the basic abbreviations like c, l, s, cha, tr, but am not going to sit there and memorize more so that I can become some sort of cad wizard. It's never been a problem in any of the offices I've been in, because I'm still by far the fastest one around. Just get those typing skills down, and it won't matter a lick that you don't know what F8 does, because you can type it just as fast.

the guy who works in the office space behind me eats sunflower seeds...ALL DAY LONG! and, instead of spitting the seeds into a cup he spits them into a 16 oz bottle - making little spitting noises every 10 sec...all day long.

you should buy him a bag of the pre-shelled kind and say, hey, i know you like these, but would you mind switching to shell-less? your noises DISGUST me, freak! ;) ...or something nicer than that.

yeah, i thought about just stealing his stash one day but with my luck he'll come in with a giant value size bag. awesome, he's eating them now....ahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I eat those California Large Premium Pistachios "Pick of the California crop" SAM*S CHOICE.

I really become pi$$ed off when I hear those shells that I'm breaking. I become so irritated and hungry at the same time and wonder why would I make so much noise when I am trying to concentrate on my work. I am losing my temper by the minute with my rudeness. I WILL talk to my boss about this. People should not treat other people in this manner. It is high time I do something that will teach myself a lesson and be an example to the studio. I will not allow this to happen any longer. This will not stand. My rights will not be trampled.

I had to stop eating sunflower seeds because I got tired of shelling them with my teeth, and I would just chew up a big glob until it lost its saltiness. Then I reevaluated my life and decided that the big glob was gross and I haven't looked back since. Not that there is a good way to eat sunflower seeds, though.

Instead of stealing his bag, just add extra salt.

i have to admit that i like sunflower seeds and i even like the act of shelling them with my teeth, but when this guy spits them into his bottle for 8 hours a day, minus his bathroom breaks, it drives me caaaaaaaaarazy.

former co-worker who:

1. had the worst breath (and diet)
2. public character assasinations of everyone but his former employer
3. constant need for reassurances
4. constant throwing/banging of phones, computers, pdas followed by questions as to why it doesn't work
5. felt a constant need to lie to fellow employees about the most trivial things

melivt, that sounds awful. All of it.

I can't stand the refridgerator here. It is shared by about 40 people and it smells like death.

OK, I have a coworker who is in deep marital trouble. He and his wife are constantly arguing over the phone. We work in an open office, and this is not a quiet guy. They sound like they're getting divorced every other day, except that they never actually go through with it, so we get to keep hearing them argue. Every. Single. Day. It's driving me nuts.

I don't want to listen, I don't like to listen. I don't want to know that his wife is signed up at a singles sight, or is digging through his 401(k) records to see how much she'd get, or talking to real estate people about how much their house is worth, or lying to him and hiding things. I feel embarrassed for the guy every time I do, but I can't help it. It's an open office, he's two desks away, and we're not allowed to wear headphones. The principals hear him all the time, too, and haven't said or done jack about it.

p.s.- if you are this person, please keep it at home. Do not mention it to any of your co-workers, just stop it.

Recollections: There is a woman in the next cubicle...and well there is a loud noise of passing gas.....and oh the smell....and she justs pretends she is just one of the guys at the construction site.

there is a new guy in my office who sits behind me and
a) smells horribly of cigarettes (which is tolerable considering that i used to smoke, but mostly just disgusting)
b) has awful dental hygeine.
c) has chronic smoker's cough.
d) hits the keys on his keboard really har and really loudly, all day long.
today i asked if he had sticky keys. to which he replied "oh...no, not really." which leaft me muttering "well, it sure sounds like, you've got some sort of problem over there."

there is another new guy who is entirely frustrated with "the 2D world" and does really awesome 3D models, but yesterday when he was asked to draw elevations (2D ones) the look of terror was like no other i've seen upon being assigned a task.

he also wears lots of emboridered clothing. which is cool, but sometimes weird. (although i did learn that grown men can buy pants with anime embroidered on them.)

man, i feel like such a bitch.

all receptionists are bitchy

I AM NOT A RECEPTIONSIT!?

i dint mean you.

there is nothing like someone getting caught in an interoffice infidelity to rachet up the tension, half our office wont talk to the other half.

there is a lesson in all this: if your going to cheat on your partner with someone at work, dont do it at a cafe 100meters from the front door.

wooo, I think the powers that be finally got tired of the constant drama. He was in the boss's office with the door shut (v. unusual around here) for a while today, and then he left shortly thereafter. I don't think for a second that they fired him, but it seems they may have told him to take time and sort out his home life away from the office.

i must cut a million dollars out of a 2.8 million dollar building "and keep the same look"

wow. how did that happen? Was it $1 mil over budget, or did they cut the budget $1 mil? If it's the latter, are you getting extra fee to cover the redesign?

rationalist, it was over budget -- no we don't get extra fee.
Even though we suggested it, there was not a single cost estimate done during design and we weren't contracted to do any. How does that work?
Anyways, somehow I designed a $550/s.f. building, can you believe it? What building costs that much? Well this one shouldn't either, the contractor is a home builder trying to do a commercial building and not getting good pricing. We have no choice but to cut, cut, and cut some more - politics of the relationship of the owner to the contractor, we can't point fingers at either and must eat it.

By the way, this is the same job with $77,000 worth of ceramic tile in a little over 3,000 s.f, thanks to miss ditz interior designer.

-- I think I would like a work blog, I think it is very "interesting" the things we do as architects... every project I work on just blows my mind as to the gymnastics we have to do, the different forces and poliitics in a project that push and pull.

Now, I need to turn that jewel of a building back into a lump of coal on my own time, mind you....

I only like to work with chicks

VE will turn your HEART into a lump coal. My sympathies are with you, Strawbeary.

Someday when I'm a project manager and able to call the shots, I will demand that the client provide a budget before design begins. As I learned from my time on the owner's side of the table, a cost estimate based on design drawings (SD's, DD's) must not constitute the budget. Rather, it should be a check to make sure that the design meets the predetermined budget. (Nuance, perhaps, but it makes sense to me.)

Well, not an office annoyance; but it's kind of been bothering me so I thought I would post it here. Recently I set up an interview with a firm and the interviewing Architect called me up a few hours prior to our engagement and stated, "I need you to come to my office now - don't worry about what you look like – no primping, just throw on some lipstick and get down here!" Whahhh!!

Katze: Maybe that's their M.O.? Did you go through with the interview?

DCA, yes, regrettably I went through with the interview. Really, I don't know why because all I had on my mind was to write a "thank you for the interview but no thanks" letter!

sometimes i work for this project manager.

he knows how to use CAD... prolly more than i do... although i am much faster.

when he finds miss spellings, or mistakes on drawing, he prints it in 8x11, and gives it little by little... honestly, i believe.... by the time he hands me his 8x11 sheets, he could make correction by himself.... plus, when i start working on those drawings, i have to ask him, "can you close that drawing please?"

so i drew section details he drew on papers. when someone points out that the drawing i worked on has mistakes... his first reaction is
"oh... (my name) did it."
... it's not my fault that drawings have wrong elevations, and details... i drew what he told me to draw!!!

when cad drawing gets corrupted... he says
"oh... (my name) worked on it"
(i am not the only one who worked on it!!!)


and his breathe smells... i usually lean to opposite direction, when he talks to me.