New office, new dynamic

I'm in a different office now. That is, my physical location has shifted. My job is remaining largely the same.

However, my new office is bringing with it a new dynamic. Previously, if somebody came into my office to get something off their chest, there was no chance of them being overheard by anybody. Now, however, it's changed. It is very, very easy to overhear what's being said in my office.

That fact obviously hadn't sunk in this morning, which meant that, for the first time ever, I actually got to hear both sides of a debate. It's something we shall all have to get used to - if anybody needs to offload to me before having a formal chat with the HR people, it shall have to happen offsite now.

For the record, the lady to whom I shall refer as Long Suffering R&D Technical Writer will sort out the packaging section.

The other major development in QA is that Mistress Mouth has finally realised what it means to work in a company as small as this one. Previously, I'd been fielding commands from above to specialise, because it was dreadfully urgent that the task of the day be done quickly. At the moment, there are two of these: batch document review (which had previously been labelled under 'somebody else's business') and archiving (which, to be honest, is what I'd rather be doing right now).

Both projects are long term: the former because nobody else has the time to do it (which slows everything down dramatically because nothing actually gets signed off without me pushing), and the latter because there are more than 20 years' worth of paperwork to archive, and there was no way that was going to happen overnight.

Finally, Mistress Mouth has come to her senses and realised that for the sake of her own sanity (and everybody else's), she simply has to let me perform a less specialised role, thus taking some of the weight off her shoulders.

This has come as a relief to me, because it means she's finally stopped moaning at me (and everybody else too, I suspect) about how things should be done, insisting that they be done that way, and then stressing out and moaning even more when it just plain doesn't happen because we're not that big and we don't have the personnel.

All in all, location change aside, I can finally relax and get on with things.