Change is bad

There was a meeting yesterday about plans for the move of our department to a new, big, modernized, state-of-the-art facility. Everyone in the offices hates this and wishes there were some way out of it.

One big problem is that they designed the new place on the assumption that a lot of people in other departments would move there in addition to just us, but it now looks like the other departments will join us years later, if ever. (Why? Because of funding cuts, somehow.) And the design called for sharing certain facilities among all departments, but most shared facilities will not be completed or at least not available until and unless the other departments join us. Since one of those shared facilities is the cafeteria, this is a problem. Until they open that up, we will only have a "snack bar" with seating for 50. I'd estimate that's less than a quarter of our current cafeteria's capacity, and of course, a snack bar probably won't have much cooked food. I'm sure that refrigerators, microwaves, and break rooms will be available somewhere, but we couldn't get straight answers at yesterday's meeting about how many there will be or our close to workspaces they will be. Likewise for the credit union. That doesn't affect me, but it'll probably be even worse for most people.

Beyond that, it's inconvenient to get to. Our current location isn't all that great, but there's a shuttle from a major metro hub and we're just five minutes from major highways. For those who drive, there's quite a bit of parking around here, although not enough for everyone. So there are options. At the future location, there's no on-street parking. There will still be a shuttle, but as of the meeting yesterday they don't know where it will go from, and that major metro hub seems unlikely to me. Not only that, but the whole complex is big. If the shuttle only goes to the main gate (no straight answer on that either), then it would be a 10-minute walk to our office. As for parking, there is no on-street parking in the complex. There is a parking garage, and we might be able to use the space meant for people from other departments before they're there, which would actually be an advantage to being there alone... but we can't get a straight answer on that either. There's one entrance and exit from the complex, which will probably be very crowded at rush hour.

Now that I write it down, a little of the negative reaction to the move is probably reflexive distrust of unheaval, even though the negative reaction is universal. Because a lot the problems are the result of the fact that our department will be there alone for years before anyone joins us, if they ever do - but half the problems are mitigated by that. No cafeteria or credit union really sucks, but we might wind up having enough parking for everyone, traffic won't be bad, and there will be plenty of storage space.

However, there's no help for the location. It'll almost double my commute.