Good Job Sucking

With a few sales under our belts, we packed up what little equipment we had, and moved to our new space in a downtown commercial high-rise, where we had an entire floor to ourselves.

An entire floor is a huge amount of space. There were ten of us now, including sales, marketing, etc., in a space that could hold 300. The space was fully furnished, and included a boardroom with a view, where all of us could sit, and have ample room for 20 more people.

This wasn’t unusual for any dot-com era startup, but perhaps it was unusual for one without venture capital funding. Bill explained that we hoped to expand quickly, and that more importantly, customers should be able to visit a place that inspires confidence.

One walked off the elevators into a large, well appointed lobby with leather seats and a stainless steel version of our logo on the wall, up to a reception desk, behind which was a glass wall displaying our opulent (and usually empty) boardroom, where one looked through it onto an expansive view of the city. From there, one could go right or left to weave through cube farms before reaching either outer wall, all floor-to-ceiling glass. The few employees scattered about and a few well placed plants and personal items give the impression that a large office had just gone to lunch, or is sequestered in meetings somewhere. You’d probably end up at a huge, well appointed corner office to meet the CEO, or perhaps the head of marketing, or the CTO, or the COO — there were four corners, after all.

Bill was right — the entire place spoke of money and confidence, without being too opulent. On the occasions when customers did come by, we avoided an empty look by using 3-4 cubes each, and inviting friends over to sit around for lunch. (Nobody would ask if all the people in the office actually worked there, but we certainly would not have lied if it came up.)

Along with the cubes and chairs came a big PBX system with hundreds of phones, handy partly since we were so far away from each other. This was in our full server room, where Bill invested in two racks full of servers, along with new PCs for everybody, plus a bunch for empty cubes.

None of the equipment was unused. For every empty cube with a PC humming under the desk, there was a system running tests, compiling code, copying backups, running competitor’s systems, providing remote access, and so on. In addition to selling our main line of software, we also did odd bits of consulting in order to provide the company with income — this included setting up and integrating competitor’s systems (which was handy for a number of obvious reasons) as well as odd jobs like data mining for grocery stores and other utterly unrelated technical tasks.

I sat in the back, near the server room, which gave me a unique view and made it easy to concentrate on writing code.

On the floor below us was a radio station, which we didn’t notice at all our first few months — then they either changed formats or management, or both, and suddenly it was apparent that my office was directly over some kind of listening or sound booth — and during the day, they started cranking up the noise so that not only could it clearly be heard in our office, it was hard to speak to somebody in the same room. I called the building management to complain.

“I’d like you to do something about our downstairs neighbors,” I shouted over the din. “We can’t hear ourselves think up here.”

“I can’t understand you,” said the building manager (a dour woman we’ll call Leslie.) “Maybe you could turn down your music.”

“That’s really my point,” I shouted. “That’s not our music. It’s coming from downstairs.”

“I’ll be right up,” said Leslie, lying through her teeth.

A couple hours and a few phone calls later, Leslie appeared. Perhaps coincidentally, but probably not, the music had been turned off moments before she marched up to my desk.

“I don’t hear anything,” Leslie told me, in an accusatory tone.

“Well, obviously you did when I called, since you complained you couldn’t hear me over the music,” I explained.

“That could have been anybody’s music,” said Leslie dismissively.

This seemed pretty disingenuous and odd, but this same pattern repeated itself a few times, before Leslie actually appeared in my office while a deep bass thump was still shaking my furniture.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Leslie.

“What?” I said, shouting over the noise.

“I said, I don’t hear anything,” she shouted. “I can ask them to turn it down, I guess, but I don’t hear any music at all.”

I didn’t know what to say at this point. I talked to our business manager later, who mumbled something about a possible dispute with the lease. Were they trying to make us leave? I’m not sure, but I was beginning to hate Leslie.

I once had a friend with the curious habit of jumping up in moving elevators, landing with stiff legs. This created a booming sound that resonated throughout a building, and he’d nonchalantly walk off the elevator to nervous stares of people waiting to get on, some of whom would think better of the idea.

With this in mind, I brought in a bowling ball. Next time the music started up, I ceremoniously dropped it on the floor, right above where the music seemed loudest, which was near the server room on a little bit of linoleum floor (the rest of the office was carpeted.) It worked better than I could have imagined — it sounded like the building had been hit with a wrecking ball, sending a BOOOOOM that resonated through the floor and walls. I did this a few more times before the music stopped, and put the ball into a desk drawer.

Leslie showed up a moment later. “Are you guys doing any construction up here?”

“Heavens no,” I told her. “Surely we’d notify the building.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “We’ve had complaints from the floor downstairs, the noise is interfering with their radio broadcast.”

“Is that so,” I mused. “Well, I don’t hear anything.”

She stood, listening, and looking around, presumably for signs of construction equipment.

“I said, I DON’T HEAR ANYTHING,” I shouted at her.

She left in a bit of a huff.

The radio station’s volume got loud a few more times, but a few drops of the bowling ball were enough to stop it quickly. Our downstairs neighbors seem to have quickly learned the cause-and-effect relationship, and the bowling ball became an ornament on my desk.

Leslie dropped by one day on an unrelated matter and noticed it, and appeared to connect the dots all of a sudden.

“Were you dropping that bowling ball on the floor? Because I have to warn you, that would be unacceptable,” she lectured. “I could hear something like that all the way on the first floor.”

Really? Awesome.

“Madam, that’s a valuable ball,” I replied. “Besides, I’m certain it would cause quite a bit of noise, which would be completely unreasonable in a professional office environment. It might be more appropriate for some kind of party floor with loud music. Do you hear any music?”

She ground her teeth a bit, but said nothing. We didn’t have any more trouble from her or the neighbors for the duration of our stay.