As I've mentioned before, the company for which I work is trying to save money. I get it, spending more money than you make is generally a bad thing. So they're taking steps to remedy that. And most of these things make sense. There is, however, one particular cost-cutting measure that I take a little bit of issue with: the lights.
Funnily enough, I'm normally a huge fan of not wasting electricity via lights. At home, I'm the one who's always walking around turning off lights behind people when they leave the room. People will leave a room, go do something else for 10-15 minutes, and then stroll back in. That's a full 10-15 minutes of electricity that didn't need to be used, so I turn off the lights. When I was younger, my mom once joked that she'd save money whenever I was home, because of this habit.
At work, they put motion detectors on the lights in offices. The idea is pretty similar to what I do naturally; if there's no one in a room, turn the lights off. You can tell if there's no one in a room because there's no discernible motion in that room. The key word in that last sentence would be "discernible." The motion detectors suck.
I will be sitting in my office, happily coding away. Now I'll be the first to admit that this activity doesn't require me to move around a ton, but it's not like I sit there perfectly still. For one, I tend to fidget a little bit when I'm stuck on a problem, thinking about it. I also tend to rest my head on my hand, rotate around in my chair, tap my foot, work standing up, and basically not-sit-still. Does the motion sensor recognize all of my movement? No. It decides that there's no one in the room, and turns off the lights on me, as I'm still working.
Knowing that the motion detector is the problem, I usually try to wave my hand or something to get the lights to turn back on. But that never works. I have actually tried waving both of my hands over my head to get the motion detector to recognize movement, but nothing. The next logical step is usually to stand up to go to the light switch to make sure there's nothing wrong with it. And then, and only then, does the motion detector decide that there's somebody in the room.
At this point, not only has the motion detector decided to mess with me by turning off the lights, it has also decided to trick me into getting out of my chair. As soon as I do stand up, it turns the lights back on, like a little brat saying, "just kidding!" I basically get played twice every single time this happens. Even now, knowing that it's going to turn on as soon as I stand up, I still have to stand up. I know the punchline, I know what that little punk light is going to do, but I still have to play its game.
And apparently, I'm not the only one. My coworkers have commented that they have the same thing happen to them. In fact, I've actually seen some of them work in the dark because it gets annoying enough. Seriously, they will leave the lights off rather than give in to that silly motion detector. I'm all for saving money, but c'mon. You have people actually working in the effin' dark because you wanted to pinch some pennies. Heck, even if they bought better motion detectors, this plan would be infinitely better.
So, morals of the story:
1. If you're going to save money, make sure you're not cutting the wrong corners
2. Motion detectors apparently have a sense of humor
3. Some coworkers put their pride above being sensible. If you figure out which ones they are, you can probably use this to your advantage.
Funnily enough, I'm normally a huge fan of not wasting electricity via lights. At home, I'm the one who's always walking around turning off lights behind people when they leave the room. People will leave a room, go do something else for 10-15 minutes, and then stroll back in. That's a full 10-15 minutes of electricity that didn't need to be used, so I turn off the lights. When I was younger, my mom once joked that she'd save money whenever I was home, because of this habit.
At work, they put motion detectors on the lights in offices. The idea is pretty similar to what I do naturally; if there's no one in a room, turn the lights off. You can tell if there's no one in a room because there's no discernible motion in that room. The key word in that last sentence would be "discernible." The motion detectors suck.
I will be sitting in my office, happily coding away. Now I'll be the first to admit that this activity doesn't require me to move around a ton, but it's not like I sit there perfectly still. For one, I tend to fidget a little bit when I'm stuck on a problem, thinking about it. I also tend to rest my head on my hand, rotate around in my chair, tap my foot, work standing up, and basically not-sit-still. Does the motion sensor recognize all of my movement? No. It decides that there's no one in the room, and turns off the lights on me, as I'm still working.
Knowing that the motion detector is the problem, I usually try to wave my hand or something to get the lights to turn back on. But that never works. I have actually tried waving both of my hands over my head to get the motion detector to recognize movement, but nothing. The next logical step is usually to stand up to go to the light switch to make sure there's nothing wrong with it. And then, and only then, does the motion detector decide that there's somebody in the room.
At this point, not only has the motion detector decided to mess with me by turning off the lights, it has also decided to trick me into getting out of my chair. As soon as I do stand up, it turns the lights back on, like a little brat saying, "just kidding!" I basically get played twice every single time this happens. Even now, knowing that it's going to turn on as soon as I stand up, I still have to stand up. I know the punchline, I know what that little punk light is going to do, but I still have to play its game.
And apparently, I'm not the only one. My coworkers have commented that they have the same thing happen to them. In fact, I've actually seen some of them work in the dark because it gets annoying enough. Seriously, they will leave the lights off rather than give in to that silly motion detector. I'm all for saving money, but c'mon. You have people actually working in the effin' dark because you wanted to pinch some pennies. Heck, even if they bought better motion detectors, this plan would be infinitely better.
So, morals of the story:
1. If you're going to save money, make sure you're not cutting the wrong corners
2. Motion detectors apparently have a sense of humor
3. Some coworkers put their pride above being sensible. If you figure out which ones they are, you can probably use this to your advantage.
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