Brand new U

I've got last weekend's Dublin trip to write about, but more a current topic is my first day in my bright spankin' new office today. Unilever is gathering its Foods and HPC (home + personal care) groups under common roofs (why isn't it rooves?) around the world. Therefore, I'm in my 4th office building in 2008. In February, my NJ office moved across the office park into a gutted + renovated (+ asbestos laden) building. The in July, of course, I moved to the Crawley UK office, mere feet from Gatwick airport. Today, I moved to Leatherhead. Check out how it all lays out here.

What's really notable about this move is not so much that it's a new commute (10 mins longer train ride but less stressful without a trip through the South terminal of Gatwick bi-daily), or cheaper commute (9£ vs 12.3£, but no chance to cheat the system). What's notable is that Unilever is leading the way of 21st century office life.

• My team is now comprised 90% of "flexible home workers", meaning we're encouraged - no, expected - to work from home or a remote location 2 out of 5 days/week. We're being provided with office furniture for our "home offices" as needed.
• They're serious about it, too: if you drive to work, you're not allowed to book a parking spot through the online parking spot reservation system for more days per week than you've been allotted. Yep, you read that right: online parking spot reservation system.
• As "flexible home workers," we're also "hot-deskers", which means no one's got a place to leave a can of pencils overnight. I now have a small locking cubby for belongings, a 1m long filed drawer, and the freedom to pick any desk I like each morning. And, since we're not expected to be there every day, there are about 75% as many desks as "flexible home workers" in my group's area.
• I have a dedicated non-mobile work phone number, but I have "global mobility". I log in to the phone at my chosen desk every morning, and log out at night. On the road/at home, I can get on the phone from my computer with a nifty headset.
• Much to my chagrin this morning, I learned I can't use cash to buy breakfast or lunch. Fortunately I could buy coffee, and by the time lunch rolled around I figured out how to load money on to my employee ID, which I can use at the coffee bar, the cafeteria, the company store, and the bar. That's right. Because in addition to all these new fangled ways of working we also have...

- A gym - free!

- A Ben & Jerry's scoop shop - free! (to counteract any good that comes from the gym).

- A company store that sells grocery staples (read: bread, milk, wine, beer) in addition to the stuff my company makes).

- A dental surgery. I'm a bit apprehensive about this.

- Free decent-quality coffee machines throughout the building.

- A bar, open 5-9pm Thursdays & Fridays (payable only through the ID card method, of course)

So, essentially, drag in a sleeping bag and you never need to go home. Or just keep drinking the coffee! Oh, and they gave iPod shuffles as welcome gifts... claimed to be for the gym or train ride (and please, use your home computer for loading music), but I'm guessing it's so when people start complaining about the close, *very* open environment, the can say, "we gave you an iPod, use it!"

Coincidentally, I finally got my new UK laptop today. It's slick because there are keys for £ and €. No more Insert-Symbol for me! But the " and @ are mixed up on my keyboard. That's confusing. And the £ is where the # should be. Oddly enough, while we call # "pound", that word is already in use so they call the # symbol "hash" or "square". As in, "Welcome to Unilever Conferencing. Please enter you passcode, followed by hash".