There are the people that wake up miserable, being sad about going to work, sit on a chair all day and wait for the time to pass. Or are at each other throats about promotions, stabbing their colleagues in the back or accusing them all day. And there are those lucky SOBs that wake up with a smile, go to work singing and whistling, and clap their feet on the air. Nope, am neither of those, but life here at BLEND is pretty good.
I work in an office with 9 friends of mine (bosses included), 6 of which are in the same room with me. Some would say that it’s too crowded, hard to breathe. You might be thinking…being in the same room with all those people? But I would say that it’s filled with love, fun times, a lot of gossiping, and sometimes, there is time left to work.
The BLEND week
Mondays are always slow, everyone is moody about coming to work after the weekend. But this quickly turns around when you start gossiping about your Web Designer’s love life, your favourite cake recipe that you baked during the weekend. Or even the weird beer you brewed on Sunday morning with cinnamon sticks and cocoa nibs. And there is always that happy person with the positive vibe, screaming “Happy weeeek”, or “Happy Mooonth”, or even “Happy Spriiiing”, that gets you started.
I will leave Tuesday and Wednesday behind as this is when some actual work is being done. Everyone is “in the Zone”, wearing their headphones, writing code, designing stuff, or “socializing” on social media. Good stuff. You can see the occasional message popping up on HipChat (we use it for internal communication, the IRC of 2018) with a GIF of a baby farting. Or even a giraffe chewing marijuana leaves. That breaks the silence and gets the cycle of gossiping going again.
You know it’s Thursday when you go to our kitchen and see the sink full of plates, forks and glasses. This is the day that the cleaning lady is here! Lay back Thursdays are called that for a reason. You are 1 day shy of the end of the week and the beginning of the weekend. Everybody is in a good mood. You will always hear on a Thursday the comment – “Ooooh it’s Thursday again? When did the week passed?”
Lunch breaks at BLEND
We have our breaks between 13:00 – 14:00. Some leave to go home to eat, but most of us stay here to “hold the trenches”. We have lunch in the BLEND land conference room with the big TV, and the sun coming through the windows, to get our batteries charged. Everyone sits around the table, like a big happy family, holding hands and saying praise. No, no..we don’t actually do that. We spend another 20 minutes in front of the TV watching babies farting and giraffes eating tobacco leaves (did I say marijuana earlier?)..yeaeeee!
13:30 is when the fun begins, our daily foosball match. Balls are flying around, people are screaming and sweating. And once in a while, you can hear the robotic voice of the foosball yelling “Scooore”. That is, when the ball hits the destroyed wires on the right spot. You know that you need some exercise in your life when you finish the foosball match at 14:00 and can’t hold your breath.
BLEND Friday’s
Then Friday is here. We can skip morning, when we usually work, and go straight to the evening. We usually leave work a bit earlier, around 16:00, and once in a while go grab a few beers at local pubs. During which, we discuss how the week went, which was the hit recipe, or the best GIF, have a couple of beers and some good laughs. Feel free to join us!
Is there room for improvement? Of course, there always is. A pool table, an in house gym and food catering are some of them. But then we would be talking about a different company, and that’s someone else’s story. Kidding aside, we are always trying to improve ourselves and improve the way we work. So if you have any suggestions, feel free to share them!
So, there you have it, life as a BLENDer. The good, smiley one, not the mechanical.
Some would think “oooh he is on the take, saying all these nice things about his work”, or “he is an employee, what would you expect him to say?” But think about this. Would I lie to you, knowing that from the time you started reading this article 3 Web Developers have been kidnapped in South America, 5 Web Designers have broken their mouse and 2 Social Media Managers have left Facebook?
For now, I’ll leave you with this…
