Sometimes we’re given tasks out of left field that seem rather strange. Other times, we see oddball tasks, and we latch on with reckless abandon. I’ve done one of those second ones.

There’s a decent chance that, within the next year, I’m going to need to support an increased user base. Well, it’s not going to happen with the existing infrastructure, I can tell you that.

Right now, I’m stretched for wall jacks, our desks are a collection of an old set plus the occasional folding table, and I’ve currently got a hutch sitting on the ground acting as a table. We’re going to need more stuff. Preferably different stuff, actually, because what we’ve got right now are glorified tables. The occasional cable grommet carved into the top is about all I can say these desks do for me. I want better. We all run laptops. I want desks with electrical, network, and phone ports on the desktop. I want walls. I want world peace, too, but I’d settle for not having to fear for my life every time I push too hard on a hutch and it threatens to tip over because it isn’t attached by anything.

Of course, I can’t actually buy anything, or even make the decisions. According to all of those forms I fill out to read whitepapers, I “influence” the decision. But if I’m going to influence the decision, I’m going to know what I want, and I’m going to make sure it’s the right resource for the job. It was for that reason that I started asking around. “Do we have building plans for the office?”

As an aside, there’s an old saying that I’m fond of. “Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers.” Sysadmins who ask for building plans can’t be too far behind.

As it turns out, we do have schematics from when we ordered the construction done on the office, before we moved in. It’s not entirely up to date, but it gives me all of the measurements that I needed to produce a to-scale drawing in Visio. I worked on it for a while, and produced a pretty respectable diagram, I think.

If you’ve ever used Visio for any kind of layout like this, you’ve probably seen the built-in shapes for things like cubicles, desks, office chairs, etc etc. I was using the default “cubicle” shape, at the default size, and I started to realize that what I was seeing on paper didn’t add up to what I had experienced in real life. Never one to take a challenge to my reality while sitting down, I broke out my tape measure and started looking.

I found out that while the average workspace in my office is 7ft x 7ft, the default Visio cubicle is 8ft x 8ft. That sounds more reasonable, but as I said, we’ve been working fine with 7ft². I looked at a couple of sites and they make cubicles from 10ft down to 5ft, and everywhere in between.

So here’s my dilemma…how big should the cubicles be. On one hand, I have a certain number of people that will be necessary to add, and a finite amount of space. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone to go insane and shoot people. Or gut fish in the office.

Do you have a full on office, desk, or cube? How big is your workspace, and how cramped do you feel? I’m interested in hearing from a lot of people to try to get a feel, so please, drop me a comment below. Thanks!