31 Janvier 2012
FN: 8
Office space
Today, I get to write my first post from my erstwhile desk in my putative office at FAIJ headquarters in Ouaga. I say erstwhile and putative because it sounds better than “the long table I share with 5 data entry functionaries” and “the place I’m going this week because they don’t quite know what to do with me”. Everyone here is incredibly friendly, welcoming, and helpful, but it’s evident that they were in no way prepared for us and they don’t really have much of idea of what our “training” should consist of. I’m unsurprised but hopeful that we can make it work anyway.
Right now, none of us are working, because:
- The internet is down
- The bosses are all in a meeting
- It’s not even 9 yet, so why get too involved?
Given that, and given the fact that I can only track about 1 word in 10 of the very rapid and highly colloquial French that is being tossed about quite freely right now, I think this is the perfect time to get in a post on Burkinabé office life.
So what is life like in the headquarters office of a government agency in Burkina Faso? I would say it’s very similar to life in the office of any local insurance agent in the US. There’s AC (set 5 degrees too cold for comfort), reasonably new computers (running an…interesting…mélange of XP, Vista, & 7), printers[1] that everyone hates (but will still forever use for personal purposes), chairs that look comfortable (but aren’t), desks that look nice (but aren’t), fluorescent lights (that flicker subtly in the edge of my vision and make me sick), lots of stacked files (that no one ever uses), and even a mini-fridge (holding the standard blend of water, Coke, diet shakes, and someone’s forgotten lunch from 6 weeks ago).
And that’s just the physical side; the interpersonal dynamics are very similar as well. Just like in the US, the youngest workers get the crappy manual entry jobs, the older folks all have nicely appointed offices, there’s waaaay too much middle management, and at the end of the day the place is really run by 5 or 6 executive secretaries who have been here forever.
(In fact, right now one of said middle managers is taking advantage of the internet being down to hold an impromptu no-one-is-doing-anything-anyway team building exercise. Hooray for crappy training seminars everywhere!)
That being said, there are some real differences between office life here and office life in the US. Some of them are subtle, but some of them are pretty damn remarkable. For example, it gets hotter than Hades here during the middle of the day[2], so the work day runs from 7 – 12, then from 3 – 5[3]. The interval from 12 – 3 is known as le repose (think the French equivalent to siesta), and it means just that: people everywhere just…take a nap. Offices empty out, businesses and banks close down, and if you go to a boutique you’re as likely to find the owner curled up on a bench asleep as you are to find someone ready to sell you something[4].
Another effect of the repose is that there are really two work days: a highly formal and productive one in the morning, and much less formal and productive one in the afternoon. In the mornings, they dress sharp and work hard, and in the afternoons they frequently change into more casual clothes and they tend to kick back and relax. This is similar to the US, wherein the after-lunch blues definitely kill productivity between 2 and 4, but it’s much more formalized.
Think about it: in the US, when you first get to the office you tend to get some coffee, start up your computer, check your email, the weather, and the news, and chat with your coworkers for a few minutes. Even in the middle of the hardest work schedule, there tends to be at least a 15 minute “settling in” period, wherein people gradually ease themselves into another long full work day. Here, people show up and immediately begin to work. But they can do that, because they know they can kill time in the afternoon when no one is expected to do much anyway.
Similarly, people in the US tend to dress well for work, but unless you’re bucking for management, you don’t dress sharp. It’s expensive, it takes time, and there’s not much point if you’re just going to be sitting at a desk compiling reports all day. You don’t want to look slovenly or anything (unless you’re IT, where you garner geek cred in inverse proportion to how neatly you dress), but you don’t want to spend $100 a week on dry cleaning either. Here though, you wear the nicest clothes you own, and you do everything you can to make them look good[5], because you know you’ll be able to change a few hours later. A 5 hour work day is faaaaar less demanding on your attire than the standard US 8 – 10 hour work day. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I personally would dress a lot sharper in the mornings if I knew I could come back in the afternoons in business casual. But maybe that’s just me.
But that’s the big stuff. There are also some more subtle differences in the work place here that I can’t actually say I would recommend for the US[6]. For example, so far as I can tell the men have all of the best seats (ie, under the AC, by the windows, and at the larger desks) and all of the newer computers, and the women have what is left over. Similarly, the upper management appears to be 100% male, and the glass ceiling appears to be more like a concrete box. Women do have some higher roles here, but it doesn’t appear to be as prevalent in the US[7]. I can’t say for certain that this is an accurate observation – and I certainly can’t say that this applies everywhere – but if what I’m seeing is indicative of a national trend, I would say they’re about where the US was in the 80’s in terms of gender relations in the workplace. I hope I’m wrong.
Some other interesting notes:
- One thing they don’t have here: the fire alarms, extinguishers, and exit maps that are ubiquitous in every US building. I’m guessing you don’t get out of work for fire drills very often here. But you just *might* get out of work more often for actual fires…
- The pedagogy of technology training here appears to be like the pedagogy of everything: heavy emphasis on rote memorization and repetition, with little or no time spent on application of ideas or concepts. The folks in this room appear to be whizzes with Excel, but if something goes wrong they have no idea what to do. They just call IT. They don’t know how to alt+tab between pages, how to ctrl+c to copy, how to ctrl+v to paste, or even ctrl+alt+del to kill unresponsive programs. All they know how to do is reboot or call IT. I suspect this is a product of deliberate training, because they were shocked when I hopped on one of their computers, player around for a few minutes, and figured out exactly how to use their internal software. The response was “you’ve already been trained!”, not “well, if you know how to use Windows & Office, you know how to use this…have fun”.
- Office phone ring tones here are this sort of high-pitched buzz than set my teeth on edge and make me want to go on a killing spree. Especially when they don’t answer their damn phone for whatever reason and the caller lets it ring 230 times anyway. Landlines need a silence button.
- Every room has both AC and a ceiling fan. I am NOT looking forward to the hot season.
- 99% of the non-local stuff in this country is a cheap Chinese product, whether it’s a hammer, a motorcycle, or a power cord. But not the computers. Nope – they use Dells, just like the rest of us.
- Browsing large storage volumes in French is a bizarre experience.
- As is reading SOPs. But they’re just as boring.
- There are no elevators in the building, despite the fact that it has 5 stories. Chris started to complain about this, but when I asked “would you trust the elevator inspectors here”, he quickly agreed that maybe stairs would be for the best. Besides, it’s good exercise.
- The windows are tinted with the same cheap do-it-yourself tinting that clueless poseur teenagers everywhere use to make their cars look more ‘thug’. And just like the Wal-Mart specials in the states, it bubbles and peels like crazy.
- My office is carpeted. I think this is the first carpeting that I’ve seen in country. I’m yet to see a vacuum, so I’m wondering how they clean it…
- Just like in the US, if you’re sitting at a computer typing in Word and there are bullet points visible, it’s assumed you’re doing work. But since we actually have internet now, I should probably stop pretending and get back to doing. SOPs in French! What fun[8]!
Hey…if nothing else, it helps me improve my business French, non?
[1] Not named after Star Wars characters, alas. I guess the IT guys here aren’t quite as dorky as they are in the US. Nothing tickles me quite so much as hearing a 50-something executive secretary complain that “Boba Fett is down, and I have to walk all the way down the hall to Lando Calrissian to get my prints; can you please map me to Obi Wan so I don’t have to walk so far?”
[2] It really does. Even in the cold season, it pushes at least 90 every day. From April – June, it can be 120+ every single day, and it never gets below 90, even at night. Right now, the hot part of the day just makes you sweat if you walk in the sun; in a month or two, there will never be a time when you aren’t sweating, even if you’re lucky enough to have fans and/or AC.
[3] Yes, that’s only 7 hours, for those of you playing along at home. They also get 6 weeks of mandatory vacation every year. Yes, the functionaries are something of a privileged class here, but it’s the standard European benefits package: work to live, not live to work. Je suis jaloux.
[4] Another reason the night life is so active here. Most Burkinabé only seem to sleep 4 – 6 hours a night, but that’s not so terrible when you also get a 2 – 3 hour nap every afternoon…
[5] I’m highly conscious of the fact that the best I have to wear right now are some slacks from Banana Republic, a polo, and some skechers. It’s not bad, but when the other guys are all wearing pressed $500 suits and shoes polished to mirrors, you feel a bit out of place.
[6] Note: I have been here all of two days. These are my observations and first impressions only, not an informed commentary on the subtleties of Burkinabé office life. Take any and everything I say here with a grain of salt.
[7] To say nothing of the fact that my female friends in the US assure me that we ourselves are far from being what they would consider balanced in that department…
[8] Actually, I quite literally can’t complain. I’m sitting at a desk, in AC, typing on a computer, with internet. This is amazing. It beats making stoves out of poo or planting trees in little plastic bags any day. Especially considering I rode here in my own chauffeured air-conditioned truck (I want that truck), and I have a toilet to poo in whenever I have the urge. Count your blessings. I know I do.
