Zach Soares His Work: A.V. technology specialist at a local college.
“If I spend 10 minutes before I leave cleaning and picking up and organizing, I like my workspace when I come into work. If I don’t get that time and I come in and it’s cluttered, I go a little crazy.” He explains that if his desk isn’t clean then people tend to pile things on top of it when he isn’t there. “So there are days when I come in and there are 15 things on top of my 30. So it takes me half hour or an hour just to deal with all that stuff. But if it’s clean they usually don’t do that.”
Mr. Soares says his workspace is “like my living room. I have stuff all over. I have ‘to-do’ piles. I’m always processing something on the computer. I always have a browser open on the other computer.” His office is more comfortable than classrooms or in the auditorium sound-booth but with his work he is only at his desk 50% of the time.
“I feel like it’s my job that student’s tuition doesn’t get wasted or blown on crap, so the more the equipment is here and in boxes and organized the more I know that the tuition isn’t being wasted.” He says it’s “gratifying. I’m able to help a large amount of students with projects.”
The aspect that he doesn’t enjoy as much, but also feels is one of the most important, is organizing the equipment. He says that sometimes he “feel[s] like an AV janitor” because what he really enjoys is the thrill of the auditorium sound-booth equipment when there are performances, conferences, or guest speakers. When you’re in that sound booth all it takes is the slip of one button and the whole presentation can become chaos with lights turning off, microphones shutting off, or recording equipment going haywire, so it can be stressful but he explains that it’s the most exciting and keeps you on your toes.
Though most of us may end up throwing a user manual in the corner, Mr. Soares enjoys reading these manuals. He says “I’m a manual junkie. I’ll take a 600 page manual and enjoy it.” He is currently working on reading one that is over 1,000 pages.
In his work environment Mr. Soares says “I need music. I need to be facing a door. I can’t have my back to the door, I need to be able to see who is coming and going. I actually need distractions to not be distracted… I need space. I need to be able to layout stuff to get stuff done. Also I need to be able to leave my work environment but still be working… I feel like my entire desk is pretty much the campus.”
His workplace is a large part of his social interaction. He tells me that his priority is his family and he is at home with the kids a lot. At work is where he sees the majority of the people in his social network.
Surprisingly, even though Mr. Soares works with technology, he says there is “too much technology.” He tells me that “as much as this is my job, I really hate computers and I don’t like the majority of tech, and I think it’s environmentally unsound and I think it’s treated really poorly by the majority of people in our culture. We have a lot of high tech trash. And it depresses me at times that I’m surrounded by it all the time. But so what I enjoy about it is that I can create the most environmentally friendly AV set up that the college can have.”
Themes: organizing, cleaning, manuals, ability to leave environment but still be working, distractions in order to not be distracted, gratifying, living room, enjoy, social network, fun.
