I knew when I quit that one of the things I would miss most would be my beautiful cubicle. But somehow I survived the separation process, and I love my new desk even better.

My new place of work is in a loft in a converted warehouse with wood floors and pipes everywhere. In fact, the only insulation between floors is the wood of the floors (very thin). Often people will be walking around so loudly upstairs that we think there is somebody stomping up behind us and turn around for nothing. Sometimes their footsteps even jar rust from the pipes overhead onto us and our computers. But that's just part of the building's charm. It's actually very comfortable and cheery, and not dank or hot water boiler closet-y at all.

The only real downside is that the bathrooms are at the end of the hall (shared by all the suites on the floor) and you have to take a key with you to get into them. It's a little gross to think about the fact that this one key (and its cute fob) travels to the bathroom with every single one of us multiple times day in and day out, but mostly I try to ignore that fact and pretend that the key and I are exclusive bathroom buddies.

When I first started, the main reason the key thing freaked me out was because I was sensitive about the idea of everyone keeping tabs of how often I was getting up and down to go powder my nose. But I needn't have worried, because it turns out I'm the one who is supersensitive to when everyone else goes. Every time someone gets up and clomps across the floor to pluck the key off the hook and saunter down the hall, I'm like "Again???"

Luckily, after the first few weeks, I managed to pretty much wean myself away from keeping tabs of people's pee trips unless they directly affected me. For example, ironically enough the woman in the office who goes the most is also the person most prone to forgetting to put the key back on the hook. So half the time the key is nowhere to be found and everyone else is politely crossing their legs, silently sending her mental messages to put it back, and (me) e-mailing friends at my old job: "Kidneys. Exploding."

What I should do when this happens (daily) is get up and walk from desk to desk loudly stage-whispering, "Do you have the key? I need to UR-in-ate" so as not to unduly single out the key-hog, yet nevertheless point up the fact that she's bogarting the key. Unfortunately this is more the kind of thing I would put someone else up to doing, and my friend that would do it is still languishing at the old place of work.