10. Arrive early and leave early. The work day is flexible based upon an employees needs. For example, most individuals with families arrive between 7 and 8am and leave between 3 and 4pm. When I tend to leave work around 4:30pm... it's usually a ghost town.
9. Light and bright offices. Compared to the cramped cubicles and shared office spaces that I've worked at in US, my office (yes, that's right - I have my own office... baller) has high vaulted ceilings, plenty of light and natural wood desks, chairs, and bookshelves. Now, I just need to do a bit more decorating (see picture below).
8. Chocolate for snacks. There is a small basket of assorted mini Ritter Sport chocolates available for 2 kroner each. I guess this is an upgrade to my habit of buying post-lunch Hershey's mini's from the Atrium Cafe at UNC.
7. Fredagbrød. This is the weekly tradition on Friday from 10:00-10:45am where the entire Department of Clinical Epidemiology gets together to enjoy a coffee and some breakfast bread, butter, jam, and chocolate. Yes... it is as amazing as it sounds.
6. Eating lunch together. For those of you who have ever worked or attended school with me know how much I hate to eat in my office/cube. As it so happens, the Danes also share the same sentiment. Everyday, the entire department emerges from their offices just past 12:00pm and everyone sits at a series of 4 long tables and enjoys lunch together. However, I still miss our Bioinformatics lunches outside, Pam and Emily!!
5. Biking to work is definitely the norm. Everyone comes into work looking a little windblown... and likely a bit sweaty, depending on the distance of their commute.
4. Showers at work. Thank goodness for them - as some of my co-workers have a longer commute to work than I do ;)
3. Weekly fruit basket (see picture below). As some of you may know, the Danish government has a program that supplies workplaces with one piece of fruit per employee per day. There are a variety of fruits including apples, oranges, kiwis, plumbs, bananas, and pears. I guess that means I have no excuse to partake in #8 above.
2. Eating lunch with real plates and cutlery. This is surprisingly one of the nicest features of the office lunch in Denmark. Everyone basically brings their lunch, but uses proper plates, glasses, and cutlery from the two kitchens to eat with. No need to microwave your tupperware... or eat out of a plastic sandwich bag. I would like to bring this custom back to the US (but I guess we'd need to have dishwashers in the office, as well).
1. The stand-up desk. This is by far one of the best parts of working in Denmark. Almost everyone has a convertible desk where you can sit or stand (see the picture below).
Is it weird that 50% of these have to do with food and eating?
That's about it for now - but I promise not to take such a long hiatus next time!
Hej hej! (Bye!)
Jenny
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