Man, I just found my home thread. This is exactly what I'm going through right now.
My job just moved so I'm commuting twice as long, and by car instead of the subway. That may change, but I think the extra time it's going to take doing that won't be worth the relatively small amount of money it saves (I'll be paying about $170 a month in subway fares, and probably another $40 or $50 for using the car). With the car my commute is only about 45 minutes right now, though that'll extend some after this week (carryover from the holiday) and when kids start going back to school en masse, but the subway is going to be an hour plus time waiting for transfers and time on the shuttle to get to my building. Add in a 20-minute walk to the subway itself, and that's like double what it takes to get there by car. It used to be that I'd get a 20-minute walk in the morning, a 20-minute subway ride, and the subway stop was 2 blocks from my building... now I don't get to walk at all (bye-bye exercise) unless I want a ridiculously long commute. I hate it.
And I hate my new building. It's in a business park, which might initially seem a lot better than downtown Oakland... but while I admit that it's nice not to step over piss and shit every day, this new place is in Pleasanton. Now, I fucking hate suburbs. I don't know why, I just do. I'm a city boy, so this just isn't my scene. But beyond that, Pleasanton is out in the middle of nowhere and it gets really, really hot. I've worked at this new building for 3 days, and every day it's been over 100. I believe today the high was 110° F, and that wasn't even as hot as it was yesterday from what I could tell. Heat warning is in effect until Friday. If you know me at all, you know that I hate heat like I hate nothing else, and while my building is air conditioned, it means I basically can't leave the premises to go anywhere. I walked like 3 or 4 block-equivalents to a liquor store on Tuesday and it nearly killed me. By the time I got back I could hardly breathe the air was so thick. Because it wasn't just streets, it was walking across huge parking lots and endless blacktop. We're in a giant sterile, corporate business park where there's nothing but concrete and death. It was awful. And it's like this all the time in summer there. I have family around and I hate visiting them unless it's at one of the nicer houses with good AC. This is made all the more aggravating because I only have a half hour lunch now, and there isn't really anywhere to walk even if you want to brave the heat. All the places are blocks away on busy streets in crappy plazas, and that leaves you virtually no time to eat when you account for lunch rush. Go in, get food, go back, then eat at your desk while you work and hope one of your anal bosses doesn't yell at you. Fun.
Also, my direct boss got a new boss, and this new chick is a micromanagement psycho apparently. She seems nice, but I'm hearing stories, and already this soulless fucking pit is taking hold of its employees in other ways. It took them a whopping 2 days to mandate that no decorations can be placed on the outside of any cubicles, and you can't have any decoration inside which can be seen from another cubicle. That's fine for the fucking people with huge cubes, but ours are going to be ridiculously tiny, the smallest anyone has in the building, with walls that afford a pittance of privacy. And what sucks worse is right now we're in HUGE cubicles that are ridiculously nice compared to our usual, but that's only because we're part of the first phase of the move, so we're temporarily in the half of the building that's finished, where there are only nice cubicles to sit in. So we get 3 weeks to get used to having a really nice work environment, then we get relegated back to fucksville where we're *right* by the fucking lunchroom so we get the most noise of anyone in the building, but we're also in the most out of the way corner so it'll take forever to get anywhere. On top of this, we're only doing temporary duties right now, all of which are better than what we're going to end up doing. I'm probably going to be stuck on phones calling employers to verify health insurance all day. I hate working phones.
The one bright side is I got to switch my shift from 8:30 - 5 with an hour lunch to 8 - 4 with a half hour lunch. It makes the morning a lot harder for some reason, but the rest of the day is better. The lunch thing sucks if you want to go somewhere, but it's okay if you bring lunch. The morning is a nightmare, but by the time I finally get out of my half-sleep funk I'm usually working hard enough to not notice that I'm working past what my usual lunch time used to be (I used to do 12 - 1, now I do 12:30 - 1), and then the end of the day comes an hour earlier than it used to. It's really all that's keeping me going, plus the prospect of being able to see some of the very precious few people from the other building that I like (both our buildings are closing and combining into one).
So if it makes you feel any better, you guys aren't alone. Misery loves company, right?
EDIT - That's the most incomprehensible post I've ever written. Jeebus.
