Don't Sh!t Where You Eat

[secundem_artem]

My undergraduate uni had a lovely Faculty Club to which I had an occasional invitation.  Decent food, copious amounts of potent potables complete with a Scottish barman, the ability to simply sign for one's food and drink and generally, a very pleasant atmosphere.

My current uni closed their faculty club about the time I arrived 20 odd years ago.

My building was renovated at about that time and a 2nd building for our program went up then too.  No faculty lounge.  We all eat at our desks.  No kitchenette - most of us have our own coffee pot and mini-fridge.  There is an ancient microwave sitting in the lobby of one of the office atria. 

No faculty restrooms.  We wash our lunch dishes in the bathroom.  We share our bodily noises and excretory environment with our students who are probably laying bets on which prof did not flush.

If architecture has any ability to tell people where they are on the food chain, I'd say my uni makes it pretty clear.  No place for faculty to hang out but about 6 student hangout areas in our 2 buildings.

What are your facilities like?

[Wahoo Redux]

Exactly what you have described.

I've never been at a place that had an active faculty club or a dedicated lounge for anyone.

I pretty much thought that those were a thing of the past.  Too bad.

[mahagonny]

All is need to get through my day is access to a copier and any bathroom nearby. I eat with the students. I never see faculty there. As far as I can tell, full time faculty have no interest in hanging out in the vicinity of anyone but each other. That's fine. It's what I expect. If I need to get away from students I get a sandwich and have it in the room where I teach. I bring my own computer; no, the computer my other school loans me. The department supplies one or two for all the adjunct faculty to share and it works poorly online. Not worth the trouble. It feels something like stopping at a rest area on the freeway.
There is an off-campus faculty club. Never been there. One of my colleagues, who didn't get along too well with the chair, attended some event there. He said 'the chair's face fell when he saw me entering the room.'

[downer]

I would not like anything like the Oxford High Table where the dons eat at the same time as the students, on a different table with  better food, wearing their sub fusc. But a senior common room, with nice arm chairs and a place to meet, would be nice. I've seen all sorts of faculty restaurants and occasionally they are good. Sometimes it is good to have a convenient place on campus to have lunch without a lot of noisy students around. Generally though, I prefer to go off campus or bring my own food in. I did recently get a letter from one place saying that I am entitled to go to the faculty lounge if I pay a yearly fee. I wasn't interested.

[RatGuy]

At my PhD university, there was an on-campus restaurant near the library that had a faculty section. Imagine a back room at your local Jason's Deli, but with comfier chairs. I once had a chance to eat with the Provost there and he ordered a fried shimp poboy. It wasn't plush or even all that quiet.

At my current place, my office is not in the same building as my home department. My department has much nicer amenities. Those of us in the satellite location have a small kitchen -- sink, microwave, fridge, cabinets, cleaning supplies stocked my the dept. There's no space to eat in there though. Most of my colleagues get takeout from the many, many places to eat. (There's currently an ongoing debate about the best chicken fingers in town). There's a lounge/library area in the building that the grad students also use, so I don't think too many of my colleagues ever eat in there.

As far as bathrooms, there are no men's restrooms in my building. There are women's restrooms, and a single "family room" on each floor. They have changing stations and locks on the doors (it then says "unavailable" on the outside of the door). You'd be surprised how often I walk in on a student because they haven't locked the door behind them. You can't unsee that.

[scamp]

At my old uni, there was a faculty kitchen and eating area on our hallway, but we usually had to kick undergrads out of it, despite the fact that there was a student kitchen and eating area on the floor below.

At the current fancy SLAC I teach a course at, in the building I teach, there is a giant comfy lounge room that looks exactly what you would expect a SLAC faculty lounge to look like - dark panels, bookshelves filled with books, big comfy chairs, and coffee on tap. No students dare enter, from what I can tell!

[cathwen]

All three universities where I have taught have faculty dining rooms.  BucolicEliteU was the best; it had a hotel school whose students cooked and served, and the food was wonderful.  My department at BucolicElite also had a lounge where both students and faculty could lounge in comfy chairs, chat, read, sip coffee, and write witty things on the blackboard.  Neither BIgStateU nor UrbanU had faculty lounges.

[larryc]

Same.

My administration is always asking how to encourage interdisciplinary research and teaching. Lots of us suggest a faculty dining hall. We had one 20 years ago. Admin says "No, how about we reorganize all the colleges and combine departments?"

[clean]

Our building was built a few years ago.  We have a break room of some sort. It has a microwave, full size fridge, and a sink (that always drips!!).  there are 2 tables, and another area with a couch and 2 chairs.
The problem is that it has been taken over by foreign students.  The aroma of whatever their native dishes are is overwhelming and I am so glad that my office is at the polar end of the hall so I only get an occasional whiff if I am checking my mail. (likewise, because of my location, I am spared the smell of the burnt microwave popcorn).
At lunch time (which is most of the time, it seems) the tables are full of students and when a faculty member enters the room, it gets quiet and all eyes are upon them .

Oh, and there have been reports that faculty leaving their lunch in the fridge have gone hungry!  One faculty member caught one of the lunch nabbers, but that stands more as a warning to not leave your lunch in the fridge than to encourage faculty from having lunch in the faculty break room!

[lilyb]

We now have an extra conference room, coffee/fridge room, and student lounge on my Humanities faculty floor. We acquired these spaces because of a "right-sizing" purge three years ago, plus no faculty hiring.

[wellfleet]

This building has a faculty/staff kitchen I could cook Thanksgiving dinner in, which the students--at their peril--are forbidden from entering. I didn't even know about the magic kitchen at first, until someone saw me putting lunch in the fridge in a copy/storage room and said "that's the punishment fridge! let me show you the real one." (I have office space in a department I'm not a member of--long story.)

So apparently, you can be kicked out of the real kitchen, which I find hilarious. But seriously, two ovens, dishwasher, range, microwave, the works. My lunch resides there in comfort, as I type.

[Juvenal]

The new building our department has most of the use of (another STEM has half a floor) has an OK faculty lounge.  Fridge, micro, sink, tables and chairs, a padded sofa, two padded armchairs, even what I have to call a useless coffee table I try to make less useless by bringing in copies of STEM journals from time to time to set there and at least make the place look a little professional.  But, the lounge also has the mailboxes and sign-in sheets for adjuncts (I'm now one, a retired FT), so there's a lot of casual in-and-out.  Students stay out unless occasionally invited in--and it's not on the way to any classroom a student might be heading for.  A nice large window supports an array of folk's potted plants.  Some other plants, less-light endowed, are basket cases . . .

[pedanticromantic]

We have no faculty facilities in the building(s) I am in. There is a faculty club, but even I can't afford to eat there. I bring my own food and eat in my office. We don't even have a shared coffee maker.
I'm OK with it, but I really, really wish we had faculty bathrooms. With real toilet paper. I travel with my own TP because the super-thin 1-ply stuff we have just shreds and gets all stuck up in there...

[aside]

Similar to pedanticromantic's place, my building has no real faculty lounge yet the university has a faculty center.  Actually, my building has no real student lounge, either, just some lobby space with seating and the occasional drink or snack machine tucked away in a stairwell.  It's an older building (early 20th century), and the faculty/staff/classroom needs have grown in such a way that any lounge space that might have existed a century ago has long since been utilized for other functions.

[Trogdor]

Here at small-rundown-college there is a faculty lounge with kitchenette in my building, that as far as I know, nobody uses, except to wash dishes and pick up their snail mail. It's actually a nice room. It has a nice view out a huge window, comfy couches, a big table to sit around. But still, everyone eats in their office, or eats during meetings (which are often scheduled during lunch time). I don't understand why.

I've never heard of "faculty only" bathrooms. But we do have a "all genders" bathroom on the first floor that is pretty nice.

Now, the rest of the building, on the other hand, especially the hallways, look like a cold-war fallout shelter. The inadequate fluorescent light fixtures are filled with years worth of dead flies. Above the lights are a warren of exposed pipes and ductwork that suck up the light like a black hole. It's so dim in the hallways you can barely read the signs on the walls. I cringe when they give tours to prospective students. It was built in the 60's and has never been updated, except for a nice addition they added in the 90s, which only accentuates the dilapidated state of the old half of the building. The faculty lounge is in the new section of the building.