Who has the least Bike friendly workplace ?

Just read thro Scruffs NHS thread and it got me thinking that I must have one of least bike-friendy workplaces around. There are no showers – I use the Disabled Loo which has a tiny washhand basin to get changed in. No lockers or drying facilities – all my gear gets draped around under my desk to dry. No secure bike storage – I used to store the bike under the stairs in the Basement of the building which was at least through a secure door until the **** “landlord” banned me from storing it in there because my bike was marking his crappy lino flooring. The bike is now chained to a drainpipe in the staff carpark. Despite their best efforts to encourage me to use my car all week I still do my 20 mile round trip 2 or 3 times a week. Any STWers have worse “faciities” that this ??

My place is shocking. No bike storage, no changing facilities, the MD whines about the carpet if you bring bikes in, and nowhere for muddy kit.

Awful

Had a similar thing in the last place I worked, couldn’t change in the loos due to short height stalls (wasn’t allowed to use disabled loo as that belonged to the office downstairs), so had to change in comms room, not fun when you work with all men and they choose to ignore the “please can I have five minutes alone in the comms room to change?”, funny how they all suddenly had work they HAD to do on the servers at that time. Had to leave clothes hanging in there too, nothing like freezing cold wet clothes to change into for the ride home. Bike was left under stairs in the reception area, but that was stopped when they did the refurb, so option was to leave it in the car park round the back where there was nothing to chain it to and no CCTV.

Gave up in the end.

Not wanting to rub it in but…

Secure underground car park with CCTV that cant be accessed without a security pass

Bike racks

Showers

Changing rooms and lockers

Heated drying rails

🙂

I have a pretty self-serving attitude at my place of work to be honest. I’m one of 3 or four regular cycle commuters out of 150 staff, which means we always have space to store bikes and kit, and the rush for the showers (though I don’t bother to be honest, I never deal with customers) is never bad.

If everybody started cycling in the demand for what little facilities we do have would be huge, and things would start getting out of hand.

Therefore, in a purely selfish way, I’m happy to be one of a tiny minority 🙂

Similar to the above – no showers, lockers, drying etc and bike lived in an alcove. Company moved office and only difference is a shed out the back to keep the bike in. Not even a mirror now to check how sweaty I look! Still they at least let me do the bike to work scheme…

Oh, actually my employer did try to introduce the cyclescheme and sent an email round saying how it would work and askign if anyone would be interested.

The staff reacted in much the same way I would expect someone might react had someone just pissed on their kids.

Pathetic, fat, lazy losers.

Sunderland City Council just don’t want to know about the bike to work scheme. I still work about six hours a week at a local leisure centre. Quite a few of the staff cycle to work and enquiries have been made several times, to the relevant person / people. Don’t know if it’s a council-wide policy.

Sorry for the mildly off topic hijack….

At my soon-to-be ex-workplace, there’s bike storage with CCTV, lockers, showers and a changing room. They recently refurbished the changing room to a very high standard, but there were a few reasonable design flaws in what they did. The result? Constant whinging and moaning about how ‘appalling’ and ‘disgusting’ and ‘pathetic’ everything was. Strangers would open conversations to you in there by saying ‘disgraceful, isn’t it?’ Shut the **** up you whining buggers! You’ve got no idea how good you’ve got it. Then again, this is the civil service.

At soton I had a shower and a very comprehensive supervisor who let me store the bike change me in the cluster room. Stuff was let to dry in the cluster room too.

Here bike is lock to a pillar down the departement I have shower and I managed to get 50 € from the lab to “refurbish the shower”. Like to put a curtain and to change the shower head.

Best I have seen was of the 3 decathlon I have been working in, none had shower…

3 outdoor bike racks. One at the bottom of the hill at the end of the footpath/steps which the main building is on, one in the carpark and one for staff around the back. Most are CCTV covered. 1 shower cubical not great but better than nothing. We are also right next door to the Uni pool/ sports centre and get a great rate on membership so can use their pool, showers, gym, climbing wall etc instead. Oh and we’re on Cyclescheme.

Can’t wait to start commuting by bike next week.

Sounds familiar Surfr, what Uni is it?

Aberystwyth Uni is right next door to us.

no bike storage, no secure parking for cars either, no showers, no disabled loo for changing, nowhere to put skanky biking clothes, no encouragement to bike at all to be honest.

used to store my road bike in the clean lab, well we cant be having dust settling on it can we?

current office has a bike cage in the underground car park, and a shower in the prayer room, anoyingly they are allowed to pray on company time, but i’m not allowed to shower after clocking in 🙁

Oh it is terrible. Bike storage, showers, full bike workshop, trained mechanics.

We have a single shower for blokes in what used to be the womens’ bogs on the ground floor (great design… put all the showers in the womens’ toilets, even though there are about 5 or six women and eighty blokes here), and cyclists have a locked storage shed for their bikes. Unfortunately, you can access the inside of the lock through the bars on the door, so they get a B- for that. No drying facilities either, so those that do cycle have to put stuff in the loo or leave it on the window sills.

Muy wife gets quite upset if I try and bring a bike upstairs to the office with me.

Other than that working at home has been quite bike freindly, albeit with reduced commuting opportunities…

we are lucky have showers and internal bike storage
unfortunately 20 spaces for over 200 staff a lot of whom are students so twice as many spaces needed

instead i lock mine up in the hospital shed next door, tho have had my lock cut 90% of the way through when i was working late

bike gets parked in courtyard at work, clothes go in drying room, shower, then put clean, dry biking clothes on and use bike for work…then kids clean bike for me before i ride home.

oh yeah, and work bought me all my cycling kit to wear as well!

benefits of working at an outdoor ed centre 🙂

3 years of whining lead to some Sheffield stands finally being installed … which are better then the rubbish ones that were nylock nutted (I kid you not) to a wall near the bins …

… still no shower, and no C2W scheme, though I life in hope – and extra nagging. Though these days I have nabbed my very own coat stand to dry my kit on.

we have a rusty old bike rack (space for 3 bikes) but no changing/drying facility or lockers. No wonder there are only 2 people arriving on bikes (1 of those has a commute less than a mile).

Shower, secure bike place, full workshop and trained mechanics on hand, not bad really.

Current work has bike lockers in the car park, however they are all ‘in use’ (this means people have the keys and say they use them, 1 out of 8 is actually in use) so my bike is chained up outside. We did have two showers but they have been out of use since Christmas – being turned into office space. They recently tried to introduce the cycle to work scheme, I suggested they might want to fix the bike storage and the shower problem before they introduced it.

Last place I worked bikes had to be stored on the 4th floor which involved a lift (which broke down approx. once per week) and a half flight of stairs. Plus cleaners used to leave earlier than they should and set the alarm on that floor, whilst we were issued with card access for all floors you only got an alarm fob for the floor you worked on.

Me…work for probably the largest government dept and they dont do cycle to work scheme. How crap!

I work for the 6th largest employer in the world who are also the largest logistics company in the world yet the facilities available at our site for cyclists consist of an old corrugated iron lean-to for bicycles, a single knackered shower which is on a different floor from the locker room and a complete lack of interest in the cycle to work scheme.

Apparently in a company as large as ours there is no-one looking into the scheme and when I asked if I could take it on I was told “we’re holding that project for someone else”.

Mine’s pretty poor. We are only allowed to travel by company appointed transport. There are no bike facilities at all. We have on-site accommodation for shift workers, so there are showers, but not much use if you are not allowed a bike here.

The commute would be pretty tough anyway. 120 miles of the North Sea.

Astronauts? It’d have to be a carbon fixie to even get on the shuttle.