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A sweet corner office and a sweeping view of the Rochester skyline were supposed to be Terence Rafferty's when he moved to Rochester two years ago.
The division president's office is at the end of Mahogany Row, the term employees use to describe Time Warner Cable's richly decorated executive corridor, whose large double doors separate management from operations.
Approximately half of the employees at Time Warner's Rochester division are at its headquarters on Mount Hope Avenue. The number of employees-has grown in recent years by roughly 70 annually to slightly more than 1,000.
Rafferty's appointed office is largely empty, except for the stacks of half-filled boxes and stray computer equipment. There is no sign of him in there.
His real office is half the size of the original and plopped at the center of the company's buzzing call center, far from Mahogany Row.
Rafferty, 42, planned the move shortly after leaving Time Warner Cable New York City to come to Rochester in January 2006. But nobody believed he would do it, says Lara Pritchard, public affairs and production manager at Time Warner.
Rafferty carved his office out of the call center, which teems with hundreds of employees whose voices rise and fall throughout the day. Clearly practiced, the volume of his own voice rises and falls accordingly.
"When he says open-door policy, he means it," Pritchard laughs. "I compare it to a deli counter. Take a number. People really do feel free to come in."
Other members of Rafferty's management team have followed his lead and left Mahogany Row to move back into their departments. Rafferty says he likes to have managers on the floor to hear about the issues they might not otherwise hear and, just as importantly, break down the perceived barriers between departments.
The executive team consists of approximately seven vice presidents. Rafferty says he has replaced some members.
"I would say we're rebuilding our senior leadership," Rafferty says. "There have been some changes there. I think we've done a lot more team building from a managerial perspective, so that philosophically we're all in the same place.
Employment levels at the Rochester division have been quietly growing, he says. How much they will grow in the future is uncertain.
"It will...