Our company has consolidated our office space in order to save money. We’ve been condensed from three floors of an office building down to one and a quarter floors. I got downgraded from an office to a cubicle, because there aren’t enough offices for someone of my low seniority level to have one.
It’s kind of a bummer. I don’t think I’d have minded as much if I’d always been in a cubicle here, but it’s different when you’ve had an office for a year and a half and then you have to switch to a cubicle.
Goodbye to being able to close my door, goodbye to having a window, goodbye to being able to take quick naps underneath my desk. Hello to ambient noise, hello to other people being able to see what’s on my computer screen when they walk past.
Well, at least cubicles have walls. So, there’s that.
It’s always amazed me how flagrantly undemocratic and non-egalitarian the American work environment is in this modern era. The idea of seniority somehow bestowing carnal benefits is preposterous and beckons backwards to the fundamentals of feudalism, a system best relegated to the eras where might-was-right and basic brutalism.
Cubicles, if properly designed and implemented, provide enough audio and visual shielding to perform most contemporary business tasks; when they do not, a lesson in basic group etiquette is usually adequate. And for private meetings, one-on-one or grouped, enclosed meeting rooms fill the gaps.
Sure, those entrenched in a culture of privilege and constant stroking might get a bit miffed, but such evolved group-work office styles have worked for years in many businesses where fellow colleagues know what constitutes proper/improper public behavior.
The need for an enclosed, cauterized work space is more psychological than empirically necessary for good productivity. The generations that follow us will look at private work environments as not only potentially elitist but innately anti-social and anti-productive to a high caliber of work. The most productive humans work best together.
rob@egoz.org
Ummmm…yeah…we got sort of a…ahh…problem here. You see, your forgot to put the cover on your TPS report! ;)
If you haven’t seen “Office Space,” please consider watching it!
Rob, you may be right. I openly admit that I’m an anti-social elitist. And apparently, I’m not particularly productive, either. I’ve never been a “team-player”, and I never will. What a disappointment I must be to all those who heralded my great potential back when I was a puppy. But fuck them, and fuck all the team-players, too; I’m happy this way!
rob: I work in one of those open workspaces you lionize. They are absolutely terrible. They are completely dehumanizing. Everyone, from top to bottom, should get an office.