I don’t know…I’m 5’5" and I could see over them, maybe just below my collarbone?
…he had room for a pile of paperwork?
To be clear, I don’t sit in a completely open bay. I have a desk and a 4-foot partition down one side. Plus, I managed to get myself placed at the end of a row and to hang onto some rolling cabinets to serve as a second wall. There are other bays, though, in which the “desks” are just long tables down the middle of the room with monitors and docking stations on them. There’s about enough room between them to put a coffee cup, but not really enough for a stack of paper.
Shared cubes with low (about 18" higher than the desk height) partitions at the current job. All other jobs had high Dilbert cubicle partitions.
I’d prefer the Dilbert cubicle partitions. The low partitions do nothing for privacy or noise pollution. It is worse, and I can’t pretend to ignore people because everyone can see everybody else. God forbid you have to call the doctor.
I once had a team office with a door. I miss that. I really really miss that.
The cubicles at one of my old jobs was ideal. It was high enough that I had privacy, but if the conversation in the neighboring pod got interesting, I could stand up and join it.
It might be a New York thing, but real estate is so expensive, very few people I know have offices. Even in the Big-4 accounting firms, only partners had true offices. And even those offices got tossed into the “hoteling” pool to be used as meeting rooms when they traveled.
Do you make people knock on your imaginary door before you’ll talk to them?
///d&r\\
I’ve never had an office. I’ve always wanted an office, but I never get one. My husband? Gets offices up the fucking ass, all the time. But never me. sniff weep openly
Hey, I found the youtube video I was discussing above.
It was from 2008, when the monitors were big enough to cause some damage if you heaved them across the room.
I have an open plan office, but thank God it’s not as bad as in that video.
My bay is not that cramped, but the other one I described is actually worse.
Offices up the ass? I hope he has health insurance.
I’ve worked in most of those scenarios. I miss having an office with a door. 
Right now I have a cubicle with 4’ walls which keep me from seeing my next door neighbor, but allows us to collaborate when necessary. The cube across from me is currently empty. It doesn’t suck and 90% of the time it’s nice and quiet in here. The open plan was the worst, though. In one place I managed to have my desk in a fairly secluded corner where I could look out over the rest of my office, but no one could see my monitor. I hate when people can see what I’m doing and I don’t like having my back to the rest of the space.
This is exactly what my company has done. I’m somewhat fortunate, in that I get to work quite early in the morning so can have my pick of seats (and tend to sit in the same place). But I feel really sorry for people who have to come in later and try to find a place to sit. It makes for a very sterile work environment, because although I could technically put out family photos, etc, each morning, the reality is that you stop bothering. 
This sends a loud and clear message to employees. The message is, think of your workplace as a public toilet. First come, first served, and if your output is shit, that’s normal.
This…this is great. 
I sit by a doorway and everyone that walks through it speaks to me. I know they feel they have to greet me politely since we’re both right there, but it would be really nice if they didn’t.
My home office has gone to an open plan. The folks there seem to like it, but then again, I’m never around them when they’re not all around each other so they don’t necessarily bitch openly. They do get to work from home twice a week, so I think that gives them some downtime. Otherwise, it’s a loud space, and they have no meeting space, so anytime that a group of them need to talk, it pretty much makes sure that the other people hear every word and (I imagine) don’t get much work done.
I’m remote, so I don’t have to deal with it. I do have a video feed that I can turn on and off at will and see what’s going on. I swear to God, I don’t know that I could work there. I really like the job, but that environment? Horrible. Maybe, just maybe, I could deal with it for 3 days a week (which is what they do). But I know flat out that when the couple of loud-voicers are talking that no other work gets done. Management is all ga-ga over it.
The best is when we remoteys are in the meetings. The others gather around the video feed, which is in the middle of the room, and we all yak. I can see the people not in the meeting trying to work. They are not only crowded out by the folks gathered around the big screen, but they can hear everything.
Back in the 90s, it was a given that the best environment for coders were separate offices, with doors that could be closed for deep-thought work, and a common area for when people need to have discussions. If a few folks needed to collaborate, they went into an office or a the conference room and closed the doors so as not to disturb others. Somehow, that got thrown out in favor of these open plans. It sucks.
Even being remote, I’m not as productive with my own work, as I’m constantly being brought into the group discussions. On the other hand, I have to admit I do know more about what is going on with my coworkers. Some of it is work-related, and I guess that’s good. But today I burned 45 minutes listening them yak about a particularly painful meeting one of them had been in. It was social and fun! I didn’t, however, finish the coding I was planning on doing today. But I guess that’s what management wants, so who am I to say no?
I think we have discovered why American productivity has declined.
Really? The place I worked in the 90s jammed us all in the same room on top of each other. Not even cubicles. Just desks squeezed as close together as possible.
Yup, really. Let’s see… in the 90s, I had a cube, an office shared with one other person, and a private office. With window. Heaven!
You and Les Nessman, from WKRP in Cincinnati.
I’ve never worked in an open-plan office. However, I have been a student in an open-plan classroom, which is to say, three classrooms with about 75 kids right next to each other and no walls. Oh, the teachers were so excited about them! It was going to be so great. Yeah, right. The noise level was excruciating. The teachers put up barriers as soon as they could, and not long after that, the administration caved in and put in real walls.
A coworker of mine sits in a couple cubes over from me, and she keeps snapping her fingers whenever a thought seizes her.
Now she’s humming and singing to herself. And OMG, she just started clapping her hands! Why?
Another coworker is whistling. Yes, whistling.
I don’t understand what I’ve done to deserve any of this.
Maybe the first one’s applauding the whistler. Perhaps a standing ovation is next.
You have my sympathies.