I’m quite content with having a room of my own with a door I can close, adjoining a further room with a door I can close. Even then, I try to work at home as much as possible. People are terrific to socialize with, but when I have to get work done, isolation is best.
I’m in a cube now, but next month I’m going free range. My company is gradually converting all our buildings to “collaborative” spaces where you have no assigned work area - everyone just comes in and plugs in to whatever workstation is available. It’s going to be a royal pain in the ass - I like my privacy, including my SDMB time. I’m also not looking forward to getting up and trudging to the bathroom to scratch my ass or pull up my bra strap. The official email announcing the move said “no personal items will be allowed in the workspaces”. We’ll have centralized lockers (1’ cube) for purses and briefcases, which means I can’t even file my nails, let alone pick my feet.
I can clearly see why my company is doing this by observing the relative size of buildings and parking lots. The new, open space building has a parking lot the size of Disneyland’s; they can just fit a shitload more people in the building if they don’t allocate 8’x8’ spaces for them and the pictures of their kids and kitties (or, in my case, the decapitated baby doll head).
Hot diggety dog - I’m a gonna be a mobile worker!
Sounds like a war room at my job. A couple of weeks ago I spent 40 continuous hours over a weekend with a group of 12 - 15 guys in a conference room intended for 10 people. The trash was overflowing with Red Bull cans and takeout containers, the table coated with spilled soda and covered with laptops and power cords.
Nerf guns would have improved the situation, but only briefly.
I would go mad in the normal open desk environment. If the desk was facing the wall though, it probably wouldn’t matter. There is a cubicle with my name on it now, but I go into the office so rarely it is often in a different location when I get there. I’ve started noting the moves with Algebraic Chess Notation. I have White in check right now, but there are plenty of pawns left on the board.
For a call-center type office setting, definately want some walls for noise control. It really irritates me when I get one of those telemarketing calls and I can hear the rep, and the reps dozen or so neighbors.
Now, I work in an open office. It is a very small office (only 2 of us) and the 2 managers have the offices. It does get noisy at times, which can be frustrating when you are on the phone. So, very small workforce = open office. The larger you get, the more noise control you should have.
It depends. Cubes with high partitions are better if you’re in a noisy part of the office, say, next to Outside Sales. OTOH I hate to have my back to a room, or otherwise be position so people can come up behind me unawares. So I can readily imagine a situation in an open office, where I’d rather have the last desk at the back facing forward, than be in the most luxurious cube–hah! A little joke.–with my back to the entrance.
In my last job we had shared offices, usually with two people in a room. Invariably, whoever won the coin toss (or had been their first, by themselves), positioned work area at the back as you walked in, with their desk facing out.
Technically Cambridge.
I completely agree with you. I have had an actual office the size of my living room and it is great. I didn’t work well when I had to in cubicles and I am certainly not going to work in in an open plan. I would quit over it in a heartbeat. I am lucky that I work in a job that takes lots of security clearance so I can always use that as an excuse. We are short of space so they are always trying to get me to share mine with someone else. I do it with a coworker/friend in a similar position who comes in a few hours a week from another site but everyone else has to stay out unless they are invited to a meeting.
I guess I am lucky that I work outside of the general management structure and can make those calls. I feel really bad for those forced to work in an open environment.
I think if my job did that, I would have to quit. I would be unable to function at work if dozens of people were at my back. Not to mention the visual distraction of people around the monitor in front of me. I can’t even sit in a restaurant with my back to strangers without mounting social anxiety. In such an environment, I’d be paranoid every time I went to scratch an itch on my nose, because I’d think coworkers would think I’m picking. And what if someone has to pick a pantyhose wedgie?? Or sneeze? I don’t like my cubicle as much as I’d like a private office, but an open plan would be far, FAR worse. At least cubes offer sound protection and a modicum of privacy.
It’s bad enough when people walking in my row can see my computer screen from over my shoulder. The whole office, though?? I’d have to beg, cry, and scream for a desk by the wall, then turn it so my back faced the wall. And even that might not be enough privacy.
My current job gives us three-walled cubicles. We are open to the hallway, which tends to have another cube on the other side. So you get to know the person across the hall really well.
As part of the…process…of a recent promotion, I moved to a window cube. (YAY!) The side effect is I’m now angled away from people who walk down the hall, instead of towards them. I hate…HATE…having people walk up on me like that. But not enough that I want to give up my window.
And don’t get me started about the furniture they make us use…wasting all kinds of valuable space, making it impossible to have a second person in your cube anywhere close enough to read most of the text on your monitor…
-D/a
I love the “collaboration” argument. If collaboration was so important, why aren’t the higher ups in the open environment too? No an open working environment is always better for someone else. I don’t recall ever seeing someone place themselves in an open environment. Stupid stupid stupid
This thread makes me want to hug my office.
Mainly because my coworker across the hall has the most godawful loud cackling shrieking irritating laugh I’ve ever heard, and she laughs a LOT. It’s deafening through two solid walls and a closed door, and she always manages a cackling fit when I’m trying to add up 200 checks or find a $3 error out of $100k.
Without those barriers between me and her, I’d be on the news because I’d either murder her or kill myself.