The open office hate thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I know there’s probably hardly anyone here who feels the same, but I loathe open offices with every fiber of my being.

I sit in an open space where we’re ostensibly expected to write computer code. It’s table-style open office. Without moving my head I can make eye contact with 10 people. If I stand up it’s 30. People conduct maximum-volume conference calls on speakerphone, they do boisterous loud socializing. Meeting space and quiet space are a premium, so people just hold meetings in the work space. As well as eating lunch there. Oh and the big 40-person auditorium space is contiguous with the office space with no walls.

There is no acoustic tiling. There is a sound masking system; nobody seems to understand it’s for masking normal background noise. It was briefly cranked up to the loudness of a small jet engine in an apparent effort to drown out the noise of blasting the world cup and playing foosball; we then concluded that noise management doesn’t work for us and we may as well give up. I have a sound meter app on my phone; it’s always at 60dB and often up to 70db.

I spend a good bit of my workday grinding my teeth and asking myself why this persists and who could possibly think this is a good idea. But of course… bring this up to management, and of course the line they tell you is that it’s great for collaboration. From within the confines of their private office, of course. And of course collaboration works so great when everyone is wearing dinner-plate sized headphones to drown out the mouthy extraverts, when everyone is working home 4 days a week to avoid the zoo, when everybody sends Slack messages to the person sitting next to them so as to fight the noise level in vain.

It’s not just a bad management idea, something is wrong with workers in general these days. We do have a “quiet room” in our office with a small futon and a couple of beanbags. It’s always occupied of course, as people are desperate to escape the endless talkey-jokey hell of endless extraversion. I’m in there one day, and someone opens the door to come in. Okay, I feel it man, have a seat. But even here in the sanctity of the quiet room, this stranger I don’t even know plops his ass on the futon not even 18 inches away from me. Why even come to the private room? Why sit next to a hostile geezer striving his best to emanate a “fuck off” vibe?

In summary I hate everything and I don’t understand anything and I’m about to embark on a career selling essential oils to housewives who believe in astrology.

2

Sounds like a nightmare. Makes me feel okay about my cubicle.

3

A cubicle? Where do you work? What do you do? I want to do that and work there.

4

Open offices are horrid. Terrible. Soul-destroying. I rise in solidarity to your cause.

5

They SUUUUCK!
I took my current job 25% because I got my own damn office back

6

Our offices were switched to an open plan and I loathe it.

As you say, there is massive noise pollution. I wear noise cancelling headphones 100% of the time just to get anything done. Unfortunately, I know that some people are intimidated or unwilling to ask me things because I’m wearing them. But I don’t have an alternative here.

The visual distractions are also bad. There is no direction I can look in where there isn’t movement. Every person that walks by, every rotation of a chair, etc.

We have these phone pod things, which of course are attractive since they’re the only place to get any quiet at all. So of course they’re always occupied. Some people eat lunch in them, which is unfortunate.

I hoped I would get used to it, but it hasn’t happened. I really did give it a shot, but it’s just become worse over time. To be an even remotely decent officemate requires a kind of super politeness that no one can sustain indefinitely. So eventually the politeness wears off and people don’t bother with trying to be quiet and non-distracting.

It’s wearing. I’m going to have to work from home eventually. I’m not a big fan of working from home but to maintain a semblance of concentration I don’t think I’ll have a choice.

Oh, and they decided to shrink the workspaces by 25% when they switched. Without bothering to upgrade the parking situation. You can imagine how that has turned out.

7

This is so true. When I had a cubicle or private office, I would actually come in early and stay late. Check emails, cup of coffee, have a leisurely dump, work, let people waste my time, waste other people’s time, go to meetings, buckle down and crank out some serious work from about 1-4:50pm.

Nowadays, everyone rolls in at about 10:40 and leaves about 3:59 because the office is such a shithole of distractions. Supposedly we are all “online and working” outside those hours but nobody really does. It’s like a labor union where we all agree to work shit conditions for 5 hours a day. I know, I shouldn’t complain, but I actually like working and accomplishing stuff.

8

Different strokes for different people. Most Europeans prefer open floor to farm stalls, but then, if you’re part of a culture where that’s preferable you’re probably also good at things such as “moving to one of the side rooms if you’re going to be talking on the phone” (attending one of those conference calls where you say your name at the beginning, or not even, is ok).

From what I can see, and I’ve been working for 30 years in multiple countries on both sides of the Atlantic, one of the worst management mistakes is the belief that “if it works well in one place, it will work well everywhere”. This applies to organization of physical spaces, to organizational charts, to company processes, to advertising campaigns… It’s just fucking stupid, that’s what it is.

9

See that’s the weird thing about open office culture. If you ask people about cubicles, they say they are conformist or dehumanizing or ugly or some other horrible thing. To me, this seems like… and I hate to deploy this term, but in this case it’s apt… virtue signaling. We are signaling that we are always on, always available, have no private thoughts or mental space.

I have never worked in Europe. I did work in Japan in an open office and by God these people understood that if we share a workspace, then we are as silent as corpses in the grave until the monthly happy hour. Then we get wrecked, we do our gossip, and it’s back to business as usual on Monday morning. Maybe Taro takes the gossip to heart and stops microwaving fish in the breakroom. Probably not, but at least we have levers to work with.

10

Of course the ultimate in modern office de-motivational techniques is the implementation of open plan offices and hot-desking, although you can disguise it by calling it activity based working.

11

heh i remember when they tried “open classrooms” … yeah that went well …

12

It took my longer than I care to admit to realize this wasn’t about the Microsoft knock-off software, OpenOffice.

13

My coworkers did not get the memo about going to another room for talking on the phone. And one wears hearing aids, so the resulting volume means that lots of people only hear him. Noise cancelling headphones do nothing for individual voices.

And whoever that it is a good idea to have the ENTIRE outer part of the building to be one huge room, so that someone who can’t even see me can hear me sneeze (yes, 30 m away, she Skyped me “bless you”), should sit at my desk. And listen to the 3 different conversions in 3 different languages, punctuated by the crash of metal as the recycling collection point is outside my office. Joy.

And did I mention, that since I’m on the north side of the building, and the thermostat seems to be on the south side, I often wear fingerless gloves throughout the entire winter while my coworkers broil?

14

OTOH, we have an open office at our computer helpdesk and it’s by far the best way to go. Someone calls with a new issue and you can put him on hold and ask if anyone’s come across it before. If someone needs to go out and about, they can ask if someone else has to leave, so we can make sure someone’s there to answer the phones. We always know if someone is in, if they’re the one familiar with the problem. You can overhear someone talking to a particular person who you’ve dealt with before and give advice. You immediately know if someone’s at their desk when a call comes in for them.

It may not work in other environments, but it’s far too useful in ours to go any other way.

15

The place I retired from had open FLOOR concept! I’m surprised the restrooms didn’t end up being bare toilets in the middle of everywhere.

They had cubicles, but that’s a joke. Watching people prairie-dogging is entertaining for only a brief time.

The WORST part of “open office syndrome” (OOS) is the fact that the place is impossible to heat or cool efficiently. People along the South and West windows wanted to come to work in cut-offs and flip flops. The rest of us FROZE. Almost everyone had a “work sweater” that stayed at your desk. I saw knitted caps, mufflers, gloves. I myself brought a Cuddle-Up blanket that I plugged in. Tour groups from other parts of the building would come to see for themselves.

Open offices suck, majorly!
~VOW

16

We just went open office, about five weeks ago. We were bribed with an upgrade to our free coffee (before: Folgers from concentrate, current: three types of beans that it will grind and serve on demand). The coffee is excellent, and that’s not sarcasm. The lines waiting for it kind of suck now, because it’s really slow, like a Starbucks.

Aside from that, if I want to participate in a Webex at the same time as someone else wants to participate in a different Webex, I’m better off going to my car or a conference room. It’s even worse when a neighbor is in the same Webex, because I get to hear him speak live, followed by the audio delay in the conference call.

The open office is supposed to invite collaboration. With my cube, someone could come in, and I’d invite him or her to sit in my guest chair, and we’d work through the problem. With the open office, there is no chair, and such a conversation just pisses off my neighbors, particularly if they’re in the same Webex together.

Right now we have the same number of people that we did pre-densification, so a lot of the new desks are empty. Obviously, they’re for someone, though. The coffee lines are going to get longer, and the refurb didn’t add any urinals or shitters, so I’m sure that when Land wants to clean the toilets 10 minutes before lunch, it’s going to be just that much more inconvenient when we’re fully densified.

I can’t put my bicycle in my cube now, and I can only hang my smelly cycling shorts from a communal coat rack. Luckily cycling season doesn’t overlap much with wearing coat season, lest the people sharing the communal coat rack complain about my sweaty, crotch-smelling bib.

Actually, I can’t put my bicycle anywhere now, and given that my office is on the Dearborn-Detroit border of a questionable Detroit neighborhood, I don’t really want to leave my bicycle outside (I’ve got nice bikes).

The thing is, we’re not a call center, and we don’t do the type of work where managers have to walk by and see what’s on our screens. We’re working professionals, and most of us are engineers (natural introverts), so there’s nothing to be gained in the way of supervision.

So far, the only advantage to the change is the truly awesome (give credit where it’s due!) coffee, but I tend to think that they could have given us the coffee without taking away our cubes.

There’ve been a lot more plant visits, supplier off-sites, and working from home days lately.

17

Open offices are the worst. I’m sure there is some group or age demographic they work for, but for middle-age programmers, they don’t work at all.

I was stuck in one for several months the size of a gymnasium. Customer Service was halfway across the cavernous space and still so loud I couldn’t do my job. Ended up costing me my job in fact I’m pretty sure.

Please give me a cube or part of an office.

18

Management and bean counters *love *open offices/floors because you can squeeze more people in for the same, or less, money than is spent on real rooms, or even cubicles.

A lot of American-based companies are also on the “the Japanese do it and look at how great their products, etc., are, so we should do it too” train, without realizing that a lot of what makes it work in Japan is the culture, not the floorplan.

Frankly, while I find even cubicles to be too noisy (we have a number of people who speak at volume), I find myself missing my cube while the renovations in my office are going on because right now I’m in sitting at a desk with no place to put my references and at least two people within 10 feet of me who have voices that project. A lot. And they’re on the phone constantly because they provide tech support on our products.

19

Agree with the Op wholeheartedly. Sucky and soul-destroying, as already mentioned. Collaboration is lessened since most people WFH 2-3 days each week anyway to avoid the horrid environment.

Here is my personal situation. I moved from one office about 12 mi from home where I had a normal cubicle with 5 ft high walls, into a different office 6 miles in the other direction to be closer to my team (yes, the team where everyone WFH several days each week). My “workspace” or desk is in a wide “u” shape with 3.5 ft walls where the person sharing this space and I each face a corner, so we are generally looking away from one another. On the end of some of the rows is a taller cube for a managerial type or someone who has been around long enough or butt-snorkeled enough to get one of those.

OK, here is where I get irritated: the guy sitting behind me in this U shape talks on the phone very loudly and irritatingly, and sometimes stands-up in order to make sure the people on the phone can hear better. He also turns away from his computer screen and faces directly at me while jabbering loudly over my shoulder. I have turned around a couple times while this is happening and made the “whisper” signal with my finger over my lips followed by the “turn-around” symbol with the same finger. I probably give off the similar “fuck off” vibe mentioned above, so we have not yet collaborated on this issue.

These open concept designs are just cheaper so companies are all into them telling employees they are for better collaboration - we all know this is not true, but as long as they have a generous WFH policy I will just grin and bare it.

20

Yes agree with the OP.

An open office is supposed to create an environment of communication. It’s total bullshit. Buzzword bingo to make excuses.

I’m a programmer as well. Others are analysts. When we need to confer, plan, or share information, we talk to each other and not involve everyone else. Yes, it’s cubes, but tall ones. We all have extra chairs in our cubes so a co-worker can take a seat.

Sheesss. Even in as good as an environment I work in, if I need to make a personal phone call, I make it somewhere else so as to not disturb the few others.

I used to work in an area with smaller cubes and more people. The impromptu meetings outside my cube drove me nuts.