Fed gov’t lawyer.
Private office w/ door (ALWAYS CLOSED!). Top 2/3 of East wass is all windows w/ view of Lake Michigan from 30th floor.
Not only a private office, it’s the only office on my entire floor, since it’s adjacent to my film vault. There are two work stations so once in a while a project employee or intern is in there with me, but most of the time I’m all by myself. Given that I bring my lunch to work, there are days when I literally see nobody all day.
Fed employee in a 12’X12’, 4-person cubicle. We have lovely modular work areas, 2 overhead bins, 3 drawers, and a file cabinet out in the passageway. I’m about at the top of the middle of the pile as far as seniority goes, and only 4 people have single cubicles. The boss has an interior office which doubles as the conference room. It’s a crappy part of a crappy old building, but we have pretty much what we need to get the job done. And I’m leaving in 2 years, so I don’t care…
I work in an office. It’s pretty big, but it’s also packed to the gills with journals, study medications, and supplies. I have two desks, two chairs, and 3 moveable shelves on a track. I work for the gubmint. State job, but low on the totem pole. I’m just a pharmacy technician. The only reason I have my own office is because my boss finagled it out of someone a few years ago.
In two weeks, I will be working part of the time in the pharmacy in the hospital. Which means I will have a computer next to my boss’s computer. The downside is that my office is right next door to the morgue. The upside is that I can come to my office here whenever I get done with work over there, and cruise the boards for the rest of the day. 
Legal assistant in NYC. I share a large office with a view right down Park Avenue. No complaints here.
Local government cube-dweller here. It’s a nice cube though, about 12 feet square, in a corner with two real walls and a window. The window looks out on some grass and trees and the courthouse across the street, where manacled miscreants arrive on the Happy Fun Bus[sup]TM[/sup] every morning and afternoon. Beats heck out of the brick-walled, windowless dungeon I had to work in for a while.
Not to brag, but… well, okay I guess it is bragging.
I have the largest office in the place, pretty much. It just worked out that way when the associate director changed offices, and they had to put me somewhere, and it was easiest to just move me into her old office rather than shuffle a bunch of people. So here I am.
I have a window that looks out onto an interesting downtown street, and two doors (which are open 99% of the time). When they are open my office forms something of a hallway, and I let a few key people people use my office as a cut-through to the back offices when they are in a hurry. But generally as a courtesy no one does this except my boss.
I have room for two computers, one of which is dedicated solely for statistical analysis and is only used a few days a week. Sorry, Why a Duck
If I didn’t have so damn much junk everywhere, it’d be a lovely office.
Cubicle, but one with a window to the outside. Lovely view of the parking lot, the expressway, and the trees in front of the glassy office building across the way. The walls are high enough that we cannot overhear each other - mostly at the request of those who work near me.
Wisely, the window does not open, or I, or several of my valued co-workers, would have experienced the express route to the parking lot.
Private industry - I’m a consultant. For me, Dilbert is a documentary.
Regards,
Shodan
17 years with Oil & Gas and software firms.
Nice sized private office with a door that can be shut for a 30 minute catnap over lunch.
The decor which I got to pick out myself is pretty decent and the window view across one wall is heavily treed. No complaints here.
I’m in the Marketing department for a health insurance company and I have a cubicle inside a private office.
My office, which has a door that locks, is shared with another person, so they built two cubes in here. Kinda nice, since it’s not out in the open like much of our building, which is the total cube farm floorplan. Plus I can turn on my little space heater and close my door and stay warm. Even though it’s summer, I have to dress like an Eskimo to stay warm in here.
You guys are great! This is just the kind of information I was hoping for when the idle thought “I wonder how many people still get offices” crossed my mind.
I know that not everyone works in an office, but that’s who the question was directed at. If someone starts a thread asking about our job histories, I have plenty of interesting anecdotes, including the time I was spit upon by a homeless person whose feces I had previously hosed off the sidewalk.
I covet an office so much! Even a semi-cubicle office would do, if it were all mine. First I’ll have to get myself employed. Those of you who have real offices, man do I envy you.
Of course, there are jobs that need to be done out in the open, such as on the trading floor or in a large room where everyone can intercommunicate.
Apparently luck factors in largely, as well. Maybe your company is based in a place where rents aren’t ungodly high, or they’ve owned the building for sixty years, or the new-fangled thinking just hasn’t taken hold. Or, you might be in a brand-new, upstart business in a city with ridiculously high rents.
Anyway, it’s all fascinating. Thanks for all the responses so far.
At my best job ever, Associate Editor of an alternative weekly paper, I shared one big room with 8 other people. We didn’t even have cubicles. We barely had desks.
As a lowly customer service rep for Budweiser, I had my very own office with a window. Nearly starved on the pittance of a salary.
Private offices aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Communal offices are fun in the same sense as a bunch of puppies rolling around on the floor together. Warm, cuddly…
Gads. I was going to complain about being a highly-paid engineer with an open three-wall, 6’ high cubicle. :eek: I think I’ll just count my blessings and be quiet, now…
(Although I did get a lot more work accomplished during ‘normal office hours’ back when I had an office…
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Hence the private office. If I remeber it correctly…"If you want me to work here and not waste valuable time standing in the front doorway, I’m gonna need an office with an ashtray.
You sure you’re not a submariner?
Had a cube. Then a nicer cube on a higher floor. As the layoffs started, I got an office with an interior window that looked out onto the cube farm I used to work in. It was a sweet office, though, right next to the VP of sales, and I could hear everything that went on in there, including my own layoff.
Now I again have a private office, just 20 steps or so from my bedroom. It has some nice art on the walls, and when I feel like it I can make lunch as swiftly or elaborately as I choose. I almost never have to go to meetings, and when I feel like it I can go golfing or volunteer at my kid’s school. I love working from home.
Another fed. Um, I have a cubicle, about 10 x 10, if I need to be indoors.
Otherwise, my real office is outside. All three million acres – streams, lakes, forest, mountains, volcanos.
Thank God for laptops, and funky wilderness Internet connections.
It’s like I won some kind of bizarre office lottery.
At my last job, I worked in a “war room.” A large open space was converted (via cube walls) into a pull pen and 10 desks were arranged inside. It was horrific.
I got a job at Microsoft (make cracks about the company all you want, I have great benefits and a swell office!) and originally had an internal private office, very small, but all my own, it was bliss.
We then moved to a new building, at the same time my team was increasing from 3 to 6 people (3 new people were expected to be hired after the move). Our team was allocated 6 offices, 3 offices with windows, three offices without windows.
Since I was one of the first people hired on my team (yay, lucky chance of seniority) I ended up with a HUGE window office (honestly, you could ride a pony around in it) with three nice windows and a view of a little creek (and a Costco in the distance). It sometimes gets really hot on summer afternoons, but I love it. It’s big, it’s messy, lots of room to spread out and stack papers about, I could NEVER go back to cubes or, hideous the though, a bull pen.
Spend about half my days on my feet doing errands or up & down at the reception desk.
Spend the other half in “my” office, which I don’t officially call that since it’s shared with two other people (or more). There are two desks in there, one of which is used by the accounts receivable person(s), and the other of which is shared by me (accounts payable) and the payroll gal. Nice wooden desks with lots of drawers, and great roomy shelves above; also large file cabinet. No windows, but that’s OK since I don’t work there for eight hours at a time even on long days.
I’m up and about a lot in both my capacities, so I don’t get too bored with my location. The first three years I worked here, though, I didn’t have the office and was stuck on my feet most of the day.
I work in a medical clinic for four family physicians, and do medical records filing, answer the occasional phone call, and keep our office books.
At the consulting/auditing firm I work for only partners and a few managers get the glass-walled offices. The rest of us drones have enormous hot-desking areas: one chair, one phone, powerpoints and a network connector. Whoever gets in first gets the rare seats by the window. It’s like a call centre; everyone can see everyone else and hear any phone call.