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Old 11-27-2018, 12:44 PM
 
Location: Minneapolis, MN
40 posts, read 40,701 times
Reputation: 48

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This is such a cop out / corporate spiel to save up on rent money. My company had 6 floors and has been reduced to 3 by going open floor plan. They talk about how it's so much easier to collaborate but what else can they say other than that.
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Old 11-27-2018, 01:55 PM
 
Location: Panama City, FL
3,041 posts, read 1,951,942 times
Reputation: 6742
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron61 View Post
I worked in a real open office where rows of desks were placed beside one another and there was exactly zero privacy. Every phone call from every person in the room was heard by everyone else. From keyboard clacking to chairs rolling to desk drawers being closed all of it was part of my day. It was without a doubt the most stressful and unproductive environment imaginable.
Agree 100%. I've mostly worked in those open, side by side pens & they're even worse as polite behavior has taken a tumble slowly over the decades. It was bad enough when smoking was allowed indoors & I seemed to be the only human (asthmatic, no less) in offices with only chain smokers.

Added to your list, sitting next to people who bathe infrequently so their greasy hair aroma or never washed parka odor hits you every time they swing around in their chair... eat smelly food everyday (hey, I love sardines, garlic, onions & ethnic foods, too, but I eat them at home, alone or in restaurants)... have annoying ticks & issues (constant, loud throat clearing, Paul Bunyon sneezes, refuse to blow their noses & slurp & snort all day)... talk too loudly, which renders one having to take a cannonball pose with ears blocked to hear someone on the other end of the phone... & display humiliating behavior in public (combing crumbs out of beards, scratching & digging in delicate places others shouldn't have to see, releasing air from varying cavities with no shame whatsoever)... dang, I don't ever want to work in a large office again.

Cubicle/open office life is like trying to work next to someone on the subway, but you can't get up & move away, if they display any of the above.

I'd rather work next to this guy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Fk_mDem4o
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Old 11-27-2018, 02:43 PM
 
7,759 posts, read 3,845,141 times
Reputation: 8846
Quote:
Originally Posted by tamajane View Post
I am amazed many are able to work among such chaos and distraction.
They don't. The Finance team also doesn't worry about productivity but only salary. So they cut the high salary high productive workers because Big Boss A tells them they don't get along with the team and are hurting productivity. Then whine when their absence shows up in the Sales or Revenue goal numbers and how we need to cut some more people to bring that number up

Someone should make a Netflix series called "Stupid Corps Anonymous"


Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Wave View Post
Offices in general aren't good for productivity.

People waste so much time gossiping, schmoozing with the higher ups, and dealing with petty drama.

A work from home situation is great since the focus is almost entirely on performance rather than acting your way through the day and dealing with all of the political nonsense that goes along with working in an office.
My WFH productivity is 2x of what it would be in the office with all the distractions. Going in once in a while is nice but not every day.
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Old 11-27-2018, 04:51 PM
 
829 posts, read 623,316 times
Reputation: 2167
When I entered the workforce, we had rows of desks, one in front of the other - no cubicles or partitions unless you were a manager. Then we got partitions between departments - and eventually, pods - with four people to a pod, but roomy. As I get close to exiting the workforce, the company where I now work has migrated to the open floor plan - and even worse, a "honeycomb". If two people were to push back from their desk at the same time, their chairs would collide, that's how close they are.


Mercifully, when our office lease was up, our boss was able to convince them to merely refresh our office and we somehow retained our cubicles, which may only give us the illusion of privacy, but at least there is some division. I've heard people in the offices that converted to the open space say how loud the office is and I don't know a single person who likes it - not even the Millennials that we were told were the ones who wanted the "collaboration". I don't know how I got so lucky to avoid experiencing the pure horror of an open floor plan, especially since I WFH for 2.5 years before joining this company.


My complete sympathy to those of you inhabiting the open floor plan.
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Old 11-27-2018, 07:28 PM
 
Location: Garbage, NC
3,125 posts, read 3,004,603 times
Reputation: 8245
Ugh. I would hate an open office so much. Private offices (or at least semi-private "offices"/decent-sized cubicles) are a must.

Now, having open collaborative spaces IN ADDITION to decent offices (or at least cubicles) is fine.
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Old 11-27-2018, 08:03 PM
 
Location: Central IL
20,726 posts, read 16,246,928 times
Reputation: 50368
My company keeps making cubes smaller and smaller...and yet we have more and more meeting rooms...that are rarely used because almost every meeting is virtual! So we gave up our cube sizes for a bunch of rarely used meeting rooms that are left vacant. It is truly maddening - the dept. still has to "pay" for the same space whether it is cubes or meeting rooms.

And no, we don't "collaborate" on much of anything. If we HAVE to communicate with someone - even in our own aisle we just IM them.
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:30 PM
 
12,660 posts, read 8,883,944 times
Reputation: 34627
Quote:
Originally Posted by reneeh63 View Post
My company keeps making cubes smaller and smaller...and yet we have more and more meeting rooms...that are rarely used because almost every meeting is virtual! So we gave up our cube sizes for a bunch of rarely used meeting rooms that are left vacant. It is truly maddening - the dept. still has to "pay" for the same space whether it is cubes or meeting rooms.

And no, we don't "collaborate" on much of anything. If we HAVE to communicate with someone - even in our own aisle we just IM them.
At least they created meeting rooms. I've been in places where they downsized the cubes but didn't provide any private meeting areas. I mean where the heck did they think the collaboration was going to take place?
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:47 PM
 
Location: Ft Myers, FL
2,771 posts, read 2,287,724 times
Reputation: 5139
When I entered the office environment in 1989 I had a private office. Seven years later, the business decided to save bucks by moving us into a smaller building and doubling us up - two to each office. But at least we had a door.

A few years later they moved us again, this time into a cube farm - four to each quad.

But I actually had it better at that point because my three quadmates always spent their whole day in the lab so I had the whole quad to myself - I hardly ever saw them.
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Old 11-28-2018, 06:58 PM
 
715 posts, read 1,069,849 times
Reputation: 1774
My employer just recently completed their open floor plan renovation. So recent the office finally just got monitors for all the desks a few weeks ago. They shrunk from two floors to one by doing so. I hate the concept, but since the office rarely gets a big influx of people - either due to project work or taking advantage of working from home flexibility - I’m able to have quiet most times I’m there. I do like our conference and collaboration rooms with the meeting tech and frosted walls for whiteboarding, but I still get more done in my home office since the majority of my group are located in other cities and countries.

By contrast, another office location has the same open concept, but so many go into that office that it’s a madhouse many times. I’m sometimes on a call with a colleague there and you can hear the noise and laughter in their background. It would drive me crazy and I’d refuse to go in if I couldn’t reserve a small office space for the day.
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Old 11-29-2018, 08:45 AM
 
1,092 posts, read 1,552,510 times
Reputation: 750
its called distractions, every generation it changes tho
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