It’s astonishing to me that new staff as well as new managers became such eager consumers and proponents of open offices just because a few big-IPO companies made it _seem_ avant-garde.
At no time did they consider the effect on personal space and depersonification of this new “paradigm”.
People were hoodwinked into believing this was more social, more cooperative and more egalitarian. No it wasn’t. It was cheaper to seat people and it took freedom away from workers. You now had a multiplicity of eyes upon you. So now even if you don’t have anything productive to do till tomorrow, you have to at least pretend you have something to do now. So instead of thinking about what and how you’ll do things to morrow you waste your time pretending along with everyone else in the corral.
I saw this happen at places which say they “care about workers” and offer a good “work-life balance”. It was such horseshit. If you have to propagandize your beliefs you don’t actually believe them.
At no time did they consider the effect on personal space and depersonification of this new “paradigm”.
People were hoodwinked into believing this was more social, more cooperative and more egalitarian. No it wasn’t. It was cheaper to seat people and it took freedom away from workers. You now had a multiplicity of eyes upon you. So now even if you don’t have anything productive to do till tomorrow, you have to at least pretend you have something to do now. So instead of thinking about what and how you’ll do things to morrow you waste your time pretending along with everyone else in the corral.
I saw this happen at places which say they “care about workers” and offer a good “work-life balance”. It was such horseshit. If you have to propagandize your beliefs you don’t actually believe them.