I really hate this chat about how now people don't need offices any more. It is a fad that I wish would hurry up and go away like 120 degree workstations and office radio. I can not stand people talking rubbish about how 'everywhere is an office' It's total tosh and I want them to shut up.
I read this article and it has really got my back up. Stanley Daniels is asking about skyscrapers. While I am interested in many ideas that this chap general talks about; urban renewal, suburban excuses, sustainability and the future of mixed use, I can not begin to understand how he suggests that it's not the economy, death of the starchitect or simple impracticality that has cooled the skyscraping but the simple decisions by business(?) Anyway the bigger issues aside what I want to rant about is that people who work in glass offices wouldn't throw stones at the folk in the open office.
Apparently offices are changing but here's a news flash, the office is not changing. Only the way companies cram us in is changing. Companies want more economic offices. More streamlined and organized. They want to save money. They want more people on less floor space and this tripe about everywhere office is the perfect guise to get us all working at home, ignoring our kids and messing up our relationships with the world. Our primitive brains have a hard enough time differentiating what is work and what is play with out those times being all mixed together.
Humans are nesting, territorial creatures, we like to have our own settings on our computers, our chairs and arm rests at the same height everyday, to be able to find our personal coffee mug gifted by the children and on off days just to be able to get on with out having to participate in a lifestyle advert for Apple.
The future office breeds selfishness. With out personal space there is no sense of pride or responsibility. The printing area or fridge in a conventional office is bad enough, what are we going to do when every other aspect of the office is treated with the same disrespect?
The idea of offices being fluid, hot desking, breakout spaces of cascading ideas is ridiculous. Offices like that are hell holes of disorder and procrastination. Workers are there all the time not because they love their work more than their family but because they can't possibly get anything done! The fact that small business owners or entreponers work insanely long hours is just that because of the nature of owning your own business!
Idiots and generalisers are pointing to young folk, how they do everything online, that they don't need a desk and computer when they have an iphone so why not take the office away from them and pocket the cash? Think about it how much work do you do on your smart phone. Really? Don't lie, you're lucky to read the email and wait till you get back to the office to reply because who wants to be gotten a hold of at every moment. When having my game face on all day a 10 min taxi ride or lunch alone is a personal haven that is bad enough when a phone call interrupts let alone having to comment on emails right at that second, some how it's expected of the young guys to do it but not the olds. Like our eyes some how are more accustomed to squinting at scanned scrawlings on a 50x75 screen or like we actually want to be staring in to the electric horror at every moment.
I conceit that some positions in company don't need extended computer skills. If you're in that possession then you've probably done your time doing drawings and you're knowledge is by no means obsolete but if you're that far up the chain then unless you have actual knowledge, don't comment on how the minions should or shouldn't be working. If you start speculatively talking like 'the kids do this or the kids do that' then you've already illustrated that you're brutally out of touch.
I want to call all those middle ages opinionated gurners out, stop being lazy and get you to move with the times, they don't move that fast for christsake. If you find the screen difficult to read then don't waste time and resources printing it out, just double space it. It's a trick the learning disabled have used for ever, you might be dyslexic too and never knew it. If you cant type then freaking get on and practice - everyone, including your peers, are laughing at you. You are really not so important that should be depending on someone else to help you communicate. I'm sure that a PA can be kept in a job with out having to dictate emails. And finally, the toughest of all, stop and think for 2 minuets about the reality of the working office instead of just flapping your gums and discrediting yourself. Would you give up your office for a crappy 1200mm work bench beside mine in an open pool? I didn't think so.
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