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Cubicles a Giant Mistake
J to the D writes "Apparently even the designer of the cubicle believes now that they are a bad idea." From the article: "After years of prototyping and studying how people work, and vowing to improve on the open-bullpen office that dominated much of the 20th century, Propst designed a system he thought would increase productivity (hence the name Action Office). The young designer, who also worked on projects as varied as heart pumps and tree harvesters, theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box."
My cubicles walls help give me more free time to spend on Slashdot... And, that's Stuff that Matters...
Without cubes, we never would have been given Dilbert, Office Space or User Friendly. Cubes aint all that bad!
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Cubicles are Cubs Fans who sit in their ice-cold stadium
tell me you all aren't pumped full of donuts, chained to the desk, allowed to get big and fat, and then sold for slaughter right before the holidays....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
To remedy this, I suggest corner window offices for all office employees.
I don't get it.
We just move to icosahedronicles.
The latest Slashdot meme.
... theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them ...
What if your work is in front of you, behind you, on both sides of you, and even hanging above you like a 100-ton anvil? Some cubicles are death traps waiting to happen. Especially if you got a Star Trek nut in a cube.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to goofy off properly with people walking by?
It bothers me even when I actually doing work.
And here comes someone now.....
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
He IS in a box. RTFA.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
he's been dead for several years.
You heard it here first: even brain-eating zombies hate cubicles.
I worked on design of the cubicle. The original idea had us placing workers inside transparent spheres, but testing revealed some office environments devolved into crazy pinball machines or a bumper car ride from hell. Our second revision merely squared off the spheres and lowered the height for visibility. There was no long-term view to our design. We were just trying to meet a deadline.
Now, they are about 1/6 to 1/8 of the size of an office.
.. er, my sixteenths."
"Counselor, see me in my quarte--
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
No, actually it was after that. When he was welcomed to hell with open arms, and placed in his cubicle.
Though I'm not sure exactly how he got the message out to us...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
It's especially bad if one of the people is a heavy Coke drinker. The sound of the pop tops opening! The coughing when he swallows wrong! The loud burping!!
I don't know how my cubemates could stand it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Hell, I don't even have an office, let alone one along an outside wall, and I have a window!
In fact, nearly everybody here has a window, because the building used to be a window factory, so the previous company used their own product nearly everywhere in the construction. If it was to showcase them or to cut down on the cost of drywall, I'm not sure.
Of course most of them look out onto stairwells or warehouse shelves, but at least they are windows:)
Even in a typical private office, however, there are still distractions. The telephone ringing or your neighbor speaking too loud or any of a million other things can be disturbing.
A good compromise is to provide flexible space, cubicles for handling the normal day-to-day stuff, team rooms for collaborative work, and small private spaces with no distractions for deep solo concentration.
Actually, lots of companies provide the third. The room is generally tiled and has a row of tiny offices equipped with porceline chairs.
work better in offices with windows
This is Slashdot. I recommend that they get Linuxes instead.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
In my office, one guy used cardboard to increase the height of his cube walls. We almost put in a masking tape / Les Nesman 4th wall and door for him, but he got moved to an office because he whined so much. Which led to everyone whining.
I did something similar to keep my chatty neighbor from driving me nuts. I started by putting up a huge whiteboard so it stuck an extra foot above the cube wall. Then he couldn't Kilroy over the wall and chat. Then I put two extra desktop machines at the end of my desk to keep him from sitting on my desk to chat. As bonuses, it blocked the view a bit more and the extra white noise drowned him out. Then I had to put an old monitor and desktop on the floor behind my chair so there was nowhere left to stand in my cube to chat. My cube looks like something from Sanford-n-Son, but it keeps people away.
Actually, lots of companies provide the third. The room is generally tiled and has a row of tiny offices equipped with porceline chairs.
True. To coin the grandparent poster, I often experience "the flow" when in these private sanctuaries.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
You should move a little to the left. No one likes it when you crap in the sink, fyi.
Karnal