Are you lucky enough to be in a modern, cutting-edge office building? Oh, it’s great. Space is at a premium, so the desks are placed really close together. That way, you get to hear everything that’s going on in the business.
The breakdown of the air conditioning in the Perth office? Mate, you are right across it. The bowel obstruction being suffered by the deputy manager’s dog? Should others require details, you discover you have them all. Of course, having all the desks so close together provides space for 27 bookable meeting rooms, which no one ever uses.
I suppose you could pop into one and use it to pray. For example, “Dear Lord, could you make everyone shut up?” Ah, now that’s a proper office space. Credit: iStock Overcrowding, however, is not usually a problem.
In most offices, everyone now works from home. The modern office building is little more than an over-engineered billboard for the company’s name. I know this from walking through the public square in front of the office tower in which I work.
In our office, we all turn up, but other workplaces appear empty. There’d be more people on the main street of Yass. Except on Wednesdays.
There’s a convention, it seems, that workers attend work on a Wednesday, so it’s suddenly like the Royal Easter Show. Four days a week, the place is full of empty car parks; mid-week, and it’s the Hunger Games. This may explain other aspects of the modern office.
For a start, there are no bins, at least not the sma.
