From the DUH! files..."Open office plans cause stress, high blood pressure"

[thebaldguy]

I've been working in cube farms 13+ years.

I prefer the term "veal fattening pen". I guess it's better than an open work area, but you still get to hear all the details of the woman next to you going through a divorce.

I worked in one cube so small you could touch both walls at the same time.

One place I worked shared cubes; the night shift took over after the day shift. There was a lot of conflict betweeen the two shifts. The night guy would dump coffee and not clean it up, leave food residue, etc. The company was too tight to get extra office space for everyone.

I agree that bad management causes more stress and high blood pressure than the pod farms do.

[Regolith]

I technically work in an open office.  There's only three desks in the room, though, and most of the time there are only one or two occupied, so it's not too bad.  Helps that I get along with the guy who shares the space with me.

[HeroHog]

Our cubes are 5.5' tall and those with seniority get to sit on the windowed side of the room which is also farthest from the main area that has the most traffic. Here is what my cube looks like:



The fish-eye effect of the camera makes it look smaller than it really is. Headphones are a must!

[Creeping Incrementalism]

CI, I've never seen a cube with windows.  Kinda defeats the purpose of the wall, doesn't it?  I guess it still keeps your neighbor from sneezing on you, or blowing your stuff around with their fan.  I would be too tempted to cover my cube windows with photo-like pictures of my cube full of water.

The boss tells us the windows are to let natural light filter in.  Which is just stupid, because if I need more light I'll turn on the lights under my top cabinets.  And because the windows are to let light in, we aren't allowed to cover them up.  There are two ways around this: (1) sit in the corner of your cube and place something perpendicular to the window, which blocks your view or (2--if you can manage) sit by a window, because the glare reflecting off the cube window makes it impossible to see anything.