Originally published in June 2019
I work from home now. Freelance, no boss, no communal restrooms. I exist in a cocoon of silence only briefly interrupted by the occasional street-level horn honk. The privacy is delicious. In fact I often wonder what it would take to get me back in a non-residential building and friend, you could not afford it. Nope, I’m a solo artist from here on out, and I think it was open office floor plans that drove me to it. I suffered awkwardly and so did my productivity for six long years, and I like to think I’ve rewarded myself with an abundance of personal space and a complete void of $16 salads.
Below, my own personal report on the anxieties caused by working close enough to multiple humans to slap them across the face with a wet trout. I hope you relate. I hope your startup builds cubicles. Good luck.
1 — Is everyone actually like…friends here? Why do people seem to treat this open office as a 7th year of college? Are they seriously talking about the house they rented together upstate this weekend? My god I had to invest in $300 headphones just to pretend these people don’t exist during business hours. How the hell do they like each other enough to sign up for more of each other I ask you?!
2 — I don’t want to work at the same Restoration Hardware dining table as the CEO of this company and I don’t care who knows it. It’s not “cool” or “down to earth,” it’s awkward and I’m scared all day and this isn’t productive. At no time should I be aware that the person who signs my paychecks is rescheduling the biopsy of a weird freckle she found. It’s not right.
3 — Can everyone hear my ungodly stomach noises right now? Are they judging me for digesting? For getting hungry? For having a delicate constitution? Be quiet, body! Why must you make sounds that don’t come out of my mouth?!
4 — He’s sick. He’s sick again. Why do people think that coming to work sick is some kind of Marlboro Man tough guy badge of honor? “This company is 100% the most important thing in my life—I’ll prove it by wiping out half this department.” And after last time when I googled the contamination radius of the common cold I am now well aware that I’m firmly ensconced in his halo of infectants. I must now quarantine myself to work on the welcome couch by the front desk that’s never been cleaned for the next three days, making myself the defacto receptionist in addition to my eight other roles at this fa’cacta startup just so I don’t catch plague less than a week before the first vacation I’ve taken in two years.
5 — *Mentally keeps tabs on everyone’s arrival and departure times whether they want to or not because it’s SUCH a constant visual.*
6 — If one more person asks me how my weekend was so help me. Must I be subjected to re-having the same conversation 12 times during the hour between 8:30 and 9:30am filled with this company’s staggered arrivals? (Not the engineers though of course, they won’t be here till noon and they’ll be having happy hour together around the kitchen keg by four). Here’s the thing: I’m not a heinous and frigid bitch for not looking up and saying good morning to absolutely all of you, I’m simply trying meet my deadlines because “sorry, I had to make myself come across as like-able all day” isn’t going to fly in my next performance review. Which will be held in a room made of glass.
7 — Does my lunch smell? It smells, doesn’t it. If the raw onion in Karen’s salad from two days ago is still haunting my dreams there’s no way this hummus-riddled grain bowl isn’t assaulting the olfactoires of half this company. I can’t help it if the designating dining space is full of 24-year-olds who make me feel like I’m back in the middle school lunchroom and every bit as unwelcome—I’m starving and there’s nowhere to eat in peace! Light a candle. Wait no, don’t do that—Bob’s allergic to synthetic scent.
To conclude, open spaces for collaboration, meetings, and the like are very wise and very exciting. But keeping humans in open spaces but also together 100% of the time with no escape save for a coffinesque un-air-conditioned phone booth is tantamount to torture and must cease. Open office floor plans are not cool, they never were, and if you want to create an environment that’s productive but also social and everyone pretends like they don’t notice human smells, build a gym.