It's ironic how the cubicle was the symbol of working-class oppression in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, with countless references in popular culture using it to establish the character's insignificant overlooked place in society. The cheap grey carpet and the temporariness of the fabrication reflected how the organizations viewed their lowest productive workers—too expendable to bother placing in an ordinary office.
Now, fast forward twenty-odd years, and they're not even bothering to stick workers in carpeted squares. Justifying this move with snazzy, jazzy buzz words like "open-planned" and "hot-desked" in order to convince workers that these new fads are somehow in their best interest. Further irony comes in the form of the fact that some hot-desking offices are effectively telling their workers that their work doesn't necessitate or require a permanent place for them to work from… Yet they aren't allowed any working-from-home arrangements.
These offices are the plight of the modern worker. Would it be too much to ask for a place to put pictures of your family so you can be reminded why you come to this forsaken place? The only people who ever really seem to be a fan of this arrangement are your coworkers, who view socializing as their job and never seem to be getting any work done outside of gossiping anyway. These "personality hires" do nothing but keep the rest of us from focusing on our work.
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This worker became the target of their company's CEO, who was desperate to pinpoint why their open plan office was failing and increase productivity. They were first, bewilderingly, tasked with making the open plan office “quieter." This was a confusing request as they and their coworkers had long since adapted to the noise and lack of privacy by wearing noise-cancelling earphones… And asking the most junior worker in the office to “make the open-plan office quieter” sounds dreadfully similar to an office equivalent telling a mechanics apprentice to fetch headlight fluid—or any number of related jokes.
The real purpose behind the task was revealed when they were subsequently blamed for not quieting the office and told that they were, in fact the source of all this loudness, setting in action a course of events that their employer would live to regret…
See their story below, followed by reactions from the online community where their story was originally shared.
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