Same. We don’t have the room in my office for everyone to be there all at once so I’m hoping we go hybrid instead. My wife’s office is the same. They have 7 rooms for 35 people in her team so unless they stack em shoulder to shoulder, there’s no way. Meanwhile, everyone in leadership has their own office. Ain’t that some shit?

As for me, my job involves a lot of salary discussions. Now, I don’t mind speaking openly about salaries. My personal belief is that salary discussions should be open and public. Not everyone thinks the way I do. And I know that if I’m placed in an open cubicle in a hallway, people to whom I report will not want to talk to me as often. I don’t mind either way. I like these people. But if leadership in my organization wants to do that to me, that’s probably what’s going to happen. It’s the nature of my job. I help write budgets and then do entry for nearly $60,000,000 of annual spending, including salaries for about a thousand positions. Nearly half of the entire organization falls under my purview. From division directors making $160k a year all the way down to part time housekeepers making 13 bucks an hour. So if they want me in a cubicle, that’s fine. I’ve done lots of time in cubicles. It doesn’t bother me much. But that could be a consequence of doing that to me.

I have an interview coming up for a job that pays twice as much and looks to be about as much work as I do now. I hope I get it. I think that my departure from this place will cause a hell of a fire. Maybe if I’d have got that promotion I’d been hinting at for some time, I wouldn’t have updated my resume. But here we are. I am no longer gruntled.

I don’t think it’s the isolation, but the endless beige monotony.

I didn’t mind my cubefarm when I was immersed in the cube, but it was hella depressing in the morning coming into that environment. Made me feel like a worn cog in the machine. Lunch, standing up to a beige hellscape, sucked all my creativity (which wasn’t great, as a designer).

Open floor plan, when that became the alternative, was worse, though.

Working from home is ideal. I haven’t been able to work for a few years, so maybe I’m out of touch, but I can’t fathom why anyone is against working from home, especially in software dev. It’s the best of all worlds – no office space fees, and most of us will work extra hours in our cosy environment.

e: I was more productive working from home than ever, and would even work outside hours without reporting it because I was just happy to be creating things. I dreamt about my project – in a good way – and implemented ideas like that. Why would a CEO who claims to have the slightest idea about things not want that, unless they’re an idiot?

e2: That’s not to devalue our worth – rereading this, I can see how it could read that way. What I’m saying is when your skills align well with what you like to do and you make a career in that, it’s a profitable combination; unfortunately, our whole economy is set up to select against that, which is a shame for all of us. Doubly so for the morons in charge.

I did this to some players in a d&d session but wasn’t thinking of the tps reports exactly. The party met an insane ghost who had died from working herself to death as a library curator. The party initially tried to be her friendly but snuck into a secret room and got caught. She attacked and the party wasn’t equipped to handle a ghost and she was several levels higher than them. The party quickly realized they weren’t going to be able to kill her so they surrendered and offered to help her with her work since she had insisted she still needed to do her reports. She agreed and put them in this tiny room and made them fill out the reports. For the first 10 IRL minutes the players thought i was just going to handwaive letting them escape after a while but i could’ve killed them all so i wasn’t going to reward their recklessness. No, it ended up being an impromptu escape room where the ghost library curator frequently popped through one of the walls to yell at them and demand more work from them. They had to devise a plan to escape. I had planned on them trying to sneak out in between her patrol route but they instead decided to put her to rest by telling her she was dead and that none of the work matters. Bold strategy! In-game the characters were there filling out reports for several hours before the curator acknowledged that the reports didn’t matter anymore and that her boss had just used her. They spent spent 20 IRL minutes roleplaying her to rest and eventually escaped the office escape room.

We’re here to fix your monitor

Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was employee number 427

I was told, I could listen to the radio, at a reasonable volume.

Yeah honestly cubes were hell, but still nothing compared to an open office. Especially a well lit ““vibrant”” one.

Good for socialising. Absolute shit for actually working.