Companies are shrinking worker cubicles while expanding executive offices

[somone]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/02/08/shrinking.american.cubicle/

Goodbye office space? The shrinking American cubicle
By Stephanie Chen, CNN

(CNN) -- If you feel like your cubicle walls are closing in around you, you may be right. A combination of the troubled economy and the influx of mobile technology is changing the workplace landscape. Literally.

Companies across the country are shrinking those boxed-in work areas or scrapping the notion of the once-ubiquitous cubicles altogether.

At tech-giant Intel, employees who used to work in a 72-square-foot space now work in a cozier 48-square-foot station, company officials say. "Everyone used to get a cube, but that doesn't work for the way people actually do their work today," said Neil Tunmore, director of corporate services at Intel, who spearheaded the corporate redesign that began in 2007.

In 1994, the average office worker had 90 square feet of office space, but the area had been whittled down to 75 square feet in 2010, according to the International Facility Management Association, a professional network for the facility management industry. Space for senior office workers shrunk, too, from 115 square feet in 1994 to 96 square feet in 2010.

But not to worry, that corner office keeps growing. During this same time, space for executive management actually increased...

[sharp_stick]

1. 48 square feet?

Damn that is tiny. I spend most of my day in a big sunny lab with music going, I don't think I could work in a 48 square foot space all day without going nuts.

I love the way the "corporate services" asshole tries to explain it as being set up for the way people actually do their work. Newsflash for Neil... "People do their work that way because assholes like you force them to do it that way".

During every one of these economic downturns companies screw the employees all the way because they know that nobody is going to quit and risk being out of work for two fucking years. Then the economy turns around and the same companies start whining that retention is really bad.

[wilt the stilt]

3. walls and bars

and they are in solitary confinement.

[highplainsdem]

6. I feel claustrophobic just thinking about it.

[JuniperLea]

2. I've built office space in New York and in California...

And in Texas, over a span of years during the 90's and 2000's. Apples and oranges. Location, location, location... and industry, industry, industry as well.

Los Angeles, for example, experienced a lowering of rents and people are scrambling for more space at a lower price than they would have paid five years ago. Now, people are scrambling to renew leases before the economy improves. We'll be seeing fewer people per area for a while.

Edited to specify Downtown Los Angeles... high rise rents... Manhattan... high rise rents... and Houston, ditto.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.

Bill Lumbergh:

Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?


Milton Waddams:
Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...


OFFICE SPACE

[Initech]

9. I.... I could set the building on fire.

[Burma Jones]

5. Same thing happening in new homes too.....

We were looking for a new house a couple years ago. We found generally that houses built in the last ten to twenty years have larger master suites and smaller kids bedrooms than those built back in the 80's and before. We moved into a house built in 1985 with bigger kids' bedrooms, smaller master bedroom and no goddamn 18 foot ceilings, pretentious grand foyers or other wasted space designed to show people how much money you can borrow.

[customerserviceguy]

7. I'm pretty damned lucky

I've got about ten by ten, before you include the usable surfaces. I can even get a trainee or two in there with me, and it's not feeling cramped. Got plenty of wall space for my Pacific Northwest pictures, too.

[RagAss]

8. The Fuckers would hang us upside down in the shithouse if they could !

[Initech]

12. How long until they get rid of restrooms, break rooms, and lunch hours?

[Curmudgeoness]

10. Boy can I relate. I am now in the storage closet

after they totally renovated the offices. I was promised that it was temporary. That was November 2009. But the shelf space is nice.

[elias49]

11. Just imagine spending 23 out of 24 hours EVERY DAY

in digs like that. No 2 martini lunches either.
No company. No coffee maker or television.
No breaks. No going home to family and friends at the end of the 'work day'.
No vacation to look forward to.
No hope.
Time to save Private Manning.

[Starry Messenger]

13. I would hate to be a cube rat.

[conspirator]

14. Race to the bottom reaches office space policies n/t