I love how that one cheddar employee hated the open plan but was too shy to ask their boss to bring back the cubicle so they made a video on it.

compared a an open plan office, cubicles suddenly look like a luxury lmao

The original plan was three desks a person and now open offices are three people a desk

I think I can speak for a large chunk of all software developers. We despise the open plan office.

People would kill for a cubicle in the horror show that is a 'modern' open plan office. It's only open plan to save money, not to increase productivity or to save your sanity!

For us introverts, cubicles with high partitions are a slice of heaven. Keep them!

As an Introvert the Cubicle is my kingdom & I prefer keeping it

I like the idea of cubicles. Because my boss sits next to me in an open plan office. He’s right there!

I love my cubicle, but then I’m an introvert who is happy to turn up, earn my cash and go home.

I hate staring at my coworkers for 8 hours a day because of short cubicle walls

I love my cubicle at work, and never complained: -dedicated air conditioning unit -dedicated heating system -dedicated sound system -dedicated 2000W - 240V inverter -24V/USB sockets for charging phones -heated seats -own fridge -own microwave oven -adjustable arm rests -full size bed -all around curtains . . . This is the cab of my truck.

Cubicles are fine. Open office is the worst.

I still prefer a Cubicle to the shared team tables we had at my work a million times over. Open offices are terrible.

Tomorrow's video title: "How the Shared Open Space Office Became Universally Hated"

Nothing made me appreciate my cubicle more than the "open office" concept.

Cubicles are horrid but they are still 100x better than an open office plan. Theres a reason we stopped with open office shit; because its only efficient for space management. Every other aspect of it sucks.

The modern office should basically be home offices. Ultimate cost cutting is not even house your employees

I went from tall to short cubicles and it was the worse. My neighbors and passerbys kept interrupting me; they got a snack; they felt the need to tell me. They had weekend pictures; they felt the need to show me. They saw me working, they felt the need to chit-chat. I'm not saying I was always focused but sometimes you really need to concentrate. It was worse when I passed by theirs and they tell me, "you don't say hi!" and drag me in.

One important factor is missing from the equation in this video- The NATURE of work done in these spaces! The type of business/work will greatly determine which arrangements are better suited!

Moral of the story: the problem was never the workspace, but work itself.

Aside from working remote this last year, I'm lucky enough to work in an environment with real offices. No cubicle or open space can match the efficiency and clarity that comes with an actual office.

HR: Should we give every employee 1 desk or 3 desks? Finance: 🤔

Innit funny that the “modern” open office looks just like office hell from the 1920ies.

I type loudly and extremely quickly, I had an open office once and quit two months because it was just too much. I much prefer a cubicle or a tiny private office because I can type and not bother people as much.

Open offices make sense when it's for a team working on the same stuff. That's when I liked it best. When I was sitting in an area that had everybody working on different things with people in different offices, that's when it was really annoying/distracting/etc.

I think cubicles and open offices are a prime example of "be careful what you wish for". Whereas cubicles were once dreaded a couple of decades ago, they seem like a luxury to me compared to the open offices we have today!

Eugh I could never work in a open office. Comparing the two extremes, I would rather have a nice cubicle. Or even better, my own room with a window, basically just a fancier cubicle.

Obviously in movies they’re seen as “hell”, look at the creative types that are screen writers and procures. You have to remember they type of people that make movies lol.

In other words, once again we try to come up with one-size-fits-all solutions in spite of groups of people liking a variety of different choices and those likes are always changing.

I like cubicles in a way. I love to have some sense of privacy and personal space. I like to put post-it notes and other things to remind me of the things I have to do and have done.

Just do a mixture of all those workspaces included remote working.

Note from Introvert: Bring back the cubicles!

A classic office with a door and two windows to the outside is best.

I worked for a company that not only had an open office space, but put 4 of the designer’s desks on a stage (because we were the talent) with rest of the employees desks surrounding the stage. I was one of the designers. Not only did I have no privacy, I was literally performing every miserable day.

Funny how you never see the CEO setting up his own little space in an open office with all the other employees. He always gets his own office. I geuss he's the only person in the company who has meetings, discusses sensitive material, values privacy, or gets distracted by other people's conversations.

Cubicles are an introvert’s paradise. It says “stay away” without having to say stay away lol

Open office is the reason I'm going to keep working from home forever.

I actually loved when offices had cubicles! The 80’s and 90’s were a much more pleasant work environment than the open plan designs of today.

Screw working in an office. Covid has only shown us that the majority of desk work can be done at home

I literally install these for a living. It's super interesting to learn the history of them. It's also sad/funny that at a glance I can name some of the systems featured in this video.

Even when I worked in a call centre I had a cubicle. An open office is just dreadful.

Then COVID came and the cubicle seems like the best thing to happen To schools

having worked only in open offices, I look at cubicles as a luxury of a bygone age

I'd much rather much have my cubicle over an open office that I have now.

I'd start looking for another job if I were put in an open office.

Let's see: from seeing people changing in their cubicles, constantly having to smell what other people are eating, noisy cubicle neighbors, people not wearing their shoes etc. I think I much rather continue working in solitude from my living room.

When I worked for Bell Labs (1976-2001), we were mostly using 1 and 2 person closed offices. This gave us the space and quiet we needed to do design work. As long as a person's door was open, there was little impedance to sharing ideas since popping in for a quick chat was easy (and didn't disturb others). The one project I was on that used cubes really forced us to find out of the way places for impromptu design discussions.

I worked in a cubicle for a year or so and loved it. You get some truly personal space you can customize. The walls were the right height too, I didn't see anyone while seating but when I stand up I could chat with neighbors. A room for a small team (4-7 people) is the absolute best though. You can have all of your team meetings there without needing to find the goddamn free meeting room.

Open office concepts are only useful when you have an office that requires constant collaboration and easy communication between staff. That's what it's meant to facilitate. Cubicles are meant for workers who only need to focus on what they're doing and nothing else. The isolation allows them to make it their own private space and a comfortable place to focus.

In my opinion, the best office is a separate room in your home, not your bedroom, kitchen, nor living room. Although unfortunately, not everyone can have a whole room at home just for work...

Personally, the problem with all these workspaces is they’re all seen as a one size fits all solution. For some people, in some jobs, open office plans will work well because they allow effortless collaboration and informal teamwork. For other people in other jobs, cubicles will work well because they allow some privacy and quiet without being totally walled in. For others, a full office will work well because it’s got a lot of privacy and space to work without distraction. Everyone needs to understand that having all this stuff for everyone isn’t ever going to work that well, and having flexibility and optimization for different people is going to work better than any one setup for all workers.

I hate the open-plan office, I would rather have the dreaded "cubicle" type.

The cubicle is a worth of art. If your a rank and file employee and you have a cubicle. You get to be a boss in someway in your own space. Unlike not having a cubicle and seeing your coworkers pick their nose or them watching you do it. Cubicle = privacy

I think the idea of a space where you have different workstations and with some of them requiering you to stand is a great idea. Makes you move more and stand up at times, perking you up. So basically a modified cubicle with enough space for that. The hexagon workspaces seems to the closest to it.

One of the more jaw-dropping experiences I've had in my working life had to do with an office cubicle back in the early 1980s when I worked at National Semiconductors, a leading chip manufacturer in Silicon Valley, California, during that era: The president/CEO of that company, Charles Sporck, conducted his work from an open-air cubicle at a non-descript desk . . . the decorum of it was no better than a low-level manager's workspace. You would have thought a top executive would be in a private office, lavishly decorated. Imagine that, a CEO for a company with a quarter-billion dollars in revenue, having a workspace as modest as it was. And Sporck's workspace was not the stuff of hearsay, I actually saw it on a daily basis since I was an internal mail courier for the company at the time; where one of my mail drop-off and pickup places was at that executives' area of National Semiconductor.

I actually had a cubical I loved. We had a "Super cube" for 4 people. There was one wall around all 4 work areas, you would be in a corner. The work areas were separated by tables with a walk way in the middle. We were working in 2 or 4 man engineering teams so this was great. We could just turn and review a plan set or draw up concepts within our team, and turn back and be back to work. We had 5 of these in the office. Engineers, surveyors and techs all grouped together.

Interesting how our current working situation sounds similar to that mentioned at the start of the video circa Industrial Revolution.

I'll take a cubicle over open plan any day! I left one of my jobs because they moved to an open office despite what the employees said

The ideal modern office looks like my second bedroom

“We need to get back to normal and return to the office.” - upper management. “...why?” - me thinking of cubicles.

I love my cubicle, I can actually personalize my space somewhat.. when I started in an open office area, I would always become annoyed at the smallest things

My eyes lit up when I saw my newest job had cubicles and was so excited to be promoted one day to get one

I used to work in an open office. I was a lot like trying to get something done at the entrance of a train station. Especially since we didn't have our own desks, but had to also spend our working day playing a stressful game of "musical chair". - Very dynamic, according to the people with personal offices with an actual door. I've found another job. Now I have an actual office of my own. It's the size of a closet, but I enjoy it so much, compared to what I had before. Usually I and my coworkers down the hall keep our doors open for easy communication. But it's great to be able to close it at be completely private for the sensitive phone calls or when you really need to concentrate.

Open offices are like open concept living. Sounds great on paper, looks great as a showpiece, but anyone who uses it for an extended period of time knows why things were designed the way they were originally

Then came the open office layout and everybody started to love the cubical

I preferred the cubical. I actually miss the personal space it gave. Working in an open office makes me feel like I'm always being watched.

They didn't like Propst's vision so he gave them the cubicles as revenge

When I worked in an office I purposefully arranged my monitors into a 'monitor wall' and put headphones in. I code for a living so need the privacy. Face to face time is for the boardroom!

Office space was one of my favorite movies of all time

It pisses me off when a coworker constantly looks at my screens, cubicle would solve that, and help with others breathing heavily, eating, sneezing, etc.

My most productive (self designed) office was much like Probst’s intuitive design, just condensed with a desk, free standing bookshelf, free standing filing cabinet, dry erase board, full 2*6 desk and a guest chair. The aisle facing wall was 48” so it was easy to chat while standing. Everything I needed was right there. With just enough privacy.

I would love a cubicle where I could just hide in it and get my job done 😂. A curtain that closes behind me would be even better

I went from a private office, to cubicle, to open space office. Open space are the worst. I liked the cubicle most, after I got used to not being able to shut my door when I was really busy.

As an introvert, I love cubicles with high partition. I just wish they're bigger and spacious. Like a room. Yes I would like a room office for myself.

I redesigned an open office lately. On the sides of the windows there are groups of 4 desks divided by shelf's/fabricwalls and plants. Also there are smaller closed cubicles where there is only one desk or A meeting table or just two comfortable chairs to have a more private discussion or a phone call etc.. that's all around an open lounge area with groups of armchairs sofas smaller shelfs and lots of plants.... Each employee would get a trolley for his personal stuff and would be able to use any computer in the area. So either working in the lounge area or the 4table groups or in one of the closed.cubicles. switching from one working space to another easily and fast as if the employee would had been working on the same machine the hole day.... turning off/on the PC Login etc...) via a timetable one could reserve those tables in advance so a fair desc sharing could develop. (Not one employee blocking one specific working space all the time if others may want to use it too)... But in the end it turned out that the scheduling system wasn't needed. Even the boss decided to use the same desc sharing system and his office became a shared meeting room.

I had always worked in very small IT companies and usually visited clients' server rooms instead of offices. The first time I came to an office of one of our clients and saw rows after rows of tables without barriers, I had a mini panic attack/stage fright. I was just passing by, but I dreaded working in a setting like that... Now it's my first time working in a big firm where the desks have short barriers between them. I can't complain. There's enough privacy and at the same time allows for easy communication. I really agree with the closing statement of this video too that office workspace is a very small part of the problem in modern offices...

I’ve always dreaded the idea of working in a cubical... however, after being around a bit, it can actually work, granted it’s modern, lively, colorful, easy to personalize and not look like something you’d see in a grey 1990’s accounting office.

Please just let me work in my nice, curated home 😫😫

3:35 Describing Herman Miller as "mold breaking" when precisely what they became famous for was molded furniture. Priceless.

I’ve always worked in cubicles (in an archaic industry) and it surprised me to learn recently that most office workers work in an open office these days. I though it was only modern tech companies. I hate the idea of an open office with a lack of privacy - I don’t think I could be productive. From the sound of this comment section, most ppl agree! I hope more businesses go back to the cubicle model.

How about making offices look/feel like an interior space rather then a classroom?

I actually LOVE having cubicles. I do not like being seen while working, making me insecure and less productive ‘cause I was too self conscious with open office concept.

I miss my cubicle. This last one was actually the best as it was huge with a big sunny window. It also represented boundaries which are hard to find working at home. I should probably buy a screen.

I worked at one place which everyone worked in a cubicle but each cubicle was a good 10 feet from the next one. That was a good layout.

For an introvert with anxiety, I'd take the cubicle

Work from home. We don’t need to drive to a building and take up floor space. My office was nice, cubicle was spacious, but my home office is better.

0:19 I love this great concept and it was all in one person in a one room for a space for the action office work. I love that! I would love to have that if I have my own office building headquarters. But then, as the pandemic happened our home is now our own office and maybe in the future, the companies might think that they didn't need to make a headquarters office building. But, I want to replicate that Action Office in my own room and/or even in my own future office or headquarters

"Open office" is an euphemism for cheap workspace where you can be watched. I have my own room, and I'm glad for that.

I actually liked my cubicle when I use to work in an office setting haha

A happy employee is an efficient and productive employee. I'm surprised there isn't more of a push in mental health even controversal treatments like magic mushroom assisted therapy.

Great B-roll on this video of all the different eras. I can see film grain as well so they weren't necessarily clips from movie sets.

I think people in offices moving to WFH was a big mitigation piece during the pandemic, even more effective than limiting restaurants and stores. I remember even during a regular flu season, illness would spread so fast in offices designed to have people practically in each other's laps all day.

This video feels way outdated. I don't know a single person that works in an open space, cafeteria style first-come first-served no-personal-effects-allowed bench seating that doesn't dream about going back to cubicles while watching their manager close the door to their single-occupancy office.

Makes me feel like a boss that I have an office to myself lol. I think it'd be best to have offices with around three people each in them tbh. For sanity.

I worked in a Startup. The first office was in a small space. Had cubicles in a row. People had to move their chair for others to go their place. Had around 30 people at that time. Then the number of employees increased and there was barely any space left. Then we got a new place. Still had cubicles but had a lot of space to move around. People started customising their space. But then again more people came in and now 3 people were sitting in the space for one. The number of employees reached 65. Then we got a new space and this time we had open office. There was enough space but the privacy went out of the window. I placed 2 wide monitors together to get that cubicle effect. I don't work there anymore but by the time I left they had close to 160 employees in 2 different office spaces. Later came to know that they redesigned the one with the cubicle layout into a open office layout. I would prefer a cubicle setup with some space to move around than the open office layout.

The design, function, and efficiency of our workspaces continues to evolve around productivity and safety. Even jobs which require high levels of customer contact are changing. For instance, car dealerships often have cubicles for their salespeople to do paperwork, use computers, or make phone calls however, that may be changing soon. With the pandemic customers are nervous at spending so much time inside of a dealership with strangers. They are demanding more remote services from start to finish in the vehicle purchasing process. Technology is fulfilling consumers desire in this regard. I recently helped a friend install a gig speed managed network of Wifi access points for General Motors Chevy Division. Now anyone can meet a sales representative virtually online and interact remotely in their search for their next vehicle. This pilot program has been so successful that its expansion to GM's entire brand lineup later this summer is fully anticipated. Remote showrooms are a new and disruptive technology that will have traditional new car dealerships on edge as they learn to compete with customers now being able to purchase directly from the manufacturers instead of having to haggle with dealership middlemen. And they can do so from the comfort of their living room couch, or anywhere else they'd rather be than sat for hours in a cubicle in a dealership doing paperwork with strangers during a lethal pandemic. Look for other manufacturers to jump on this bandwagon soon. This isn't the first time technology has left its profit deflating footprint on car dealerships either. Carvana, sells used vehicles online and customers are shipped a giant coin which they take to a giant vehicle vending machine (located in Novi Michigan near Interstate 96) and place it in the machine which will "dispense" their prepped for delivery vehicle to them. Or customers can opt to have their vehicle delivered to them at work or home instead. With GM's new virtual showroom experience customers can have their purchased vehicles delivered to them wherever they wish as well.

Two things I realized: 1. We don't hate the work office setup . We just hate the work and the toxic culture. 2. Introverts like me who want to focus on their work would prefer cubicle and extroverts who always keep poking their nose in others business would like open office.

I would love a cubicle where I can set it up in my own way and even have small decorations in. I hate the open plan style because you get no privacy.

We went from cell offices one year ago to this open office solution, while we had cell offices we visited each other and taked/had meetings in our offices, but with the open office almost no one talk anymore, except talk that is disturbing everyone else, we have meeting rooms etc but then everything gets so official and formal it is usually not used, and also, our management have taken them as their own offices, so now no one talk (shop) anymore, except just nice conversation over a cup of coffee, the focused unformal business talk has between colleagues has disappeared

That was interesting. Great video! Keep it up 🙂