The Open Office Plan: A Social Experiment Gone Wrong

Whose idea was this? Seriously. Let’s put 50 people in one giant room, strip away all walls, and then act surprised when no one can concentrate. It’s like working in a high school cafeteria, except the food is worse and the gossip is louder.

I can hear everything. Jim’s heavy breathing. Susan’s relentless gum chewing. Gary explaining crypto for the eighth time this week — to the same person who didn’t care the first seven times. And let’s not forget the keyboard clackers, the pen clickers, and the guy who insists on eating an entire bag of chips one crunch at a time like he’s trying to soundtrack my slow descent into madness.

The company said open office plans “encourage collaboration.” What they actually encourage is learning to type passive-aggressive messages in Slack: “Hey, could you keep it down? I’m trying to finish the report that keeps our lights on.” Collaboration apparently means listening to three different conference calls happening within arm’s reach while pretending you don’t secretly want to strangle your coworkers with the communal charging cable.

And don’t even get me started on “hot desking.” Nothing screams productivity like spending the first 30 minutes of your day hunting for an available seat, only to end up sandwiched between the office loud-talker and the human sneezing machine. At this point, I would pay real money for a cubicle — yes, an actual beige fabric box — just to have a wall I can stare at in peace.

Open office? More like open chaos. Whoever invented this layout owes me noise-canceling headphones, a therapy stipend, and at least three hours of focus time I’ll never get back.