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Open plan offices with low partitions and no cubicles makes for a much more pleasant working environment IMHO


Maybe it's a UK thing but i agree with you. In my current office I share a room with approx. 18-20 people and two Avid workstations. I've always worked better when there's noise and if I have to knuckle down and do anything that requires concentration then I stick my headphones on.

The only thing I want to do in a cubicle is take a dump!


In our old room, we rearranged it so that it was fairly open. Most people rearranged their desks and removed partitions so that our whole row had maybe one set of blocking furniture between them and the person next to them. In our new room, the first thing a coworker and I did was remove the partition between us and arrange the hutch parts of the desk so they didn't block us.

It seriously fosters communication between group members. It is a heck of a lot easier for the people around us (who aren't in our group) when we are able to talk without clogging up the aisles while standing around.

As for keeping personal business private, one of the things that is beat into us here is that you should have no expectancy of privacy on either the phones or the computers. Security can, and will, monitor any use of company equipment. They've fired more than a couple people for misuse of company property, but those were mostly 900 number type phone calls and visiting smut sites (which is just a really bad idea from work). If you work in a cubicle farm, the only way to expect your personal business to remain private is conduct it from home.