this post was submitted on 18 May 2026
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Holy shit this is big!
Are you telling me that giving better work conditions to your workers (and therefore making them happier) INCREASES PRODUCTIVITY?!?!
I
AM
SHOCKED.
Giving everyone an office is too costly.
I've got an idea, since cubicle went so well, lets shorten the walls to half walls.
Since half wall cubicles went so well, lets take the walls down complete.
Since the fully open design worked so well, lets squish all the desks together as closely as possible.
Since bench desking worked so well, lets take away personal desks all together and go to a hot desking system.
Since hot desking went so well, lets replace the desks with side tables, and benches with empty cat littler buckets.
Excerpt from "Leadership's Guide to Call Centers"
It's not that simple, there's also esprit de corps and discipline and networking.
Yes, for work productivity right now right here it makes sense that working remotely is good.
That has always been known and normal for people who can work remotely. Writers, or anyone who can synchronize their work through runners with envelopes or, later, fax and telephone.
But also people who can work remotely would always have situations where they'd prefer not to.
My sympathies with remote work are because I'm spoiled and because of retrofuturistic promises of (almost) everyone working like that, my concerns are because you'd want sometimes to see people you're working with, and if many people work in one place and some work remotely, then even if the latter work well, they are ruining discipline.
fuck that, not having to commute for over 2h every day beats anything you could list as being good in pro-return-to-office
I get depressed after long periods of remote work, go to office, then remember why I didn't particularly value the experience, get back to remote.
“Ruining discipline”, ha! What idiocy. Suggesting that working from office is the right way and anything that deviates from it is “ruining” something.
How about the people working from the office are “ruining discipline” of the remote workers by taking decisions behind closed doors? No? Seems unfair?
Maybe let people work the way they work their best except for very specific circumstances instead, and stop blaming structural failures within companies against remote workers.
I worked in a traditional office environment for the full decade before the pandemic, and I was constantly being distracted by "undisciplined" people. There was always someone having a loud conversation in a quiet workspace or coming to my cubical to interrupt me with pointless bullshit.
Going full remote has finally isolated me from the lack of discipline in office environments.
Yeah, we were all sitting in the office with headphones to isolate from the office noise and distractions so we could concentrate and getting work done.
Can confirm. Was stuck in an "open office". It was hell on earth until they decided to build brand new offices for the sales team.. Because why the fuck not
Yes, convenience is often ruining discipline, not for me (ASD) and perhaps not for you, but social ties form between coworkers. That part about behind closed doors - see, they always will.
I mean, we live in a society. Not seeing the faces of the others is a weakness. It's not all about work.
How is it a weakness? If anything it seems like it would help address inequity in how people are treated based on race, age, gender if people are interacting more anonymously, and maybe we could also dispense with this whole coworkers are a family bs that is meant to instil loyalty to a company that doesn’t care about you and offset a lack of work life balance
Because those who see each other's faces coordinate closer socially and might eat you. We live in a society, not a friendly place sometimes.
An it sounds like it might be part of this so called problem in society. You can't make the world a better place without starting.
[citation needed]
I've described a situation - where you'd want to talk something over a cigarette or a cup of tea with your coworker, for example. Or participate in sporadic conversations while walking around the office, help some colleague, get help from some other colleague.
I'm a millennial, I grew up in chat rooms and web forums. There is nothing unique to in-person interaction in what you just described.
You are saying this as if you were flexing your old age to me, while so am I.
No. You can't see their face.
Chat rooms and web forums were in some sense safe spaces. There would be intrigue, but somewhat limited by what concerns a specific forum, or even a specific part of it, or a specific chat. Even conflicts in one place between two people would often not extend to some other place.
And also, believe it or not, people frequenting same spaces would sometimes have offline meetings and know each other personally. Especially moderators and such.
But I agree that what you mentioned was like halfway there from today's online communication which sometimes seems just useless.
You can do all these things remotely. You are not sharing the ciggarette or tea.
Sporadic conversations around the office, set up water cooler or drop in chats. Hard to get going, sure but not impossible. Or side channels for conversations with people you like.
Surely you can get help from anyone anyways right?