The Action Office
Nikil Saval in N+1 discusses the Birth of the Office and his short-lived career as a freelancer in New York.
There are many like me — too many. I have to get up early in the morning to find a seat, which I claim with a valuable laptop. I’m afraid to get up to use the bathroom — the other freelancers might not steal my laptop, but they’ll certainly steal my seat.
No matter what happened to me, I was not at the office, and it’s hard to convey how pleasurable that is. Luckily, I don’t have to convey it, because everyone already knows. But as I wandered the streets of New York, wondering whether there existed some perfect cafe that would give me space to work, I began also to wonder whether this wasn’t exactly the feeling the office is now designed to produce — whether my reflexive disgust at the sight of a cubicle, those hoary walls, those fake-wood surfaces, didn’t fit all too neatly into corporate plans.
The way that gestures toward a future of perfect corporate efficiency (i.e., getting something for nothing), is to persuade employees to rent their own offices, buy their own coffee, provide their own air-conditioning, pay for their own health insurance, soak up their own sick days, settle for no vacation.
I’m fascinated by the changing shape of the work environment as my friends become permanent freelancers. I’ve never worked at a cubicle, and this article scares me that one day I will.
At my firm, as is typical on Wall Street, my colleagues and I sit very close together on an open trading floor with a beautiful view of central park. I sit three feet away from the PM. The space is designed for fast and efficient communication with those next to me, but, surprisingly, a lot goes on only a few feet away that I have no part in. When I switched seats this week to cover for someone on vacation, I learned more about what my co-workers do than I have in months.
Outside of this, jelly is the best work environment I know.
