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Don Cunningham: Cubicle or Open Floors? That is the Question

By Don Cunningham on February 27, 2019

This column, written by LVEDC President and CEO Don Cunningham, originally appeared in The Morning Call and on the newspaper’s website on February 26, 2019. (Click here to read Cunningham’s previous columns.)

Don Cunningham

The office, the cubicle or open floors: That is the question.

Shakespeare’s actual question in “Hamlet” — to be or not to be — is more profound but the next line in his famous soliloquy is quite relevant in today’s office space debates.

“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?”

I’m not sure what Shakespeare meant by all this. I’m too lazy and not smart enough to find the deeper meaning in the beautiful words.

But, the second bit about “slings and arrows” and taking up “arms against a sea of troubles” with the intent of “ending them,” that, my friends, is clear to anyone who’s ever had to work in an open space office to enhance “collaboration.”

In the era of Google and Facebook, the open concept office is hip. It’s meant to foster creativity, energy, and innovation. Companies and building owners have adopted it as a great way to improve business.

It’s easy to understand why they like it. More people in less space, lower fit-out costs and reduced rents or building expenses.

It’s more confusing as to why the young workers would like it. Recent surveys and data are showing that many don’t.

The business magazine Fast Company last month reported that open space layouts lower in-person interactions by 70 percent. Emailing and other electronic messaging actually increase by 50 percent when people are close to one another. Workers in open spaces report more stress and 65 percent of creative people say they can’t do their best work without quiet.

I worked in an open-floor office during my early 20s. It was a newsroom.

It was a big space with desks jammed together. There was constant noise. You smelled both your neighbors and their lunches.

In fairness, there were no basketball hoops, beanbag chairs, nap rooms or beer taps. Those running the former Globe-Times newspaper in south Bethlehem where I was a young reporter weren’t much concerned with either our comfort or marketing newsrooms as an “innovation” in office space.

I’m amazed I was able to write there. Any success was in spite of the environment, not because of it.

Today, I can’t write without the quiet to think. I do look back with a twinge of pride in my “open-space service.” It’s as close as I came to the coolness of WeWork, the white-hot, big-city office company with the dramatic open-plan designs and shared space.

I know Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire who works at a collective table with his mates and calls it the “perfect engineering space.” In my Shakespearean pondering on office space, I come down on the side of a door.

When given the chance to have an office and a door, few decline it. But, the reality is many Americans now work in open offices. I don’t know the percentage for young workers, but logic would dictate that it’s higher.

This generation is the early adopters of open offices as a preferred way to work. They’ve grown up much more collaborative and innovative than those that came before. They see things a different way.

One day I came into the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corp. office and there was a puzzle on a meeting table. I asked, “What’s the puzzle for?”

“To collaborate.”

“OK, but what are you collaborating on other than the puzzle?”

“It helps us to think.”

My first thought was, “Isn’t that what the bathroom is for?” It was at The Globe-Times.

Where my generation sees puzzles at work as goofing off, young workers see it as enhancing the process. Fun and play are part of working and creating. I’m trying to understand and adapt. Nonetheless, the puzzle is gone.

I can’t help but think, however, that this generation has been forced to adapt and make the best of a lot of less than desirable situations. Open offices are minor.

The work world is a much different one than their parents entered.

Pensions are gone. Let’s face it, just like open office space, the 401(k) primarily benefits the employer. No lifelong pension costs. The risk is on the employee. Your money may grow, it may decline, and it may be there when you’e done or it may not.

They can’t depend on Social Security or Medicare. They will pay into it but the baby boomers are likely to spend it all. Whatever is left, Generation X will wipe out.

They often start their work life in debt. They were told they had to go to college and then they also had to help pay for it. In greater number than those before them, they start life with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and no real estate to show for it.

Unlike those with many fewer years to live — who conveniently deny science because it’s financially inconvenient — younger workers know climate change is real and it’s changing their world. They will pay for it either with their health, problem weather and planet destruction, or their wallet, most likely all three.

Pay and wages don’t often match rents and the cost of living. They are forced to rely on parents and grandparents. Many are never likely to be on the same economic footing as their grandparents.

We’ve given them everything and nothing at the same time.

They’ve only known political leadership that doesn’t want to deal with tough issues. They know the issues will be left for them.

Next time we open our office doors or look over our cubicles to the open-office floors of the young, we should think about the view from their fluorescent-colored chairs. They didn’t inherit the same economic and social views as their parents or grandparents.

Maybe it will help us to understand why those “crazy” ideas like free college tuition, $15 minimum wages, and health care for all appeal to their generation and its leaders.

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