Comment by nimbius

anecdotal experience with the "open" office.

When i was apprenticing long ago on my way to master mechanic, I worked for a luxury dealership in the midwest. The manager was the owners son (as per tradition) and he had just graduated with a business degree. We had a good system of 3 closed office areas, one for sales, one for service, and one for management. In the managers wisdom, we should combine all 3 into an open office format.

this lasted nearly a year and was pretty similar to a nightmare-mode run in Doom. Customers eager to buy a vehicle would be immediately exposed to the masses of howling and screaming customers who couldnt fathom a $7500 suspension service as they barely made payments on their suburban assault tank. mechanics would routinely wander into the office to talk to the shop service lead, tracking all sorts of fluids onto sales floor carpets, and leaving greasy handprints on all the desks. the entire office usually smelled like burnt oil or gas (combined with the one peach air freshener the admin assistant bought.) finally management was becoming way too distracted with the heretical temptation to micromanage anything and everything. i was once pulled off the shop floor to clean carpets for 20 minutes, and another time i was tasked to restock and clean the customer lounge. 40 minutes of shop time (not cheap) to sit in the AC and munch on doritos while i watered plants and changed out the water cooler bottle.

all the while the 3 impact printers for invoices were wailing away in the center of the "open office" making casual conversation pretty challenging.