A recent study confirmed that “open offices” (a.k.a. a mass of desks shoved into one giant room for that 60s-chic assembly line effect that harkens back to C.C. Baxter in The Apartment) promote antisocial behavior. Alas, the potential an office worker has for attaining his or her own office is almost as impossible as that other New York dream: one’s own apartment.
And yet, being forced to “work” among the other dregs in the gulag only further solidifies feelings of terror and shellshock as you constantly look over your shoulder to confirm that no one can see that yes, you’re looking at Orlando Bloom’s penis again. The findings also concluded that too much closeness to co-workers doesn’t encourage communication and joviality so much as a desire to retreat into one’s headphones to avoid having to talk about bullshit like what they didn’t do last night.
Plus, with the far-out-of-reach private office typically reserved for the proverbial fat cats, it’s only natural for the mind to tend toward checking out and forgetting about aspiring toward such goals as promotion over a thirty-year period that will at last lead to your own personal space at work. Shit, at that rate, you might have your own apartment in East New York before you have your own office in Midtown.