The Return Of The Cube Farm

Young office workers like to be out in the wide-open spaces.

About 70% or so of offices in the United States utilize what are called 'open-plan workspaces'. The walls are essentially torn down and everyone works, more or less, together. The design is to encourage co-workers and colleagues to bump into each other and along with the bumping comes a sharing of ideas. It's all good, communal if you will.

But of course, in addition to sharing ideas, we share things like droplets of...ourselves. And in these days/weeks/months of Covid 19 and the Coronavirus, that's a no-no.

Thus, prepare for the return of the Cube Farm.

Working in cubicles is nothing new for the older workers. It started back in the 1960s when a furniture design firm began marketing what they called the 'Action Office', and before you knew it we had moveable desks, walls, and other office essentials...and ultimately the birth of the cubicle.  Popping up throughout the entire floor of an office, the next thing you knew you had a Cube Farm.

But as a new generation of workers came into the workforce, and then another and another, the walls came tumbling down. Workers wanted to 'stretch' as it were and employers found it good, this sharing of ideas, concepts, strategies, and the rest.

Open things up!

But as we work our way through the pandemic, an article on MSN says that those walls may be coming back up. Experts say that in this era of social distancing, people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow in a wide-open space...that's may not work.

So it may well be that you'll be planting those ideas back on your very own Cube Farm.