The furniture police is alive and well.
Here are excerpts of a document entitled “A little guide to a little etiquette” that provides guidelines on what to avoid doing in a work environment designed to be collaborative.
“Walk, don’t yell”, “Use your inside voice”. Basically the designers understood that open floors have no barriers against sound. They also recognise that the natural behaviour when you see someone that you need help from is to ask them directly from the distance, shouting to get their attention. And they found a solution: change your natural behaviour (and do some exercise at the same time !).
Regarding personal items, “One rule of thumb is that if you can see it from a public space or across the room (…) it needs to go”. Interesting as from my perspective anything that is on a desk can be seen from a public space on an open floor. Note that there is nothing here to suggest that this treatment is reserved to offensive material. Well, okay Dilbert may be offensive to some. Also there is a ban on plants and tape to make sure that in reality you cannot display anything personal in this neatly designed, beautiful place.
Other gems include:
“A reminder that all holiday lights should be viewed at (edited name of a city spot), not your desk. Also please remove any holiday items by January 2.”
“Walk Around. Please use the main walkways and go around the perimeter of workstations instead of cutting through work areas.”
“Please avoid ground-hogging – peeking over the workstations walls in order to talk to co-workers.”
Aside from the fact that it is the first time I get to read a written form of the furniture police manual what strikes me, and I guess it is good news for us software professionals, is that even for interior designs we have decided to replace hardware (walls and doors) by software (behaviour). It is really unfortunate that the designer failed to understand that one of the prime examples for open floors, trading floors, are places made specifically to enable people to yell and sign at each other from across the floor.
Let me re-read Peopleware
