What a Modern Office Really Is
A prison of surveillance for people who hate their jobs, get rid of these people and the office
Before the haters flood to comment let’s define “office”.
Office, for the purpose of being a prison of surveillance in the article, refers to the physical space where workers are expected to come in on time and fulfill their hours.
Throughout the day they are not expected to do anything else save for lunch, coffee and bathroom runs. In the best-case scenario for these prisons, the workers are cut off from their work after they tab out, which isn’t the case most of the time.
Because of technology including wifi, portable laptops, and work phones, the physical boundary of work is no longer confined to the office. For people who still go to the office, it’s a mental boundary of work, i.e. a behaviour and thought prison.
My argument is both these workers and these offices should be eliminated. The one good thing about the pandemic should be to wipe them out (it’s getting dark, violent, and please cue, George Orwell).
The truth about modern offices…
….Has only one purpose: surveillance.
According to the all-rounded social scientist Max Webber, there are three types of work roles: a job, a career, and a calling (P.S. he was focusing on the role of scientists and I am generalizing).
People who can settle for a job (or even a career), i.e. one that needs a physical and mental separation from other parts of our lives, and this don’t mean work-life balance at all, means that they do not have the vocational devotion to the role.
The monetary rewards, stability, and social prestige these jobs bring are usually bigger than the job itself. In fact, they are everything that matters than what the work is.
People who settle for a job don’t care about the work, they just want to take home the pay. This is called earning a living.
As they don’t fundamentally care, they will try to cut corners whenever they can. Because if they can get away by being rewarded the same way, they will.
We see meetings that are meaningless, and endless chitchats and self-glorifications. We also see people who aim for promotion always do all these ancillary things (like team culture leading, racial equality support group, etc.) and usually abandon it completely and immediately after they get the promotion.
For some archaic reasons, some managers need people doing these mindless jobs. yet, they also realise (if they aren’t also lazy job workers themselves), that they need to “manage” their people by physically making sure they work properly.
And this is the purpose and ecosystem of an office. To monitor/manage/surveil purposeless job workers.
P.s. there’s nothing wrong with being a job worker, and it’s also not an insult to call these people meaningless/purposeless/lazy. It links to the role, not the person because everyone can be more than that, then they will no longer be job workers.
The freedom of work is only for…
Not everyone can benefit from the freedom of working at whatever time and wherever they want. The only people who really can enjoy this freedom are people who like what they do and have thought-leader qualities.
I.e. the people whose lives are not separated from their “job”.
These people don’t need surveillance/management/monitoring, because they are innately passionate and motivated. The amount of toxic politics should reduce as well because they are focusing on the work they are producing, not all the politics/prestige/pay around it. It’s a place of freedom.
If a manager asks me why it takes so much of their time to keep checks on their staff, then the question should be what kind of crap jobs have you created.
Through AI and machine learning, job-focused people will be replaced in no time and thus, the only survivors are people who take their vocation with a sense of craftsmanship, ownership, pride, and passion.
If job workers are all eliminated, then modern offices will be history.
P.S. by elimination I don’t mean to kill them (this is not Dan Brown’s fiction). I mean to inspire them to find what their true vocations are, and support them to make the switch (e.g. read my articles).
I have four roles, and I take all of them with passion. They are my calling and I don’t really have weekends or holidays regularly. Even if I am not working on it (say, meeting clients, writing, or making money), I am still thinking about it.
For further reading, try the theory of alienation proposed by Karl Marx.
If we have to have an office, it should be…
Many of you will argue that working from home has been horrible to mental health, productivity, and all.
This highlights the merits of an office: opportunities to socialise, a physical separation between work and play, and the possibility to brainstorm and breakthrough with teammates.
All these can be achieved through a co-working space, a cafe, gathering in someone's basement/home, and a temporary book-able office/studio space. The idea of Monzo was founded in a gin bar called Ask for Janice in London.
The use of these temporary spaces will eliminate the negativities of an office — i.e. a surveillance cage for unmotivated job workers.
Save for absolute must-have offices, which include laboratories, factories, and shops (Please comment if you can think of more), where there’s a need for a physical space, any jobs that can be done virtually doesn’t need a permanent office.
At least a cafe has good coffees and a co-working space has fun people to network, explore ideas, and talk to. An office for purposeless souls (e.g. Chandler Bing), that’s too expensive for a business.
The pandemic shakes up technologies, attitudes, and support for remote work. So before we rush back to the expensive prime office rent and sitting opposite your nosey, bitchy colleagues, let’s think again.
