By Joe Procopio

Having been a technical and tech management consultant for almost the entirety of my career, including my recent stint as an independent, I can assure you that it has become sort of a tradition to put people like me in the most uncomfortable, claustrophobic, noisy, and ugly four-by-four-foot space in the building and then, like some lab-rat with a fancy jacket and khaki pants, watch me struggle and strain to get anything done under said conditions.

Cube? At some places I’ve had to ask people to take a meeting at my wall. Others, a stool. And when asked, the answer is always along the lines of, “Yes, we understand you have a much more productive area in your own home, with better equipment that would allow you to get started 45 minutes earlier and work 45 minutes later, but we really need you here onsite so we can watch you squirm while we adjust the temperature in your area along scientifically dangerous deltas.”

And while I’m down here, it would be really great if I could just sort of take care of that cockroach problem…

Along the way, I’ve also been privy to the experience of some of the latest innovations in ergonomic, economic, and gastronomically sound workspace environments. This happens most often, timewise, at Phase 2 and beyond – when my clients determine that I’ve done an adequate job and might even do better if they stopped messing with me (or, more likely, they have an even newer consultant and they need to free up the torture chamber).

As I’ve run the gamut, one thing has become clear. Give me a quiet, enclosed four walls and a door, the kind of door Les Nessman always dreamed of but never received. I’ll take it over the soul-suckingly gray cube maze, over the Death Valley/Anchorage area by the window, and most vehemently over the collaborative, open sharespace I’ve been walking into these last few years.

For example, it should be noted, even though it seems like common sense, that fabric has absolutely no business being involved in the making of privacy. A swatch of microfiber orlon is not going to keep you out of my day-to-day. It is equally not going to keep private your weekend plans, the time and preparation regimen for my ear, nose, and throat appointment, or the umpteenth fight you’re having with your significantly peeved other.

I’m going to hear your Gwen Steffani CD, even if it is over your headphones. And I’m going to make fun of you, but only when you’re gone because the microfiber orlon is usually not completely opaque.

Having established this as fact, I must also state from experience that the white noise machine, tossed onto the situation to overcome the surprise issue of fabric v. getting anything done, is also a total – excuse the pun – washout. Adding these machines, usually at strategically pinpointed locations in the workspace frame (re: any non-pointy, flat space), only serves to create an environment equivalent of working in Jell-O. Or working way into your eighties.

An unexpected humorous side-effect of these machines is the onset of a kind of password game situation when it comes to important instructions. “Make sure the proper release version is on the production server,” becomes “May Shirpa pop and sneeze her wonton for suction or fur.” This heralds nostalgically back to the day, when we operated under the “Getting Things Done On a Cellular Phone” conditions of the late ’90s.

Aside from the unproductive nature of these constructs, there is also security to consider. Again, there is something hilariously ironic about a locking file cabinet with wheels. While this keeps my sensitive documents very safe from people who can’t push very hard, it also means I have to take my laptop home every night. Don’t think this isn’t planned by the powers that be, as it means that when the laptop does get stolen – from my car where I invariably leave it one night out of stupidity brought on by listening to the equivalent of aircraft carrier exhaust for 8+ hours a day – it’s off the company insurance policy.

Genius!

And on top of all of this, there is nothing more worthy of being considered the scourge of the modern workplace than the open conference area. Whether it be a “collaboration table” cobbled together to take up the only six-by-six-foot open space left over, or the “grand central” traditional conference room laid smack in the middle of the space, thus assuring all my dirty laundry gets aired out. Think of having an important business meeting, with clients, in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant. At noon. On Half-Price Fajitas Day.

I long for the days when I could get up and shut the door. I miss the younger, care-free me that didn’t know all those catch-phrases from last week’s Southpark, perpetually uttered by that one co-worker whose life is an open book. I miss the days when we shoved our company foosball table into the smallest office in the wing, because it kept the noise manageable. And even though we would sweat profusely if the battle became at all heated, it would be so worth it to see the look on the face of the newbie consultant who would show up on his first day and get his first whiff of the unbearable stench of what would be his office for the next 6 months.

Joe Procopio is the founder of Intrepid Media, a technical and management consulting firm (intrepidmedia.net) and publishing company and community (intrepidmedia.com). It’s all in good fun, for example, his office at the Tech Journal is also his car, so he really can’t complain. He can be reached at joe@intrepidmedia.net.

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