I wonder who invented the office desk. I’m sure it was a very square man with square eyes and a square outlook on life who woke up exactly at 5.55am and went to sleep at 9.55pm, wearing a night cap on his head.
The Desk Man’s ancestors probably balked at the very idea of sitting behind at table: because let’s face it, hunter-gatherers never worked nine to five, they never had a receptionist at the mouth of the cave counting how many stags were slayed and how many berries were picked. They never had signs reading ‘Sorry Big Brown Bear prowling this cave entrance, we cannot wrestle you right now as it is 6pm and there is no one manning the desk’.
Verily, those were the days when productivity was not measured by the time spent sitting behind a thing called a desk, but by what you did. Therefore, because it was never in our genes, the anti-desk sentiment was bound to be revived at some point or other. And it happened with my generation, Generation X, those born in the hippie-shoulder-padding era.
When we grew up we started plugging the idea of working from home: on the kitchen island, in bed, up on the roof – those of us who could, and who had understanding employers, desk-and-office rebelled.
However, now there’s been another shift. Generation Y, the millennials, those raised on a diet of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and who grew up to the soundtrack of The Bodyguard want to work in an office. But they do not want a sturdy desk, a revolving chair, a pencil holder and a mug. They want to work in an office which lets them escape from work at work, if you know what I mean.
Just to give you an idea, they want the kind of office where instead of going down a flight of stairs, they shoot down a floor in a slide and land on astro turf. And I am not talking about the Facebook headquarters in California – here in Malta, offices are embracing these Generation Y preferences.
For work reasons, over the last fortnight, I’ve been visiting different offices all over the island. And I’ve seen it all: from stark white offices which are shrines to Steve Jobs, to offices that have darts, table tennis and Subbuteo in their reception area. One even had a fireman pole (or maybe it was simply a trendy katusa in the middle of the room?). One office even organises Zumba classes for employees at 6.30am, which I think is so woo-hoo/high-five that it made me want to lie down.
Clearly uber cool offices are the new way of attracting and retaining workers
Yes, the days of dull and drab desk spaces are on the way out, making way for the MGHO – the Modern Hunter Gatherer Office – and inspiration is just a click away.
For example, the London office of Mind Candy, the company which produces the children’s game Moshi Monsters (groan), has vines hanging from the ceiling, a wooden treehouse and gingerbread house for meeting rooms. They have a colouring-in wall for employees to let a bit of steam (‘draw your boss in the shape of a gorilla’), and there are slides instead of staircases.
The Google offices in Zurich have rooms to play sports, sing and dance, get a massage, an aquarium where employees can relax in a foam-filled bath, a jungle, a movie room, slides and fireman’s poles (the real deal). Their meeting rooms are, erm, fake ski cabins.
Across the Atlantic, the office of Three Rings, a game development studio in California, is inspired by Jules Verne’s novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It has Victorian parlours and pirate ships, a secret room behind a bookshelf (I love it) and treasure chests around the offices with little presents inside.
Down Under, the Melbourne Server Hosting office has a Narnia Room with woodland wallpaper, a white, fluffy carpet to suggest snow, a lion mask hanging on the wall and a door like a wardrobe door. The original plan was to have people entering the room through a curtain of hanging clothes, but they worried people might get tangled up.
There is also another office concept floating around: the hot seating policy. This means no allocated desk space; you sit wherever you fancy. The perfect example of this is the office of the advertising agency Mother London, which is one huge table accommodating its 200 employees, who are required to change seats every six weeks. The New York office of the TBWA ad agency – which incidentally has trees growing inside the building, a full basketball court and a classic London telephone box – also has no seating policy.
Maybe because I am an X-girl and not a Y, I find this upsetting. Firstly, because I’d want my own dedicated workspace so I can stick my post-its and happy photos to cheer me up on a bad hair day, and secondly I would have to carry a Dettol spray with me every single day and waste the first half hour cleaning away remnants of sneezes from the occupier of the desk the day before.
According to the British Council for Offices, these kind of workspaces are called ‘a funky fit-out’ – a fancy name for areas that encourage the sort of games last played aged five. Which is probably another step in the direction of growing older later.
Clearly uber cool offices are the new way of attracting and retaining workers. It used to be the offer of a company car, but now who wants a car when Malta is one big blotch of traffic? Make way Desk-Man, Disneyland is coming to our offices.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti