Bring your own premises
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The reductio ad absurdam — sorry, my mistake: I mean logical conclusion — of middle management’s generational headlong stampede towards outsourcing all those messy externalities that are a by-product of needing human beings to carry out your business objectives.
There was a time where employment in the professions afforded status in society, and one had the accoutrements to match: an office with a mahogany desk, an Elephant’s foot umbrella stand in the corner, a minute secretary, an executive model Dictaphone, and so on.
As management dogma has systematically eroded these privileges in the name of cost reduction, the poor professional has been denuded of our status. Increasingly been expected to supply her own accoutrements: do-it-yourself typing; bring your own device — and the same time that commodious office has become communal, lost its walls, been reduced to a space on a bench, and then become a slot somewhere in the building, provided you can find a spare telescreen.
Coronavirus bounced us all into a step further: you don’t get an office at all, but have to supply your own. By and large, and to their great surprise, employees have found this an agreeable development, as the Elephant’s foot and Mahogany desk are back from nowhere.