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So, things a junior clerk might have expected in 1990 — an office, status, privacy, a [[travel and entertainment]] budget, an assistant, an internal mail service, a typing pool, proofreaders — these fripperies have gone. | So, things a junior clerk might have expected in 1990 — an office, status, privacy, a [[travel and entertainment]] budget, an assistant, an internal mail service, a typing pool, proofreaders — these fripperies have gone. | ||
To be sure, the graduate clerk’s office might have been a coffin-sized, mouse-infested internal filing cupboard, but it was at least, marginally ''private''. But some time in the late ’90s she had to share it, then give it up it for a cubicle, | To be sure, the graduate clerk’s office might have been a coffin-sized, mouse-infested internal filing cupboard, but it was at least, marginally ''private''. But, some time in the late ’90s, she had to share it, then give it up it for a cubicle, the give that up for an un-barricaded desk in a row. | ||
Nowadays, she has a soft commitment that, as long as the projected number of co-workers are sick or on holiday, there ''should'' be a spare terminal somewhere in the department she can log into, as long as she wipes it down and removes her belongings before leaving for the day in compliance with the [[clear desk policy]], and as long as she [[bring your own device|brings something to log in ''with'']]: even the [[IT department|hardware]] has been taken away, now, because it’s too expensive. And forget about the tea and coffee — even paper cups have disappeared from kitchens; chocolate biscuits have disappeared from meeting rooms which, themselves, are slowly vanishing as we compress our working spaces. | |||
''The office has, long since, lost its appeal''. Like frogs in a warming pot, we have tolerated the piecemeal withdrawal of emoluments: thousands of cuts in a long-term doctrinaire erosion of paltry joys. But the professions changed over that period: they were transformed into [[fungible]], interchangeable items of capital. In this way are ''personnel'' becoming ''plant''. | ''The office has, long since, lost its appeal''. Like frogs in a warming pot, we have tolerated the piecemeal withdrawal of emoluments: thousands of cuts in a long-term doctrinaire erosion of paltry joys. But the professions changed over that period: they were transformed into [[fungible]], interchangeable items of capital. In this way are ''personnel'' becoming ''plant''. | ||