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''Au contraire''. | ''Au contraire''. | ||
===Be careful what you wish for=== | |||
But is not [[the new normal]] ''precisely'' the thing for which [[chief operating officer]]s the world over have been wishing, carelessly, for thirty years? Is it not the logical conclusion of management’s generation-long push, in the name of [[cost reduction]], to deprecate the office-working experience? | |||
Over that time employers have systematically dismantled many “peripheral benefits” of office life, treating them as regrettable externalities that should not avoidably accrue to their staff. 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. Even the [[IT department|hardware]] brought in to replace them has been taken away again because it’s a bit of a money sink: the BlackBerry has gone: now staff must [[bring your own device|bring their own]]. | Over that time employers have systematically dismantled many “peripheral benefits” of office life, treating them as regrettable externalities that should not avoidably accrue to their staff. 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. Even the [[IT department|hardware]] brought in to replace them has been taken away again because it’s a bit of a money sink: the BlackBerry has gone: now staff must [[bring your own device|bring their own]]. Tea, 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. | ||
Like frogs in a warming pot, | 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, replaceable items of capital. In this way are ''personnel'' becoming ''plant''. | ||
The office lost its lustre. The young clerk of 1990 had her own office. It might have been a coffin-sized, mouse-infested internal filing cupboard, but it was in some way private. As the decade progressed she had to share it, then give it up it for a cubicle, then an un-barricaded desk in a row. Nowadays she has a soft commitment that, as long as at least the projected number of coworkers 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 it in compliance with the [[clear desk policy]], before leaving for the day. | The office lost its lustre. The young clerk of 1990 had her own office. It might have been a coffin-sized, mouse-infested internal filing cupboard, but it was in some way private. As the decade progressed she had to share it, then give it up it for a cubicle, then an un-barricaded desk in a row. Nowadays she has a soft commitment that, as long as at least the projected number of coworkers 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 it in compliance with the [[clear desk policy]], before leaving for the day. | ||