The power was out, a few glowing emergency lights remained. If there was still electricity to power these emergency lights why wasn’t there backup power to keep the office running? It’s one of those “why isn’t the whole plane made out of the black box material” type questions. There is probably a logical explanation to those who are informed on such material, but to the common man a decent question.

Without power, means no internet, it means no phones, no connection to the outside world. It suddenly makes you realize that the majority, if not all, of your job takes place virtually. Why do we even have an office? If I was on my couch at home right now I could be more productive. I could be doing the same job.

I suppose it’s because at home there are distractions. Television, family, friends, pets, neighbors, ice cream sandwiches in the fridge… but couldn’t you argue, even if those distractions cut off an hour of productivity from your regular day, you could make up for it with lack of commute time? Crawl out of bed, no shower, no change of clothes, log on and boot up and you’re at the office. You can IM coworkers and discuss last night’s sports fiasco or mundane office jargon about having memo X in email inbox Y by deadline Z.

Perhaps it’s because people don’t want to fully admit that face to face interaction isn’t even necessary anymore. Physical contact may still seem the correct course of action for old school businessmen but if your deal is hindering on the firmness of a handshake then are you sure you want to go into business? Hell, someone invent a handshake strength tool. It’ll plug into your USB slot and you can have your firmness grade listed on your LinkedIn profile.

Physical desks are breeding grounds for clutter. Clutter of useless items that may be useful later. Clutter for items that use to be useful and are now forever useless. Post it notes with privacy passwords for secret documents. The most security being that you hope nobody knows what “BossMan82” is used for. Xbox alias for some late night Halo deathmatch? No, it’s your email password. It’s either too hard to remember so you write it down, or it’s so easy to remember I can ask your birthday and youngest child’s name and probably “hack” my way in with a few keystrokes.

The office is dying. The brick and mortar costs are unnecessary expenses for most when very little happens there that wouldn’t be improved by occurring online. Wake up at 7, be in a conference meeting in Washington at 7:15, have an eggo from your kitchen at 8, discuss profits with shareholders in Denver at 9 and have a lunch meeting with friends from Miami at noon.

All while wearing bunny slippers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2010 at 2:12 pm and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.