[ThinkBeat]

I was re-reading Snowcrash (a novel by Neal Stephenson). In this book there is a tangent about how aweful it is in the future to work for the government.

He goes over how horrible the work conditions were, with open offices, bosses always watching you, no fixed assigned spacing, first come first serve everything being tracked by computers. If you are late everyone knows it because your sit in the boonies.

When I read it for the first time I remember feeling a revulsion at it. Now when I read it, I was like "Um.. that is my job now"

At my company they have, /on purpose/ too few spaces for the number of employees. So early birds get all the spaces with powerplugs, monitors, network etc. The rest must fight it out on bench seats with no power etc.

I guess for the big bosses who spend all days in meetings its ok, but for grunts it sucks.

[50CNT]

So in order to provide incentive for employees to come in 20 minutes early, your company is willing to handicap a percentage of its workforce all day? That doesn't just sound hostile, no, it sounds dumb.

[RonanTheGrey]

Sounds like someone higher up had a bad experience and wants to take it out on everyone they can.

[ci5er]

> At my company they have, /on purpose/ too few spaces for the number of employees. So early birds get all the spaces with powerplugs, monitors, network etc. The rest must fight it out on bench seats with no power etc.

They had a weird back-story vignette told by a character in a novel called "Market Forces" by Richard Morgan like this. There was an economic downturn, and the bosses decided that instead of picking who got fired, to just reduce the number of desks from 10 to 8 and let the workers race into work for them. Too late, too many time, and you're out. The races to work for those last desks soon got fairly bloody...