A company I know of just went to unassigned cubes. Cubes are first come first serve each day, and as a result of that you can't store things overnight in the cube. Besides real estate savings for the company, I suppose it makes the firing process quicker.
that was the nature of tech company i guess. I have seen situation where the manager will bring the employee to a room and said the company not doing well etc, telling you that you are fire and by the time you are back in your cube, you cant even login to your system anymore.