'Busy-ness' bad -- Japan needs to slack?

[Taro Toporific]

[Neo-Rio]

They must be over-efficient if they just screw around in their cubicles during overtime.

Never thought of it like that.

[Taro Toporific]

They must be over-efficient if they just screw around in their cubicles during overtime.

Never thought of it like that.

"Cubicles"?

Now Japanese "mansions" could be called cubicles-on-good-day but Japanese offices are much more "friendly".

See Knowing the Lay of the Land: A Look Inside the Typical Japanese Office

[Captain Japan]

They must be over-efficient if they just screw around in their cubicles during overtime.

Never thought of it like that.

Sure, if there's nothing to do to begin with then the only thing you can is achieve the day's goals. People at my office are always inventing things to do.

[Caustic Saint]

See Knowing the Lay of the Land: A Look Inside the Typical Japanese Office

Oh, that just looks like a little slice of hell...

[Taro Toporific]

See Knowing the Lay of the Land: A Look Inside the Typical Japanese Office

Oh, that just looks like a little slice of hell...

Now imagine my first day, pulling open the blast-proof doors of a former WWII factory and seeing a vast sea of 600 desks of the Maybe-the-Largest-in-Japan Inc's "Software Factory"...random wires and pipes hanging from the ceiling, no central heat/cooling, no windows, chain smoking zombies....all in a Fortune 50 corporation. The film "BRAZIL" was more enticing .

[Captain Japan]

See Knowing the Lay of the Land: A Look Inside the Typical Japanese Office

Oh, that just looks like a little slice of hell...

If you removed one of those clusters of desks you'd have an exact layout for where I work. Even the bucho's desk is at an angle similar to the desk in the upper left corner in that plan. Scary, man, really scary.

[Captain Japan]

See Knowing the Lay of the Land: A Look Inside the Typical Japanese Office

Oh, that just looks like a little slice of hell...

Now imagine my first day, pulling open the blast-proof doors of a former WWII factory and seeing a vast sea of 600 desks of the Maybe-the-Largest-in-Japan Inc's "Software Factory"...random wires and pipes hanging from the ceiling, no central heat/cooling, no windows, chain smoking zombies....all in a Fortune 50 corporation. The film "BRAZIL" was more enticing .

I think about "Brazil" on my bike ride to the office all the time. When one of those massive pieces of construction equipment on Yamate Dori rumbles past me, narrowly missing, I think about Jane kicking the main dweeb outside of her truck's cab in that one scene.

[Neo-Rio]

Now Japanese "mansions" could be called cubicles-on-good-day but Japanese offices are much more "friendly".

Friendly....? *cough*!

Either way it sucks. Spacing everything out means no privacy. Closing everything in means self-confinement.
Considering nobody talks in the office anyway, and isn't that friendly, not only do you feel self-contained, but you can also have people peering over your shoulder when you are not looking.

[Taro Toporific]

Now Japanese "mansions" could be called cubicles-on-good-day but Japanese offices are much more "friendly".

Friendly....? *cough*!

Sure Japanese offices are much more "friendly"... my dad when visiting said he'd gladly trade his office to have Mega-Bimbo, my former ocha-girl, sitting so close, "she might as well be sitting on your lap." :P

Actually, we had one fellow gather a half dozen typing stands and hundreds of books around himself. With those typing stands that hold a sheet to be retyped in the air at the proper position and the stacks of books he built an effictive cubicle around himself. He stayed in his own "Cubicle" for several months and never came out until the company finally had to shoot him with tranquilizer darts and drag him away to own room in the happy home.