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You mean this place we go to five days a week has a history? Cubed reveals the unexplored yet surprising story of the places where most of the world's work—our work—gets done. From "Bartleby the Scrivener" to The Office, from the steno pool to the open-plan cubicle farm, Cubed is a fascinating, often funny, and sometimes disturbing anatomy of the white-collar world and how it came to be the way it is—and what it might become. In the mid-nineteenth century clerks worked in small, dank spaces called “counting-houses.” These were all-male enclaves, where work was just paperwork. Most Americans considered clerks to be questionable dandies, who didn’t do “real work.” But the joke was on them: as the great historical shifts from agricultural to industrial economies took place, and then from industrial to information economies, the organization of the workplace evolved along with them—and the clerks took over. Offices became rationalized, designed for both greater efficiency in the accomplishments of clerical work and the enhancement of worker productivity. Women entered the office by the millions, and revolutionized the social world from within. Skyscrapers filled with office space came to tower over cities everywhere. Cubed opens our eyes to what is a truly "secret history" of changes so obvious and ubiquitous that we've hardly noticed them. From the wood-paneled executive suite to the advent of the cubicles where 60% of Americans now work (and 93% of them dislike it) to a not-too-distant future where we might work anywhere at any time (and perhaps all the time), Cubed excavates from popular books, movies, comic strips (Dilbert!), and a vast amount of management literature and business history, the reasons why our workplaces are the way they are—and how they might be better.
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Copyright © 2014 by Nikil Saval All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies. www.doubleday.com DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House LLC. Portions of this book appeared in different form as “Birth of the Office” in n +1, issue 6 (Winter 2008). Jacket design by Oliver Munday Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saval, Nikil. Cubed : a secret history of the workplace / Nikil Saval. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Offices—History. 2. Clerks—History. 3. Office management—History. 4. Office layout— History. 5. Office buildings—History. I. Title. HF5547.S336 2014 651.09—dc23 2013037635 ISBN 978-0-385-53657-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-385-53658-5 (eBook) v3.1 | For Shannon | I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils … —Theodore Roethke, “Dolor” ESTEEMED GENTLEMEN, I am a poor, young, unemployed person in the business field, my name is Wenzel, I am seeking a suitable position, and I take the liberty of asking you, nicely and politely, if perhaps in your airy, bright, amiable rooms such a position might be free. I know that your good firm is large, proud, old, and rich, thus I may yield to the pleasing supposition that a nice, easy, pretty little place would be available, into which, as into a kind of warm cubbyhole, I can slip … —Robert Walser, “The Job Application” Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Introduction 1 The Clerking Class 2 The Birth of the Office 3 The White-Blouse Revolution 4 Up the Skyscraper 5 Organization Men and Women 6 Open Plans 7 Space Invaders 8 The Office of the Future 9 The Office and Its Ends Acknowledgments Notes About the Author INTRODUCTION Because the footage comes from a security cam, the images are grainy