On behalf of Cubicle Nation: Leave us alone

Your initial reaction is correct: The traditional way of doing offices is better.

When it comes to creating a climate for collaboration and teamwork, it turns out that one of the start-up culture's coolest ideas was wrong: Open concept offices don't work.

Long live the cubicle! Long live the office!

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

According to a variety of sources, about 70 percent of American offices are now "open concept," meaning they are comprised of rows of tables and computers. No cubicles or partitions. That design was created to encourage collaboration, openness, interaction, teamwork and ideas. Except it has the opposite effect.

A study from the Harvard Business School shows that face-to-face interaction decreased by 72 percent when the office was redesigned to create an open concept.

That study isn't unique. Multiple studies show that in an open-concept office, employees become less productive, more likely to be sick and more distracted.

The reasons are pretty obvious – and would likely be to the "innovators" who came up with the idea, had they ever worked in an office or talked to someone who had.

Speaking for Cubicle Nation, I say this: Put us together at a table and we become distracted, more likely to put on headphones or earbuds and more likely to communicate electronically.

What's worse, everyone can see us checking Facebook or ESPN.com during work hours, so we do more emailing and IMing with coworkers to hide that. Talk to the person? Not when I can email him.

This is in my wheelhouse. I have worked in Cubicle Nation for a long time. One of my best pals is nearby, but plenty of other co-workers are forced to listen in as I opine on issues of the day and do various impersonations.

I walk around the office a lot and check in with others. I insist it's for morale.

But . . .

The cubicle gives me a modicum of privacy. Put me in a non-walled room with other employees and I would likely treat work as a solo project. Why should I go talk to someone if I can hear them chewing their tuna sandwich across the table?

For probably 90 percent of my working days, I've lived in a cubicle. It makes sense.

If you take away cubicles (again, 70 percent of offices subscribe to the failed "open concept" approach), where do you post pictures of  your family? Where do you keep the Will Clark baseball cards? Where do you place the Post-It notes with various predictions (concerning the future of Justin Bieber, how many games the 49ers will win in 2018, when will be Paul Ryan's last day as Speaker of the House, what day the office blinds will be cleaned)? How do you keep people from seeing that you're updating your fantasy baseball team roster on company time?

The open-office concept doesn't work because humans want at least the myth of privacy.

Consider your last trip to a library or to a Starbucks when you wanted to read or study or learn: Did you go to a crowded table so you could hear others? Of course not. You wanted privacy, even in public.

So yes, I'll shout what the start-up culture doesn't know and considers outdated: Thank God for cubicles.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.