Open office I worked at constantly had music playing("Just put on headphones", management being too dumb/selfcentered to understand that that raises the noise floor and makes it so people have to talk louder) and people constantly calling.
Exactly. I wouldn't mind that at all. Instead I have open space with one desk close to one another and people around me have meetings all day long and they just talk to somebody constantly. There are not enough conference rooms for everyone, so there's nothing one could do about it. It annoys me so much that I prefer to stay at home to work, even though I would definitely prefer office if it just wasn't so noisy and annoying.
Right? It was a real meme talking shit about cubicles as white collar prisons. How horribly horribly wrong they were. It's open offices that are the 9th stage of hell as far as I'm concerned.
Boomers have done it for years as a lazy erratic way to emphasize words, seemingly because of all the accumulated lead setting in, and boomer heroes like Trump do it all the time, normalizing it further.
Neo's desk isn't as bad as the "open office" shit that came afterward, where it's even more oppressively surveilled and creepy asshole bosses have that much more means to make every moment a panopticon of misery.
I'm not sure I've ever worked a 9-5 honestly. Always 8-5, 8:30-5:30, or random other 9 hour (or more, worked 3/12.5 once) days. If we can't get rid of the 40 hour week I guess I'd prefer 4 10s, but 4 8s would be better.