About ten years ago, I shut down our offices. Everyone in my company works remotely from their home offices or at clients. The decision could not have been timed better. Besides saving on overhead, it seems that I avoided one of the worst office design trends ever embraced by corporate culture: the dreaded "open office."

Is this your office? Do you realize what you're doing to your employees? Are you really making them work together in one room? Have we not evolved since the offices of 1923?

At client after client, I watch with horror as innocent employees are forced by business owners and managers to sit at desks across and besides one another, together, in one room. It's a nightmare. Look around. You're making that poor guy listen to his co-worker's phone call about her Tinder hookup from the night before and he's about to lose his breakfast. And what about the guy who eats the same tuna sandwich every day...with his mouth open? How many times does his co-worker sitting across from him have to stare at that stray potato chip hanging in his beard before she goes mad? Does your company's health insurance cover mental breakdowns? Or the cost to reimburse your employees for a pair of Beats just to give themselves the illusion that no one else is around them? How can this be productive?

Apparently, it's not.

Via inc.com