WORKING IN JAPAN: PT. 31

Open plan vs. open air

The other day I walked by my old workplace. It was an open plan office and I had a nigh on irresistible urge to text my old managers to tell them I had hated it.

‘I can’t believe I worked there for ten years,’ I wanted to say, as if that would achieve something, then ‘I loathed it.’

I did not commit this childish act, though, and will satisfy myself by making a list of things I detest about open plan offices:

- Lack of privacy

- Sitting all day and getting bad posture

- Poorly circulated air

- The suffocating pall of hierarchical politeness

- Dickheads

The open plan office, that chamber of mundane modern torture, seems like the least natural place to spend the day. We evolved on the plains of Africa, with steady access to splendid views. Shapes could be seen in the near, middle and far distance, some roaming and others static beneath a vast and changing canopy of sky.

Contrast that to the stifling fart box of today’s office environment, a space confined by grey and white walls. The colour scheme is boring, the plants plastic, and the ‘sky’ a grid of perforated ceiling tiles. My animal being, the great ape inside me, refuses to accept it. It wants, almost more than oxygen, to see the photocopier fly from the window, expelling its trays and chips in violent union with the pavement.

We are Nature’s children, you and I! We were not born to suffer as caffeinated nodes in a project, by some CEO, to force-fabricate an enslaved group mind: that thing we call a company branch.

There it is: a network of fifty or so people emailing one other from within the same room, coordinating on the most surreal of tasks. The human brain did not evolve to sort numbers in cells or process reams of mentally unstimulating data. It developed to love and laugh and discover, not to revisit the same five highly abstract chores. I call this surreal because that’s what it is: a set of jobs and processes outside of our design spec. Which is fine if they facilitate the joy of discovery but, in the average office for the averagely skilled office worker, they do not.

The open air work life, however, is really fucking great. I get peace from constant physical movement, which becomes a kind of meditation, and joy from an imagination that’s free to wander. For example, today I was thinking about what would be more inconvenient for a couple trying to enjoy various sexual positions: having the same leg, or opposite legs, bitten off by a T-Rex. With spooning it wouldn’t make much difference but it would be awkward either way if someone went on top. Doggystyle might work if opposite legs were missing, but stamina would be required.

Not dealing with numbers, too… That’s another brilliant thing about being a cleaner. No excel files, no invoices and estimates, no checking and rechecking with a calculator. Just cloths and the odd spray. And chatting to members of the public from time to time…

I have to give it to Japanese commuters! They’re a well-behaved lot. Sure, there’s the occasional hollering derelict on the concourse but I wouldn’t classify those as frequenters of the train station. I don’t see them traveling anywhere; they just drop by to shout.

Commuters in Japan, by and large, are orderly, sober, considerate, and willing to assist anyone who’s lost. In two months, I haven’t seen a single group of drunken lads, irate people shoving, or some random youth trying to game any of the vending machines. Train stations are soothing here, believe it or not, even after dark.

Many a time, I’ve ridden at night, on carriages of boozed up businessmen, young people, and concert-goers. And you never hear the bellows of a fight, only gentle PA system melodies announcing the arrival of the next punctual train cars.

People here are dressed nicely, too. There’s a ubiquitous, modestly stylish, middle-class vibe to the sartorial efforts of the Japanese people that makes me feel like a scruffy wreck. Seldom do you see anyone in a dirty anorak with ten days of stubble and old jeans, slouched on the platform like they discarded themselves for bad behaviour. Everyone seems nice, is what I am trying to say… Nice AND classy.

So, given that stations are safe in Japan, they’re a better fit for me than offices. An open plan office is safe also, but it’s unnatural and rigid and unstimulating. The claustrophobic tedium drove me bonkers.

I need to walk around and think my own thoughts. To be unwatched and alone and trusted to get on with things. I felt like a baby in my office chair, a little organic tool repeating itself, shifting wedges of distant money into someone’s greedy pocket. But I feel grown-up now, even though my wages have shrunk, by virtue of the most elementary freedoms. I feel so complete, where I felt incomplete before, from gaining the most basic autonomy.

If I want to, I can stand up and walk somewhere else, a liberty that corporate life indulged me in tightly limited amounts. Once upon a time, I rented out my brain as an information processing unit, and the company that paid for it screwed it to a chair.

Nowadays, however, I sell the actions of my body, as it moves about doing what it was designed to. My mind, gloriously, has been permitted to float away from the equation.

If you want to read something fun, here is my sci-fi novel Disease.

I also have a tip jar, if you want to send something there.

Also, the previous part of this series can be found here, and the next part here.