I seriously hope our office can just pick a style and stay with it. It’s been two years, and we’ve had FIVE styles. Things are getting to the point where I expected to come into work one day and find out that we’ve gone from regular office block to some sort of elegant tower or underground bunker, because the boss just can’t figure out what makes everything run more efficiently.I mean, the business going so well is the reason we’re able to call in the Melbourne based office fitout companies so often, but it needs to stop at some point. We started with regular cubicles, but then they were all torn out because “open plan offices are the future!”, but after a couple of months of that, all the cubicles are back because “you guys talk too much!” and then a couple of months after that they were gone again because “social interaction is the key to a healthy working environment, I saw it on the discovery channel.”
Yeah, alright. Except then the cubicles were back again, now in frosted glass form, because “open plan offices encourage the spread of germs, and sick days are a drain on company resources.” I mean, maybe. I didn’t think we were that unhealthy as an office, but apparently there was an incoming plague, and we have all been saved, yay. So it’s all frosted glass now, and the meeting room is full of purple bean bags because “it lets the clients know that we’re fun, hip and with it.” Also, the kitchen, which is now a communal space filled with…bean bags. It’s really hard to get up from those things, sometimes.
I honestly don’t think looking around Melbourne for the best office designers is really our problem. We just do way too much re-branding. We need to find a style, find a brand, find a look…and run with it. Build upon it, even. But not make an entirely different look every two months.
-Grace