Another reason for open plan offices to suck - when you're a minority

Oh... and a little follow on from last post... which I realise was months ago... the two consultants I was out in the field were both female. Hey ho, you know how it goes when you spend your entire time writing and speaking gender neutrally that you forget to specify when it matters.

And 24 hours after that I had an epiphany to my answer of "would you encourage girls to do STEM?" but I wanted to think about it for a bit in case it was mainly just heightened emotions. But it isn't. And it's real. But I'm still thinking about it still so will post later.

But... to the thing that actually inspired me to bother putting fingers to keyboards months later... Open Plan Offices.

We are going to take it as a given that the excessive noise is both stupid and unproductive. Yes?

We are going to take it as a logical follow on from this that if you are doing work tasks that do not require you to work with others that this is a direct negative worse than usual.

Ok... well what about if you work in an office with that sort of condition on your work where no one actually needs to talk to you and you're a minority.

How to emphasis the loneliness.

So here I am, STEM person, sorry.... STEM _female_ person and... well... they don't need to talk to me, so, it could go all day with no one talking to me.

And yet here I am in an open plan office.

THANKS GUYS.

Maybe this shows more about me and less about open offices. I hear that some workplaces actually ask about friendships at work as a measure of quality. But hey, single (hetero) female, married guys with families. They don't even like going out to the field with me if it's just me and them. I had a friend I would go out to get takeaway coffee with in the afternoons and always got the sense that sitting to drink it wouldn't be welcomed and lunch with just the two of us was totally out. I eventually asked. He said that when he had moved into our team two of the guys had asked him if he had slept with me and with another female. He didn't tell me because he knew I would be shocked and upset. I was. I was shocked and upset.

So yeah... friendships... work.. when we were all younger there was friendships. But no more for me as a single female.

There is an older Pakistani man who has worked in our group for a while who I thought it was lovely to see as more Indian and other Asian people (read mostly guys) were employed started to include him in lunches and discussions. It warmed my heart and I mentioned as much to one of them. He's such a sweetie.

But here's me. Who unless I talk to others no one will talk to. All day. In an open plan office.

That's actually kind of cruel.