April 30, 2004 9:12 AM

Can anyone work at work anymore?
Posted by Jason Butlerat 9:12 AM

The Wall Street Journal takes on cubicle culture, and how it's impossible to get anything done in a cubicle environment.

Can anyone work at work anymore? Cube designers and many managers maintain that open-office plans allow for the "free flow of ideas." But here's a sampler of what bosses would hear if they cracked their office door: an elegy to the end of a mortgage refinancing, the saga of someone's bunion and the ping of fingernails being clipped.

In a sign of just how loopy the line between work and home has become, it sometimes seems as though the home is better suited to work, while work is better suited to, say, wedding planning.

Not that I would ever spend any time at work planning my upcoming wedding...

Is working at home the answer?

Of course, homes have their distractions, too. Bosti shuttered its physical offices a few years ago, and Ms. Weidemann concedes she can be derailed to her deck by sunshine or by her pug-terrier Hopper. But though dogs can be as insistent as colleagues, at least they don't think their in-law troubles are gripping enough to shout about. Another difference, she says: "I can't shut a colleague in the other room."

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