Nearly 50% of Americans Indicate Their Bathroom is Larger Than Their Office Cubicle

I was reading this press release from a company that makes office organization materials and was struck by the sizes of office spaces. They cite a 2001 survey by the International Facility Management Association that says in 1997 the average office space was 410 square feet and in 2001 it was 355.

The way they put it makes it sound bad (yeah, because you need their products). Last year, I was living in a 330 square feet apartment, which was ample living space and would have been plenty large for workspace, in my opinion. But then again, I have only worked in offices of cube farms as far as the eye can see, three cubes per one room, which had once been the office of one person and eight desks in one large general workroom.

Right now, a coworker and I have cubes inside a room, which we share with the staff printer and the campus fax machine so at any given time we have a parade of people in our workspaces. While our backs are to the door because of the orientation of our computers to the outlets (and we are the only two like this) it is better than the previous plan, which was to leave us sitting all day at the public service desk with no escape from the public and where others would be using our computers.

More from that press release:

Nearly 50 percent of full and part-time working adults that work in an office cubicle indicate that their bathroom is larger than their cubicle, and nearly a quarter say their closet (23 percent) or kitchen pantry (23 percent) is bigger.