We can blame Google for this Activity Based Workplace madness — no, not the search engine or the Chrome browser, I mean Google itself. Some time back I remember photographs being leaked onto the internet; pictures of the Google headquarters in the French Riviera… or was it Monaco? The Swiss Alps? [Silicon Valley perhaps? – Ed.] Anyway, it was somewhere flash and expensive with free beer and sausage sizzles on every corner.

The working conditions for Google employees are unique. Everybody has their very own gymnasium, swimming pool, sauna, pinball machine, XBox console and an office chair shaped like a banana (something to do with ergonomics). You travel to the upper floors in a hot-air balloon equipped with a chilled champagne and oyster bar and return down on a fireman’s pole to land in an enormous tub of Mars bars. You can take a nap anytime you want, as long as you don’t disturb everyone else trying to sleep.

All in the name of good fun. Because if you’re not having fun, how can you possibly be productive? Google believes the moment you’re feeling a bit down, maybe not so motivated, employees should immediately indulge in a few hours of Donkey Kong, or climb a few ranks in Battlefield 2.

HOT DESK, COLD COMFORT

The Googleheim [Googleplex, perhaps? — Ed.] Building is the pinnacle of this whole Activity Based Workplace approach which — let’s be frank — sounds the death knell of the personal desk. That’s a concept with many fatal flaws.

For starters, how will anyone find anything? For centuries people have lost stuff, but never panicked because of the reassuring knowledge that “It’s got to be on my desk somewhere”. Without a desk, where the hell can anything be? Any kind of communal workspace can only be a Bermuda Triangle of lost paperwork. A bottomless void for vanishing USB sticks, sunglasses and car keys. Imagine the skyrocketing costs of replacing mobile phones that have been sucked into the Activity Based black hole.

For 10 years I had my own small office backstage. My staff knew the rules, like to never disturb me unless there was a genuine fire — actual flames, not just smoke (we had alarms for that sort of thing), and on the occasions I wasn’t rostered on and somebody might borrow my office, no one was allowed to delete the cookies on my workstation in case I lost my favourite… ah, tutorial websites. My desk was sacrosanct. Especially the bottom left-hand drawer with its important shit. God help anyone who adjusted my chair. I had the height and the rock backwards-and-forwards thingy set to an nth degree. Never to be trifled with. And, of course, I knew exactly where everything was — as long as it was on my desk somewhere.

SHARE MARKET

Why would any organisation want to replace those sorts of rock solid, dependable management skills with some airy-fairy, hippy-inspired practices involving sharing things and dashing from room to room every time a different idea comes to mind? Because that’s one of the core beliefs behind any Activity Based Workplaces: you have a shared, brain-storming office for brain storming, and a shared graphics office for doodling, and a shared communications office for sending out funny emails. It logistically can’t possibly work. Here’s an example: I’ve just done my tax return online and trust me, if I needed a different office to imagine all the various deductions I had to invent, you’d need a place with more offices than… well, the tax department (which apparently has nobody to spare for answering the Help Line, so maybe it’s sharing a desk with bloody Telstra or Centrelink).

And another thing. How’s the Lunch Dude going to deliver your sandwiches, if he doesn’t know where you’re going to be? Oh right, the communal dining room where some bastard will swap your prawn and avocado wrap for a ham sandwich and deny all knowledge. All in the name of sharing, obviously. Sneaky sods. Activity Based Workplaces can potentially have a detrimental impact on your dietary intake. Who knows what they really put in a ham sandwich these days?

So no, just because Google is ranked the second highest performing company in the world, it doesn’t mean it’s doing everything right — or that we should do the same. If you ask me, if Google wants to hit No.1, it needs to give its employees a proper job with a proper desk, arranged neatly in proper cubicles with not too comfortable, proper chairs, and get rid of everything else including the hot air balloon, fireman’s pole and the enormous pit of Mars bars.

Like a proper company.