日常英語(yǔ) 嘈雜繁忙的現(xiàn)代化辦公室

Can you concentrate in a crowded environment? If you want to work in a modern office you'd better start getting used to it. Millions of workers spend their long shifts in open-plan offices these days. And your co-workers? Well, don't stretch your arms out too far or you might knock over their cup of coffee!

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Offices today might have the latest computers, but the idea of having dozens of workers gathered in a big room isn't new. Henry Ford, the American industrialist of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, had a lot to do with that. The owner of the famous Ford cars loved efficiency - one of the main themes in the story of open-plan offices.

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Companies say they use these layouts to encourage communication and collaboration among staff. But does this really happen?

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Franklin Becker, social psychologist at Cornell University in the US, doesn't think so. He says: "The fundamental reason why open-plan has taken root has to do with the fact that you can reduce the amount of space per person in an open-plan versus any kind of closed cellular office."

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Becker says that if you put walls amongst the desks, offices would look like prison cells. But a big room feels different, so having lots of workers is acceptable.

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Although an open-plan office can save a company money, they might have a negative impact on productivity.

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Sound expert Julian Treasure, chairman of the Sound Agency, explains: "We have bandwidth for about 1.6 people talking. If I'm trying to do work it requires me to listen to a voice in my head to organise a flow of words and put them on paper. If you're talking at the same time, then you're taking up one of my 1.6. I'm left with 0.6 in my head."

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Well, it sounds like that big report you have to finish by end of play might be just a whisper inside your head struggling against all that chatter around you.

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So, do you like open-plan offices?