An American Lion

Take a seat, drone, and get to work

Before I was sent to prison in 1994 for insider trading, I had about 470 people working for me in our New Jersey offices. I commuted backwards in those days, traveling from Manhattan to New Jersey to run Norman Rogers Investments, a subsidiary of Rogers Defence Industries, which my brothers and I took away from Father in 1988. At one time, Rogers Defence Industries employed about 14,000 people, most of them in India, Germany, and Connecticut. As with everything, this great company foundered on the rocks of reduced defense spending and mismanagement. Because it was founded by Father in Britain, and headquartered in the Caribbean for tax purposes, little survives of this one-time behemoth.

My brother Chetley runs a reduced version of the riot control vehicle manufacturing operation, which he bases out of San Diego. Most of the vehicles that the company makes are manufactured in Stuttgart, Germany and then given the riot control apparatus assembly in a small plant in Mexico. The last I heard from Chetley was that we had lost about $800K this year. He has reduced the work force down to about eighty people and he told me that they had moved into cheaper warehouse and office space, thereby necessitating the construction of a reduced-footprint cubicle farm.

It turns out that, when this down economy forced it, a lot of companies did the same thing. They reduced the amount of office space granted to employees and went with smaller cubicles:

The office cubicle is shrinking, along with workers’ sense of privacy.

Many employers are trimming the space allotted for each worker. The trend has accelerated during the recession as employers seek to cut costs and boost productivity.

“The majority of our clients are moving in the direction of reducing the amount of personal, or what we like to call ‘me’ space,” says Tom Polucci, group vice president and director of interior design for HOK Group Inc., a global architecture and design firm.

He says new workstations designed by HOK average 48 square feet, down from 64 square feet about five years ago. Partitions between cubicles also are shrinking, to 4 feet high or less, from 5 feet high.

Rivals Stantec Inc., DEGW, Mancini Duffy and M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates Inc. report similar findings. They say companies of varying sizes in multiple industries are reducing per-employee office space by as much as 50%, and their total footprint by as much as 25%.

Some companies are removing cubicle walls to create open floor plans. Others are eliminating assigned workspaces for employees who primarily work off campus or spend most of their time in meetings. At any given time, Gensler estimates that 60% of employees are away from their desks.

As long as the drones get their paychecks, I don’t think they have much to complain about.