You people are so greedy...

Now, now, remember. According to Mitt Romney, you're just being envious of poor little Sam Zell. Who cares that you're having problems paying the bills thanks to Zell's idiocy. The poor bastard needs another motorcycle, dammit!

 

Sam Zell though Oliver Twist was greedy for asking for a second bowl of gruel.

 

He's right here, but perhaps not in the way he meant it. I don't know that American workers should have smaller offices so much as they should have no offices. There is almost no justifiable reason any more, other than prestige, for businesses like large law firms or investment banks to take up floor upon floor in a downtown skyscraper. Most of that work can be done from the comfort of one's couch in 2012. Certainly that will be the case by 2022 and 2032 and on down the line.

Sometimes, I worry about the future of downtown real estate in big cities. They could be ghost towns and huge boondoggles once these businesses start to catch up with modern technology.

Sports writers should understand this more than anybody. Now, I always reported to an office, because I was at a mid-sized/small paper, but the big city reporters I knew stopped in to pick up their checks and that was about it. And now, with direct deposit, they don't even go there for that.

 

Right on. Zell is one of the almighty Job Creators!

 

Evil. Pure effin evil.

 

I think there are certain obstacles that will keep permanent, across-the-board telecommuting from being common, even in industries that on paper should pull it off with ease. It's still a lot easier to call a handful of people in the same office into a conference room for a meeting than it is to have people ping in on a Skype conversation. It's not as reliant on technology; you're either in the office or not. You're more likely to get immediate feedback popping over to the cubicle farm two floors up for information than sending an e-mail, which may or may not be answered quickly. At least in my experience, live conversations are more fruitful than telephone/e-mail/teleconference ones.

I only got a chance to telecommute at one job, and that was a partial deal (I was still expected to be in one of the offices to do layout, though the group IT guy and I never understood why). I was a one-man sports department and the "main" office was mostly advertising/classified folks, so it wasn't as though I was missing anything by being there. But for the foreseeable future, those circumstances are going to be the exception.

 

I do agree that live interaction is, for lack of a better word, better. However, is it so significantly better that the tradeoff in efficiency is worth maintaining plush, expensive, downtown office space? Get rid of the money spent on those kind of bills, and I suspect you still get a lot more done because you'll have capital to hire more people, have better research libraries, etc., etc.

 

For the smaller businesses, I can see that (unless what they do really requires physical interaction or proximity, such as law firms). But the big businesses use their space as much for branding as anything -- the building bearing their name, the sheer number of people who not only work there but filter their way through downtown for lunch or after-work drinks.

I do agree that telecommuting will become more common in the next 20-30 years for a variety of reasons (money, efficiency, environmental concerns). But I doubt you'll see a significant downturn in office space filled. Even if you do, America's downtowns are quickly evolving into mixed-use communities, so a large office building might be converted to loft apartments.

 

Someone just has to be the first. It's a game of chicken right now. It might take another recession or two. Businesses have cut back on various extravagances with each downturn, and eventually they will get around to office space.

I don't know, we'll see. No way of proving either of us right or wrong at this point. We'll just have to watch.

 

Creep charges into a business he knows less than nothing about, disrupts the equilibrium with a representative gang of idiots, and gets off cheap, leaving wreckage behind. And it's the employees' fault?

)(#&)&%^)&#*^*()#&)%#!

 

After reading the "Deal from Hell" book and seeing some of the shit that Sam's cronies tried to do in Tribune Tower and to the Tribune, I'll take a Zell-less Tribune, thank you very much.