That's a false dilemma. Break time is break time, and it's probably better to take it away from your desk for a variety of reasons, no matter how productive you

That's a false dilemma. Break time is break time, and it's probably better to take it away from your desk for a variety of reasons, no matter how productive you want to be. However, open plan offices make it so work time is always noisy and you have to work to avoid making eye contact with others. That's going to make it much harder to be productive, regardless of how much productivity one desires to achieve. Employees who prefer chit-chat to productive work are going to prefer open offices because it decreases productivity on the whole, which means they'll have to compete less with others to appear useful, and because it makes it much easier to start a conversation and otherwise engage in non-work social activity. To clarify, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with preferring chit-chat to productivity per se (again acknowledging that this is the preference of the vast majority of employed persons), especially when management is sending a clear endorsement of that perspective by literally removing all barriers in the office and throwing everyone into a giant single room. I'm just saying the people who are usually annoyed by open plan offices are usually people who come to work to concentrate on a task and get it accomplished, rather than people who come to work mainly for the external social engagement.