I've had similar experiences with desks, even though desks are a much easier problem to solve than 4 walls that make an office. $200 at IKEA would do it. And

I've had similar experiences with desks, even though desks are a much easier problem to solve than 4 walls that make an office. $200 at IKEA would do it. And yet it's still an unsolvable problem to many companies. Desks have been the main reason I quit two of my past ten jobs. One was at a euro stoxx 50 telco. They had a desk with a single plate that 10 people sat at. I had to sit with the project team I was working with who, unfortunately, weren't all the same height. But the plate could only be adjusted to one height for everyone which was way too low for me. Every day at the office, it felt like working at a coffee table and my back and knees hurt like crazy. I was fighting the corporate system for half a year, including making a fool of myself in front of the global director of human resources and company medical officer. This was ultimately unsuccessful as I was a freelancer, not an employee, and earned me the scorn of my direct manager. The whole experience was so undignified and humiliating that it was ultimately one of the main reasons I quit that gig. After all I was just trying not to have to endure physical pain. The other occasion was at a well-known Wall Street investment bank back in 2010. They put the computers in the space under the desk that should normally be legroom and every day at the office felt like a long haul flight in economy class. My boss's boss, a partner at that firm, privately owned a floor in a highrise residential building in Tribeca. Yet, during the work week, he still basically never got to see daylight. Our business unit wasn't high enough in status to be able to swing a work area on the outside of the building that had daylight. He had an office but still no privacy. One of the walls of his office, facing his underlings' open plan space, was made of glass. Glass walls is something that these firms do these days even for very high-ranking executives to create witnesses in cases of allegations around what may or may not be happening behind those walls between colleagues of opposite gender (or preempt those kinds of goings-on or allegations).