Jonathan Nash

Whoever came up with the idea of open-plan offices needs badly to be killed.

Undoubtedly there is a special book that says they foster a sense of community and mutual support, so perhaps they could be beaten to death with it as a sort of poetic justice.

What open-plan offices foster, of course, is, frighteningly, resentment towards chums you consciously had to make an effort to pop round to see, because with statistically at least one neighbouring mag on deadline, everyone complains if you try to play music or talk above a drawing-room whisper. Large numbers of bookcases then get ordered from the stationery department, and, tellingly, are erected like walls.

Remember kids - open-plan offices breed coils of unpleasant tension and a general unhappiness. And in real life, too.