Morgan Kastner was halfway through filing her end-of-the-quarter marketing reports when she got up from her low-partitioned workstation to schedule a doctor’s appointment.
Kastner, marketing coordinator for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, generally likes the open-office concept in BRAC’s renovated Laurel Street headquarters—except when she has to make the occasional personal call.
“I don’t like disturbing other people when I’m working, and I’m a little self-conscious when I take phone calls,” she says. “I prefer to be away from everyone.”
But rather than step outside, as Business Report details in a new feature about workplace changes, Kastner simply walks a few dozen feet and steps into one of the two phoneless phone booths near her second-floor desk. If occupied, she treks downstairs to the first-floor booths. On a good day, she’ll secure a coveted spot in one of the three, if only for a few fleeting minutes.
Her workplace is just one of several in Baton Rouge that have incorporated the booths into their office designs in recent years.
Nationally, phoneless phone booths—sometimes called “booths” or “pods”—are increasingly popping up in open-air offices, becoming to the workplace what stainless steel appliances are to houses on the market: practically essential.
Even companies that haven’t installed them yet are resorting to private meeting rooms and other areas for workers to escape, says Anita Byrne, a business management consultant with Baton Rouge-based SSA Consultants. Read the full story. Send comments to editor@businessreport.com.
View Comments