In these days of openplanoffices, casual dress and blurring boundaries between home and work, it can be confusing to figure out whether your boss is behaving inappropriately.
Openplanoffices may be cheaper to set-up, but they deny companies the full use of the human capital they are paying for - so they are a crazily false economy.
At a mayoral forum this week, many candidates said they would return City Hall to a more traditional layout, mirroring a vital national workspace debate: Open-plan or offices?
Countrywide, the second-biggest mortgage bank, is even treading on WaMu's toes: as part of its plan to triple its sales force by 2008, it plans to open perhaps a dozen new offices in Washington state.
Homeowners are tearing down walls and building open-plan kitchens that blend into dens or great rooms, and in some cases include homework stations or home offices.