If you think you spend too much time at work, you're probably right. If you think the office increasingly looks like home, you're also probably right.
Receptions that look more like a lounge than an office, work areas with large communal kitchens and rugs designed to give a personal touch are all common and it's no accident.
"The boundaries between work and home have become more and more blurred, particularly with technology," says Angela Ferguson, the managing director of design firm Futurespace. "We'll answer emails on weekends, we'll be lying in bed, even from different parts of the world, emailing each other."
For Ferguson, whose firm boasts of office designs for clients including audit firm RSM Australia in Sydney and super manager StatePlus in Canberra that intentionally aim to resemble private homes, it's a growing line of business.
Some of the changes she describes are common sense – an attractive office is just nicer to be in.
"Previously a tea room was a little nook in a building core that had a fridge and Zip [hot water] unit," she says. "Now it's a cafe or kitchen space. It's really designed the way you would design a big family kitchen with tables, lots of amenity and big benches. There's more than one fridge a lot of the time."
But that's not just limited to the food-and-drink areas of an office.
"We're trying to get work areas to look like the big kitchen table or the big communal space where people meet and gather around," Ferguson says.
Many workplaces, not just tech companies, are now providing fruit and healthy snacks and beverages for staff. It's part of a wider realisation that staff function better when they have good light and decent food. But perhaps as office workers, we're also like gainfully employed teenagers – wandering into the kitchen, partly out of hunger, partly out of boredom, in the hope of finding a snack.
Some offices have a custom-designed rug that is unique to the business that Ferguson says is "making it feel more like home".
And given the ubiquity of technology, these workplaces give a way to escape from it all – just like you would at home.
"Things like bookshelves and reading nooks and areas ... allow you to break away from the work space by doing something different than sitting at your desk on a computer," she says.
But expanding the "family home" idea into the workspace can go probably go too far.
"We're trying to take away partitions, screens between positions," she says. "We're trying to take those away so people are much more connected to the people beside them."
My brother and I grew up in separate bedrooms and there was a reason for that. Keeping us apart made the family more functional – we fought less.
So does this mean the workplace is taking the place of family life?
"In some instances, yes," she says. "A workplace people feel comfortable in and relax in – it helps stress, helps wellbeing and helps people develop relationships with colleagues at work. Not just work relationships, but social relationships."
We already have landlords trying to sell their building occupants a social life – along with your dry-cleaning and coffee they can also sell you love. Shouldn't we try and safeguard the blurring of the work and private too much?
While some solid relationships have come out of workplaces – think Bill and Melinda Gates, or Barack and Michelle Obama – others are more dysfunctional. Think Clinton/Lewinsky.
Ferguson, who points to the growing use of terms such as "work wife/husband", says it's too late. Better to go with the flow, she says.
"I don't think we can control that anymore," she says. "We have to give in and accept that that's the reality."
And there's the obvious question – if work is like home, won't we end up spending more time in the office?
"Potentially, that could happen, but at the same time, if a workplace is much more, it has those spaces to take a break, relax – we work too hard as it is," Ferguson says. "If we can have more workplaces that have this domestic approach, we've given people the opportunity to take a break from fast-paced days and back-to-back meetings."
So we'll be at work, but will be encouraged to behave like we're at home. Isn't that the opposite of what employers are trying to achieve? Let me get another cup of coffee and I'll think about it.
