I have never been a fan of cubicles. A worse system of dividing up office space has yet to be devised IMHO, for it immediately ruins any HVAC installation design and encourages staff to play solitaire all day on the PC [or come on here!]
. While they drown in the racket of hundreds of phone calls drifing in over the walls.
The worst locations are near the "managers" vast and luxurious office - you get all the crummy tasks & projects - or next the main doors where herds of 'wildebeast' sweep majestically to the water cooler while you bask in the howling drafts. The 'pecking order' is most important - any cubicle at a window is premium - although some VPs have been known to board over the glass if the occupant is too low status! All this leads to the inmates wanting electric heat. Then, the coffee machine and all the other 'comforts of home' which drive up the amperage and lower the productivity.
When I worked in a large open plan design office it was always freezing in winter, [designed with massive north window lights], made worse by the "manager" who justified his grotesque salary by keeping the steam off wherever possible for us oiks. He would turn up Monday mornings, whirl a 'football rattle', [with a wet and dry thermometer in it], round his head, check the stat setting was still locked at 58F and then go hibernate for the rest of the week with 6kw of electric heaters melting his suit. What he
never saw were the electric heaters which appeared from nowhere when he'd gone, or the fact that we'd had the stat housing apart, filed a new flat on the dial stem and turned the steam off Monday am at the main valve just for him.
Now the trend is 'hotelling'. You have no 'owned' cubicle, you get assigned one at random when you arrive. Probably. At a Gummint establishment where I once turned up to waste half my life, there are now only enough desks for 60% of the workforce. If you are unlucky [lucky?] you spend the day in the canteen eating donuts, getting a caffiene overdose and using your mobile to try & stay in contact. This reduces the electric bill marvellously, since you'd need a couple of shopping trolleys to cart about all that electrical junk that uses up the juice.