As for the "Friends" thing, I once worked in a similar 'open room' type setup (although we did have windows) ... our desks were about 2 inches apart, because they had nowhere to put us at that time, so they shoved us together in a corner. There were about 6 of us, and all the others spent almost the entire shift talking about the doings of the characters of "Beverly Hills 90210" and similar shows. I was so happy when after a few months they expanded and had room to put us into semi-individual cubes. The only time in my life I can say I was actually happy to be moved into a cube ;-)
I know. I know our boss was cracking down on people visiting each other's cubes and talking but in our case, we are in a room with everyone else and we can talk and chat while working. My co-worker runs a Dungeons and Dragon's game so there are interests in role playing games as well that we talk about. The only time we are quiet is when we listen to talk radio, he's a Michael Savage and Glenn Beck junky like I am. Sometimes we both laugh in unison when we listen to Beck, Rush and so on and the room cracks up at us. Our favorite part of Glenn Beck is when he plays his "Moron Trivia" on Fridays when he calls up convience stores in two cities that are playing NFL games against each other. I like it when he says he's "Flap Jackson of 'The Big Frog' at 109.9 FM." B-)
