The Unemployed Life

Desks, Desks, Millions of Empty Desks

When I found out last fall I was going to be laid off, visions of isolation began dancing through my head. I would be stuck working at my tiny desk in a gloomy corner of my 12 x 17 studio, all day long. Alone.

I quickly recruited several other office-less friends,  all willing to spend $200 a month to avoid working at home. And then, I set out in search of desks.

We were eight people with a very good offer that businesses weren’t ready to accept. I visited a design firm that offered $800 per-desk space at wide tables with no separation and no nearby storage space, in an echo chamber of a room. A branding agency that needed to keep up appearances wanted our bodies to fill seats of laid off staffers. They, too, rejected our $200/desk offer. I checked in with executive office suites, but the best they could do for us was five hours per week and the use of their copy machine.

Times have changed and I bet if we went back to any of those companies, we’d hear a distinctly different tune. In cities across the country, commercial vacancy rates are 10 percent or higher, and growing. In Los Angeles alone, 3.28 million square feet were unloaded in the last year, well more than after the dot-com bust.

In fact, in the last month, I met with an executive office company that offered free office space in midtown Manhattan in exchange for help using the Internet to market their space, plus the cost of T-1 connections ($75 per desk).

With square feet emptying out in cities all over the country, vacant cubicles have become legion and commercial lease holders very nervous. Here’s how you can make that work for you:

Barter is back. When Tim Jaeger and his business partner Shameel Arafin were looking for office space for their budding software startup SignalFive last year, they found an established company that had extra space and was willing to barter desks for services. It was a very good deal at the time: 15 hours per week helping to build a networking site and free rent in return. But time is money, they say, and you should consider the value of yours before entering into such an agreement. For Jaeger and Arafin, those 15 hours per week quickly added to a crucial 90 per month they needed to grow their business. When the company they were working with began to have troubles, SignalFive saw an opportunity to move on. Now, they’re renting monthly space of their own for less and their time is all their own.

Phone a friend. Ever think about your old desk/office/cubicle sitting empty in your absence? That’s money-losing space for your old bosses. We don’t recommend you re-enter your old workplace, but consider contacting companies in your line of work to see if they might have desks on offer and name your price. As long as you’re not working with the competition on the side, they’re more than likely to work out an arrangement with you.

Be a contractor-expander. Service businesses are especially prone to staffing up and staffing down — and now, they’re probably staffing down more than usual. Like the company I visited on my own search, service businesses are very sensitive to appearances. Your presence at one of their empty spaces may serve their needs even more than it does yours. Try contacting them about your offer to fill their space, at a low rate, during this downsized period. Let us know how it goes.

Seize the (economically-stressed) day. For acupuncturist Sarah Rivkin, office space has been the bane of her existence for the last year or so. She had outgrown the shared space in a neighborhood in Brooklyn near her home, but when she went looking last year, landlords were out to gouge her, with requirements that she cover the cost of improvements before moving in and at steep monthly rates on the rent. This year, landlords were all but kissing her feet. Negotiating the terms of the lease you want is unbelievably easy right now.

Move in on someone. Did you ever consider the empty homes of folks you know who still do have jobs? It’s empty space, and everyone could use a little extra cash these days. Trust will be the biggest issue here, and handled the wrong way, could easily sever your relationship with them. But if both parties are comfortable with it, it could be a win-win: You get out of your house, they get your cash — and someone to look after their cat or water the plants. (We suggest this tip only half-jokingly.)

Most important of all, keep in mind that you offer more to these companies than they do you. Not just your money, or filling an empty desk: Your skills are valuable to companies looking for cheaper ways to add resources to their overburdened staffs. If you are willing to offer some of your time or expertise, you will be doing them a service more than you know.

But if none of this sounds right to you and Starbucks is too crowded, you can always take your laptop and work at McDonald’s.

Tags: employers, office space, real estate, working at home