Office Spaces
CAT 2019 Slot 2 · VARC · Medium · Verbal Ability
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Privacy-challenged office workers may find it hard to believe, but open-plan offices and cubicles were invented by architects and designers who thought that to break down the social walls that divide people, you had to break down the real walls, too. Modernist architects saw walls and rooms as downright fascist. The spaciousness and flexibility of an open plan would liberate homeowners and office dwellers from the confines of boxes. But companies took up their idea less out of a democratic ideology than a desire to pack in as many workers as they could. The typical open-plan office of the first half of the 20th century was a white-collar assembly line. Cubicles were interior designers' attempt to put some soul back in.
- A.
Wall-free office spaces did not quite work out as desired and therefore cubicles came into being.
- B.
Wall-free office spaces did not quite work out the way their utopian inventors intended, as they became tools for exploitation of labor.
- C.
Wall-free office spaces could have worked out the way their utopian inventors intended had companies cared for workers' satisfaction.
- D.
Wall-free office spaces did not quite work out as companies don't believe in democratic ideology.
B
Explanation
The paragraph explains that wall-free offices were invented with utopian/idealistic intentions, but companies turned them into assembly lines to pack in workers (exploitation). Option B captures this core message best.
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