Page 61 - WHERE WE WORK - Schlegelmilch
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Moving between places
 norms of the place could conflict with the workers' intention of using the place. Usually, the course of events in a restaurant is where one orders food and, or, drinks and leaves once these have been consumed. However, this is not suitable for working as it is experienced as disturbing to be asked to order (Jacky’s quote above). So, even though a place – like a restaurant – provides tables and chairs that may enable workers to enact the affordance of malleability described earlier, the purpose of a place can constrain workers socially. When this happened, we found that nomadic workers did not necessarily leave but instead seemed to endure the experienced conflict for the time being and avoid in the future. In addition, as our research progressed, we had two respondents sharing with us that cafés prohibited working by hanging up signs and asking people not to work in the place. While this was constraining for the nomadic workers in their choice of place, it also cleared up any uncertainty about the places' norms. Matt explains why it is crucial to consider a places' normative aspect:
"You need to feel like you are allowed to work there. Sometimes, it doesn't feel right to just sit there with your computer, and I don't really feel comfortable sitting there. So, if there are more people working there, that helps." (Matt, AB tester, #8)
As we showed above, nomadic workers continuously change places and have to create temporary work environments wherever they are by enacting the affordance of malleability through the physical and social elements of a place. However, nomadic workers do not only need to construct temporary work environments in a variety of places, but they also need to conduct focused work, as we turn to next.
Privacy. Conducting focused work was an especially challenging situation for the nomadic workers because it required a certain amount of control over their environment. For example, Kenni described it as such, “Thinking work requires focus; you almost need a cocoon not to be distracted.” (product manager, #18). If workers were unable to control the distractions in their workplace, they could not conduct what was described
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