The cold, unyielding vibration of safety glass meeting my forehead wasn’t the wake-up call I expected at 10:06 AM on a Tuesday. I had been walking toward the ‘Collaborative Hub,’ a name that sounds increasingly like an indictment of my own personal space, when the lack of a door frame-or rather, the aggressive transparency of the door itself-reminded me that some barriers are invisible but very, very real. I stood there, rubbing my nose, while 16 sets of eyes glanced up from their identical white laminate desks. The irony of hitting a transparent wall in an office that prides itself on being ‘radically open’ was lost on no one, except perhaps the CEO, who watched the whole thing from behind 46 square feet of solid reclaimed oak.

We are told we live in the era of the flat hierarchy. It is a seductive narrative, isn’t it? The idea that we are all just nodes in a network, that the intern and the executive are essentially the same because they both eat catered tacos in the same breakroom. But if you look at the floor plan of a modern startup, you see the lie. The open-plan office was supposed to be the great equalizer, a spatial manifesto against the stuffy mahogany tombs of the 1980s. Instead, it has become a landscape of subtle, high-stakes semiotics.

My boss, Greg-who insists everyone call him ‘G’-says he hates walls. He says walls kill innovation. He says we are all one big family. Yet, G’s desk is the only one positioned with its back to the 1006-year-old oak tree outside the window. He has the only ergonomic chair with 6 distinct lumbar settings, while the rest of us sit on stools that feel like they were designed by a chiropractor looking to drum up new business.

There is a peculiar anxiety that comes from an office that lies to you about its own power structure. In a traditional hierarchy, you knew where you stood. You were on the 26th floor or the 6th floor. You had a door or you didn’t. It was honest, at least. But in the ‘flat’ office, power hasn’t vanished; it’s just gone stealth. It’s expressed through the quality of the peripherals, the distance from the noise of the coffee machine, and the size of the desk surface.

I spent about 56 minutes yesterday just watching the way people navigate the ‘hub.’ It’s a masterclass in silent negotiation. No one wants to be the first to leave, because everyone can see everyone else. It’s a panopticon designed by a Swedish furniture enthusiast. We call it ‘transparency,’ but it feels more like ‘exposure.’ If I want to take a 6-minute break to look at a picture of a dog, I have to do it with the subconscious awareness that my screen is a public monument to my own perceived laziness.

What’s worse is the equipment disparity. G talks about our shared mission, but the mission apparently requires him to have a $676 mechanical keyboard that sounds like a hail storm on a tin roof, while the rest of us use the mushy, silent plastic boards that came with the monitors. It’s a subtle flex. It says, ‘My noise is more important than your silence.’

I think about the psychological toll of this ‘stealth hierarchy’ often. When power is implicit rather than explicit, you spend a massive amount of mental energy trying to map the terrain. Is it okay to put a plant on my desk? G doesn’t have a plant, but the CFO has a bonsai that probably cost $156. Does the bonsai signify seniority, or is it just a personal choice? These are the absurd, micro-calculations we perform every day because the environment doesn’t give us the honest boundaries we crave. It’s like trying to play a game of chess where the pieces aren’t labeled and the board is constantly shifting.

There is a better way to do this, of course. It involves being honest about the fact that a company is, by definition, a structured entity. You can have a collaborative culture without lying about the fact that some people have more responsibility-and thus need more space or better tools-than others. This is where companies like FindOfficeFurniture come into the picture; they understand that the layout isn’t just about aesthetics-it’s about the cultural signal you’re sending with every chair and table choice.

I remember June A.J. showing me the escape wheel of a clock. It has these tiny, sharp teeth that catch the pallet. If those teeth are even 6 microns off, the whole thing loses time. ‘It’s not about making every tooth the same size,’ she told me, ‘it’s about making them work in the right sequence.’ An office shouldn’t be a flat sheet of laminate; it should be a well-oiled machine where every part has its place and is supported by the right infrastructure.

Last week, I decided to test the limits of our flat hierarchy. I moved my 36-inch desk six inches to the left to get away from the draft of the bathroom door. Within 106 minutes, I received a Slack message from the ‘Office Experience Manager’ asking if I had a ‘permit for spatial reconfiguration.’ Apparently, the hierarchy is flat until you try to change the furniture. It was the most honest moment I’ve had in this building in 46 days. The permit didn’t exist, but the control did.

We need to stop being afraid of structure. Acknowledging that a hierarchy exists doesn’t mean you have to be a tyrant; it just means you’re giving your employees a map they can actually read. When we provide people with an environment that matches the reality of their roles, we remove the anxiety of the unknown. Everyone deserves a desk that doesn’t shake. Everyone deserves an office that doesn’t require them to walk through 26 invisible social barriers just to get a cup of coffee.

Maybe I’ll go back to see June A.J. next weekend. Her workshop is the opposite of an open-plan office. It’s cramped, filled with 76 different specialized tools, and has a hierarchy so steep you could climb it like a mountain. There’s the master’s bench, the apprentice’s station, and the cleaning area. It’s messy, it’s loud, and it’s perfectly honest.

I think I’d trade my ‘collaborative hub’ for a single, heavy oak tooth in her machine any day. At least then, if I hit my head, I’d know exactly what I was hitting.