Look at the two images. They are the same office space, but use a different desk shape.
Can you notice how the L-shape desk on the left is taking up a lot of room. Can you notice that you can only fit 93 desks in the workspace. When we move to the more modern rectangle desk we can fit 117 desks in the same workspace - almost a 20% increase.
History
The old L-shape desk was designed in the 80's to fit the huge CPU and monitors of the old style computers, now we have flat screens and don't need that extra deep corner space.
Politics
Staff sometimes feel that if they keep their old L-shape desk they can keep their status. They will often say that they need the extra desk space. In the paperless office that we work in today, they should not need this extra space.
The latest craze is the adjustable height desk, but I will talk more about this in my next post.