Imagine going to work — and not having a desk. Or a laptop. Or a phone. But being expected to trade. Or advise on a transaction. Or whatever it is you do during the daylight hours you normals work. That’s UBS’ latest brainstorm in the latest bout of corporate cost-cutting insanity to sweep the industry:

“A desk is like a home away from home for many in the working world. Family photos, trinkets from a vacation, an extra pair of shoes or spare chopsticks are just some of the things routinely left lying around in what has become personal space. But that comes at a price for companies,” writes the New York Times. At UBS, “many of its employees … in the City of London will no longer be tied to the same desk every day with a telephone and desktop computer. Instead, the company has deployed so-called thin desks throughout the building. Phone handsets were replaced by personal headsets, and employees can log onto their virtual desktops on computers at any desk in the building or at home. There are no laptops to lug around, and their phone numbers follow them from desk to desk or to their mobile devices.”

Don’t worry, UBS assures you it’s not meant to make its bankers feel like an interchangeable drones: “For me, it’s opening up and allowing people to work in different ways on whatever project, whatever activity they’re working on,” says a managing director for “corporate services” at the bank responsible for this nonsense.

We’re betting the half-life of this story is about two years. At least half of the Bulge Bracket will need to switch at least 5% of their office space to this format — and be aped across the world by national players — before the pendulum swings and sanity is restored. Read “No Laptop, No Phone, No Desk: UBS Reinvents the Work Space” in the New York Times (no paywall today) and wish the story had been assigned to a writer who knew the definition of sarcasm.