> most workers were probably head-down looking at paper on their physical desktop

Not really. If you go back to the 50's you will find armies of people looking down at paper, reading and writing, but not most. By the 80's all of those people had machines on their desks, while most didn't do paper work.

I believe the majority of people only started doing information (since the paper isn't there anymore) work this century on the rich countries. On many countries they didn't yet.

Also, sales people were always loud.

    By the 80's all of those people had machines on their desks

What kind of machines? Computers? My father was an office worker his whole life. He didn't get a PC on his desk until the 90s. Before, he had a type writer.

Writing machines, calculators, card organizers, whatever counter, etc. All of them loud.

The cubicle was invented in the 60s as a way of liberating workers from the tyranny of the open plan. To give people their own space.

Ironic that it became its own oppression.

In retrospect, cubicles were just aesthetically unfortunate and a convenient target for those who wanted to mock business culture (a la Office Space). But full size cubicles were vastly superior in visual privacy and sound dampening to the hell of “open office” seating at long benches that came after.

Cubicles were mocked into being removed for no good reason. A programmer analogy would be the goto-statememt. Mental institutions are another.