IT occurred to me recently that most of the places I've worked in, since the age of 15, no longer exist.

My first Saturday job was on a fabric stall in Kirkgate market that now sells false nail kits, then I worked for a bakery which fell victim to a nearby supermarket. As a student I had holiday jobs in a shampoo factory and a pub, both now demolished, and after college I temped at a carpet firm which later went bust.

The first newspaper I worked for, one of the country's last independent family-owned weeklies, later moved to another site and has now been swallowed up by an international conglomerate and moved out of the town it served for more than a century.

I went on to be a country reporter for a Midlands newspaper, based in a little office out in the sticks. Sadly, the paper no longer has its rural edition and the area is now covered from a city-centre newsroom, 20 miles away.

I have spent most of my working life in newspaper offices. With the buzz of a breaking story, the colourful banter with hard-bitten hacks, and the curious journalistic terms and phrases that are a foreign language outside the profession, they are quite unlike any other office environment.

When I was at school, with ambitions to be a journalist, I pictured myself typing in a busy newsroom. When I finally worked in one, it felt like coming home.

But it seems the office isn't so appealing to youngsters today, according to a new report. Only 14per cent of 10,000 young people surveyed by professional services company PwC want to work in an office in the future, and one in five said they'd prefer to work in a 'virtual' environment.

The report reflects a growing trend away from the nine-to-five, with people seeking flexibility away from "the constraints of the typical office environment". Advances in technology mean people are no longer shackled to desks, and many businesses are embracing the concept.

While I see the appeal of working from home, or on the hoof, I think it's a shame that office life is so unattractive to the next generation's workforce. Offices can be dull - my worst job was the aforementioned carpet firm where I sat in a windowless unit making cold calls bookings for carpet salesmen, subsequently losing the will to live most days - but they can be places of great friendship, support and even fun.

If the traditional office disappears, like so many other places I've worked at, I could end up with just a laptop, taking my lunchbreak watching Loose Women. I think I'd rather book appointments for carpet salesmen...