What do you call a sociopath in a cubicle? A coworker. ~ Scott Adams
I love the movie Office Space. It is one of my favorites; one of those movies that can be watched over and over without distressed movie syndrome setting in. I guess when a movie speaks to your life you can see the same scenes and hear the same punch lines many times without getting tired of them. They keep hammering the same message to the viewer time and again. My favorite scenes in Office Space come from the main character's disdain for the cubicle he works in. Four walls that look just alike that compact a work space, including the life of the occupant.
I spent twenty two years of my professional life in a cubicle. The insurance industry is built on cubicles; they have so many of them that they are sometimes called cubicle farms. My first cubicle was actually a pseudo cubicle. It was constructed of my hard, cold metal desk, a bookcase in front of me, a bookcase to the left of me and another cold, hard metal desk behind me. The woman who sat behind me was great. We became friends. The guy who sat to my left was loud. The guy who sat in front of me was a smoker so my lungs were harassed on a daily basis by him. There was no such thing as privacy; only cold hard metal desks and bookcases for 8-10 hours a day. I knew more about my coworkers than I ever wanted to know. And I am sure they knew more about me than I wanted them to.
The psychology behind the cubicle fascinates me (I never liked being in a cubicle but I respect the fact that many employees make cubicles their homes for 40 hours a week. If you are cool with your cubicle, good for you). I always felt like a rat in a maze that was being watched for some bigger than life scientific study. Just tall enough to be able to see just over the cubicle walls, I could see where my colleagues were, when the boss was coming for the 3:50 p.m. cubicle check and when others were leaving early. I had a supervisor who would walk around every day at 3:50 to check the cubicles. My guess is that he wanted to see who was at their desk and who wasn't. Or maybe this daily ritual made him feel like the manager that he wasn't. What he didn't know was that we were onto him. Bosses, don't do cubicle checks when you are taller than the cubicle walls. We can see you coming. Being shorter than you we can hustle back to our cubicles before you get to them.
More to come.
What did your first cubicle look like?
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