Cubicles

[PonderBee]

Anyone here work in a cubicle?
Probably 25% of my time at work is in the field - the balance is in the office, in my cubicle writing up reports, special projects or making communications. I can not adequately describe how impossible it is for me to concentrate or be productive in a cubicle surrounded by munching, guffawing, whispering, spying, tapping, coughing, humming, radio playing, griping, BS'ing, tawkin' ... (you get the idea) people! Now, thanks to budget cutbacks - we'll be ... give me strength doubling up in the cubicles! In the very near future I will have someone - actually a nice guy but a newbie full of questions - at my elbow in that cubicle. Not only that but our admin person - who I've thanked the gods was way across the office will be 1 cubicle away from me ... not a bad person except for the fact that she absolutely bathes herself in perfume and reapplies throughout the day - I can feel the migraine from the perfume stink already. I am inept at making tactful suggestions about crap like perfume abuse.
I have a 3 day weekend in front of me - MUST WORK ON RESUME :blink:

[Ascending]

I can most emphaticly say I see where your frustration is.

Personaly I've decided the last place I want to work is in small box with no door.

[PsiKik]

Reading this has made me realise how lucky I am in that have an office that I only share with one other guy, even though he makes infuriating mouth noises, talks loudly on the phone and his phone rings about every 20 minutes.

[Boneca]

Ha - I remember my cubicle with fondness. Then again, I was the only one having a cubicle in an otherwise open "office landscape". :P

[cjs55]

I'd shoot myself if I had to share a cubicle with another person. Sharing a dorm room was bad enough...

[SensEye]

I work in a cubicle. Thankfully, I have never had to share. That would be pretty bad. My current cubie neighbors are pretty quiet, mostly introverts I suppose.

My company has a Dilbert like philosophy that an employee gets an office with a door only when they reach a certain management level. Anybody who reaches that level is a pure "manager" (i.e. does no real work, only produces reports and counts beans) so I am never going to go there. It's cubes until retirement for this cowboy.

[Star]

Argh! I hate cubicle farms! I've already ranted about it a bit here (http://forums.intpcentral.com/showpost.php?p=58909&postcount=56) but I'll take this excuse to do it some more. : )

The thing about cubicles is that the provide a flimsy and extremely false sense of privacy that does not provide the worker with any real personal space at all. What they actually provide is alienation; they put the worker in her little iimaginary square and separate her off from the rest of the group. For me, at least, being in a cubicle means that I have to spend extra mental energy in order to forget all the people around me, since this is what those little flimsy walls seem to suggest that I am supposed to do.

I once interviewed for a position with a large Japanese company. I asked to see the space where I would be working, if I were to take the job. The interviewers led me down a hallway and opened a door onto the most extraordinary sight: a huge open floor filled with hundreds of desks and people at these desks, all talking, working at computers, like one big buzzing organism, crackling with energy. It was so very unusual to me that my immediate reaction was to burst into hysterical laughter. The interviewers (all Americans) laughed along with me, and told me that they had had similar reactions when they first saw this workplace style. It was so intense! And I know that even I, an extreme introvert, would have been so much more productive and happy in this environment than hiding out in a cube somewhere, with the phones unplugged and stuffed into a drawer, surfing the web for most of the day.

In fact, I think I'd be happier sharing a cube than alone in one. The wrongness, the artificiality of the space provided by a cubicle is just deeply disturbing to me. If I had another person in the cube, I'd never have to spend that extra energy pretending that I was alone, and could just get the work done.

[CoHo]

I haven't worked in a cubicle in quite a few years... I think they are more poetically bad then anything else. I don't really mind them, there's just a stigma with them that screams "dead-end-worthless".

That and I HATED it when people walked by, it was like the only time someone would walk by is when I was doing absolutely nothing... like using eBay to get the current value of giant wooden spoons just incase grandma' kicks the bucket.

Anyways, you all should read this short story:
Part 1
http://www.nfocipher.org/article.php?story=20040806031954236&mode=print

Part 2
http://www.nfocipher.org/article.php?story=20040806032759670&mode=print

[booyalab]

I've never worked in a cubicle but in my dad's (more office-y than a dilbert cube I guess) there's a plant that's been in there since the 80s (when he started working there and my mom got him a gift) and it's got vines growing from it that have wrapped clear around the inside wall about 2/3 of the way along the length of the desk (which is long and sectioned along the sides of the walls). I guess it's a good metaphor for the human condition, or something.

[Nighthawk]

My company has a Dilbert like philosophy that an employee gets an office with a door only when they reach a certain management level. Anybody who reaches that level is a pure "manager" (i.e. does no real work, only produces reports and counts beans) so I am never going to go there. It's cubes until retirement for this cowboy.This describes every place I've worked for the past 10 years. I despise the intrusion on my concentration that happens with maddening regularity in a cube farm. What I wouldn't give for a door that closes. Fortunately, I work odd hours when there are not many people around. Otherwise, the myriad of speaker phones would undoubtedly drive me nuts. I've gotten used to interruptions however. I just compensate by doing less work.

[jetboots]

Anyone here work in a cubicle?
Probably 25% of my time at work is in the field - the balance is in the office, in my cubicle writing up reports, special projects or making communications. I can not adequately describe how impossible it is for me to concentrate or be productive in a cubicle surrounded by munching, guffawing, whispering, spying, tapping, coughing, humming, radio playing, griping, BS'ing, tawkin' ... (you get the idea) people! Now, thanks to budget cutbacks - we'll be ... give me strength doubling up in the cubicles! In the very near future I will have someone - actually a nice guy but a newbie full of questions - at my elbow in that cubicle. Not only that but our admin person - who I've thanked the gods was way across the office will be 1 cubicle away from me ... not a bad person except for the fact that she absolutely bathes herself in perfume and reapplies throughout the day - I can feel the migraine from the perfume stink already. I am inept at making tactful suggestions about crap like perfume abuse.
I have a 3 day weekend in front of me - MUST WORK ON RESUME :blink:


I would describe my current work pretty much the same. It is actually my first "real" job (9 to 5) ever, I managed to avoid this popular reality for many years. I look upon this as my little experiement.

I am very very strongly thinking that I am going to ask my boss if I can wear big fat headphones, as earplug quietness would wierd me out even more, cause you can hear your own sounds much better.... anyway, I think cubicles in combo with music in the ears is better, cause although much of the "privacy" is still there, at least you dont have to deal with the sounds that this cubicle setup brings.

Ps: I plan to not work there for too much longer:P what i have said, plus working at set times, just makes me realllly lathargic. At best I am breakin even for the company right now:P

[PonderBee]

I can be so damned wonderfully productive and innovative left alone in my own corner of my world. That cubicle is exposing me to a world of distraction and my ability to produce a high quality result has become severely disabled. The thought of compiling my distaction with more folks and the baggage they'll be carting with them is numbing. I know I must leave before conditions spiral into a torment of distraction and exposure.

[jetboots]

I have followed thru with my own suggetion. Apperently my boss has absolutely no problem with me listening to music on my headphones while I work. This might just completely change everything. Well not everything, but a many a thing.

[PonderBee]

jetboots, good news on the headphones :) - the bonus is you'll be able to listen to whatever you like without fear of offending anyone or arousing unwanted attention. Good on you for making the plea.

For me it wouldn't work because it is as if we are expected to be on a neverending adrenalin rush - my ears need to be at the ready to signal me to don my cape and respond to the call of a regulatory fire in a friggin flash. I'm already the Pooh Bear in a roomful of X-Men in regards to energy level.
My j-o-b is getting to me and the emerging cubicle crisis represents the last straw for me ... or maybe I'm just a tree sloth in disguise who is pulling at straws seeking an excuse to finally resign.
The question is not "if" - but - "when."