Cubicle Comedy of Errors

 At my work, we recently had our spacious 8x9 cubes compressed by 33% to 8x6. No one is happy about this. With a full L-shaped desk, you end up with about 15 square feet of livable floor space. And the door is right behind your back, so there is no privacy at all. It is unbearable. See for yourself:



Criminals get larger prison cells than this.  Click to enlarge, but not much.

 Imagine an entire floor of these boxes. Or don't imagine it. Take a look at our glorious cube farm for yourself:

33% smaller cubes also means 33% more people in the same area.

 On the up side, this has forced some of us to learn how cubes are constructed, and to figure out some more optimal cube configurations.

Do you know what these are for?  I do!

My friend Shawn and I both modified our cubes. I'm actually pleased with my layout now, even if it is smaller, and I've helped a few others re-arrange their cubes as well. All unapproved by management, of course.

I tell you all this to explain how I came up with the following scheme. Shawn was away for a week of vacation. I decided to give him the welcome home gift of eliminating his cube. I "borrowed" a 3-foot cube panel from somewhere else and closed off his door. The end result was this:

The photo was obviously taken from above. A normal person would see simply a solid wall where a door used to be.

I even made it more authentic by writing up a work order for door removal:

My job done, all I had to do was sit back and wait for the festivities Monday morning.  This is where everything went wrong.

Problem the First. We've been compressed for a few months, and to my knowledge, the manager in charge of the compression has never once come around to check if everything was done properly and we were happy (ha!) with our new prison cells. I figured I could borrow the panel on Thursday, replace it Monday, and no one would be the wiser. As luck would have it, the manager came around not three hours after I removed the panel. He was surprised to see empty space where there should have been a wall, and promptly wrote up a work order to have a panel installed. Oh no. Come Monday, I'm going to have an extra panel!

Problem B. Friday morning, Shawn calls me up from his vacation and asked me to get a box out of his cube and deliver it to a conference room. Uuuhhh.... Oh no. I briefly debated whether I could climb over the cube walls without killing myself.  In the end, the thought of lying dead in Shawn's cube until Monday convinced me to disassemble his door, remove the box, and put the door panel back in place.  This was clearly not planned well.

Problem 3.  I intended to borrow a ladder from Shawn on Monday to get some work done at my house. He was home Saturday, so I had to debate getting the ladder early, or wait until Monday after Shawn had seen his cube (or lack thereof) and potentially would no longer be on speaking terms with me. Decisions, decisions...

Luckily, in the end, everything went well. According to Shawn, he walked to his cube Monday morning, didn't find his cube, and was somewhat confused. Then he saw the work order and the panic started to set in. Are we in trouble for modifying our cubes? Would they really un-do all the work we did?? When he walked around the corner to find where they should have placed the door, only to still find no door, he finally knew it was a joke.

And he was a good sport about it and still let me borrow his ladder.

I'm still not sure what to do with this extra panel, though....

There was a young limerick from Nantuckit

Recently, my daughter had an assignment in English class to write a limerick, and she asked for help coming up with something.  My first thought was of all the bawdy ones I can't tell her, so that didn't help.  Instead, I decided to write one of my own for her.  This is what I came up with:

My Dad goes to work from morning to night.
He works all day, never seeing the light.
  He brings home the dough
  to feed us, you know.
That's why I love him with all of my might.

She didn't like it.  I can't imagine why.  She has no taste, I tell you, no appreciation for fine literature.  Where did I go wrong?

The Speed of Thought

I'm an introvert.  I think the main reason for this is because I can't think of anything interesting to say when I meet people.  My brain does not think on its feet.  It's very uncomfortable.  People say you just need to relax, don't worry, say whatever - friends won't care if it's some earth-shattering idea or not.  I agree, but seriously, something is wrong with my brain.

Let me give you an example.  I was recently driving my daughter to symphony rehearsal and was stopped at a light.  A car pulls up next to me in the turn lane and motions for me to roll down my window.  It was some elderly man, so I did, with the worry already beginning in my stomache, "Aww man, what am I going to have to say?"

He asks me, "How do I get to highway 17?"

Well, this is excellent, because that's exactly where I'm going!  I do a little internal Dance of Joy and I tell him, "Oh, it's just straight ahead.  You go around a bend to the left.  A Starbucks will be on your right.  Make a right-turn, and 17 is right there!"  I was very pleased with myself for being able to answer.

"Oh, so I'm in the wrong lane?"

Shit.  Stupid brain, why didn't you think of that before?

"Oh, sorry, no, you can actually turn left right here, and then at the second light, you'll hit Bascom.  Turn right there, and you'll get to 17 also!"

Again, I'm pleased with myself for coming up with the right answer.  The light turns green and off we both go.

I short while later, my brain nudges me and says, "Uh, the light we were at was Bascom.  We meant to tell him Camden."

Shit.  I hope the "second light" part was enough to get him to the right place.  Sorry, Old Guy.

Even when I'm not racing to provide information before the light changes, I find it extremely difficult to speak up and voice my opinion.  Especially at work, I need to think all the implications through before giving an answer, which makes face-to-face meetings very stressful.  I greatly prefer e-mail, where I can take the time to craft my answer.

Even in social situations, where the answers don't matter much, I still don't know what to say.  I spent my earlier years in online social games where you type to each other, because it gave me the freedom to think.  Maybe I looked like a slow typer, but that's far superior to sounding like an idiot.  Needless to say, this helped my dating skills not at all.

Even this blog entry, I've gone back and editted the sentences above many, many times while writing.  I could never have this conversation in real life, because my mind won't feed me the right words.

Is this normal for other people too?  How do you get around it?  To me, you look like the equivalent of the proverbial "social butterfly" always able to hold up your end of the conversation.  But maybe you feel as uncomfortable as I do inside?  I hate living this way.  It's so much less stressful to keep to myself, even though I don't want to.

Life is hard.