« Moving Towards a More Personal Research Methodology | Home | Could the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Destroy Our World? »

Hey Cubicle! F*ck You!

By crooky | March 20, 2008

You may not be aware but yesterday was the 40th birthday of the cubicle. Today’s my birthday and I’m really glad that I don’t share it with the worst invention of the 20th Century. I get to share my birthday with Fred “Mr.” Rogers.


There’s a Fred Rogers cameo at the end. That’s my excuse for posting my favourite music video of all time.

So… back to the cubicle. My friends Lori and Gregg are currently working on a book about people who work in coffee shops to escape cubicle life (amongst other things) and a lot of companies are spending a lot of time and money to turn cubicle life into something that’s a little less Borg and a little more organic.

With the new trend towards environmental sustainability - some offices are going as far as turning their cube farms into gardens.

Is this enough? Let’s face it - most prison cells are bigger than the average cubicle. When I was imprisoned in my cubicle, I used to try and spice it up a bit to make it more habitable but I always got shit from management for having a “cluttered” space. Life is cluttered, man! You should see my desk in my home office! It looks like a grenade went off! That’s what works for me though.

I used to have my overhead cabinets covered in doodles and to-do lists (I figured out that you could use dry-erase markers on those powder-coated steel cabinets, just like a white board) and the walls of my cubicle were filled with drawings done by my kids and interesting articles that I’d written.

All of these things got me in trouble and, amongst other things, precipitated by departure from the world of wage-slavery.

While I understand that the cubicle isn’t the root of what’s wrong with the wage slave life, I suggest that it is a constant reminder that we are not free and does little to help morale. What are the alternatives then? No walls? Open floor plan? No office? Everyone telecommutes? It’s really hard to say what works best.

Now that the economy is tightening in the US, I have a feeling that what little freedom workers are given at the moment will be reigned in - hard. I weep for my wage slave brothers. Throw off the shackles of your cubicle! Join me!

*********************
Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Topics: Levity |

2 Responses to “Hey Cubicle! F*ck You!”

  1. Shama Hyder Says:
    March 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    Happy Belated Birthday!

  2. Aaron Cruikshank Says:
    March 27th, 2008 at 7:21 pm

    Thanks!

Comments