For all you guys who work in cubicles

Pretty much anything. At my workplace, all of the engineers have cubicles. In other settings, they could be software developers, financial advisors, secretaries, marketing people, whatever. Any desk job will probably involve cubicles.

You could be a telemarketer. You could do data entry for any number of things. I used to do data entry in the accounts payable/receivable. My husband works in a cubicle though, and he's an accident investigator for the FAA. Some people where I work now who work in cubicles work in the training department and the QA department...

Sales clerk is another option.

Hmmm..not sure if I helped at all. Feel free to ask me questions to help clerify.

How big is the company? What kind of company is it?

I used to work in a cube farm. The company was large enough that, while I knew my immediate neighbors, I had no idea who the people sitting one row over were, nor did I know what they're doing. However, I worked at a tech firm that created cell phones, so some cubes overflowed with cell phone parts.

Some generic cube detritus and environmental imagery:

Computers
white boards with cryptic notes
cables
spreadsheets
college-room cube decor such as rows of small figures, stuffed animals, comic book characters, etc.
Phones constantly ringing
multiple trips to the coffee machine
network printers
The person with a cold who won't stay home
The cold that you can hear traveling closer to you as the week progresses
Conference rooms
Powerpoint presentations


And what kind of a cube farm is it? The one I worked in was really nice, actually. Lots of natural light, no buzzing lightbulbs overhead, Scandinavian design, ergonomic chairs and stations. It was not the same stifling environment you might see on The Office or in Office Space. In fact, it might be nice to see something other than the late 90s cliche in a story...something to think about, anyway.

Also, you could read Joshua Ferris's THEN WE CAME TO THE END.

How about spacing out or surfing the net for several hours and doing a half an hour of real data entry work before sneaking out 15 minutes before quitting time. Well, you asked...

Uh,oh! Here comes my boss.

My cubicle land is almost all programmers. Right now I can hear the snapping of keys from multiple directions, each a different percussive rhythm dependent on the typist. All else is dead silence. Every once in a while, the office door opens and closes. And soon, the halls will be filled with a zombie-like shuffle as the programmers make their ways to the breakrooms to nuke lunch and eat. A few of them will start up a game of cards. There used to be the occasional loud laughter or the spatter of zips throughout the day indicating a nerf gun war, but almost all the fun people are gone now. So dead silence it is, except the tap tap tapping of our fingers.




-Michelle

I write and analyze contracts. I work in a cubicle.

My sister is a graphic designer, my brother is a product manager, and my dad is a patent attorney. They all live in cube-land too.

Having recently survived 11 years of working in "Puka Hell" in Washington DC as both active duty military and civilian contractor, I can reliably tell you that having a puka or an office is strictly based on senority and not on job.

You will also have people and jobs intermixed with little rhyme or reason -- the only time when everyone who works on a particular job, or performs a particular task is co-located is right after everyone moves in. After that, the New Guy gets the smallest puka, regarless of it's physical proximity to the rest of his group.

For atmosphere, there is zero privacy. There are numerous phone calls going on, and only people (such as telemarketers or IT support staff -- the Help Desk) who are constantly on the phone wear headsets. About half of the rest of them use speaker phones.

Speaking of phones, they all ring, and part of the fun is trying to figure out whose phone is ringing. Most office standard phones have about eight different ring patterns. This isn't enough. My office was set up with pukas in groups of 4 - a central aisle off of which sprang pipe-stems, and each stem had 4 pukas. So, I could easily hear my 4 local phones, the 4 phones on either side of the puka cluster, and the corresponding 3 puks sets across the aisle. That's 24 pukas in close enough proximity that you had all better be able to get along (and not get too upset with Person A's choice in music, or Person B's perfume/cologne).

There is an interesting phenomenon known as Prairie Dogging. If something possibly interesting (read "loud bang or crash") happens, everyonme in the puka farm stands up and pops their heads up above the puka walls -- reminiscient of the actions of prairie dogs.

A cubicle is just a small office.

We do whatever the company requires us to do. I'm a technical writer. We have engineers, project managers, account managers, and so on.

What is the company's business? That will determine what the people in the cubes do. Haven't you ever worked for a company before?

drachin8 said:

<snip> There used to be the occasional loud laughter or the spatter of zips throughout the day indicating a nerf gun war, but almost all the fun people are gone now.

Click to expand...

Heh. There exists a whole sub-culture based around cubicle-warfare, complete with props ands on-line catalogues.
My favorite was the USB Missle Battery. You could control the elevation and azimuth of the 3-missile launcher from your computer, and either single- or ripple-fire them. Nerf missiles with about a 10 foot range.

Some really good atmospheric details here. I might add my own.

Seven of us in cubes. A large conference room shared with people from two floors above us, but also available for people visiting from corporate HQ in San Francisco. The teleconferencing setup allows up to 12 people in the conference room at once to view and be seen by folks 200 miles away using big-screen TV and videocams.

The more women present at a meeting, the louder the noise from that room even with the door closed. In an all-woman meeting, usually two or more voices speaking at once. Lots of laughter.

Often hushed gossip about the person occupying the corner office with the big window view.

No reception room, no reception secretary anymore. Big bosses type their own emails.

Very little paper flow, mostly email and e-documents.

Insurance adjusters no longer consult ledgers of green-bar printout six inches thing. The database is king, search engine is queen.

Programmers work all day without speaking to anyone--not even their computer.

You can enter a large cube room and not see a single soul with eighty people present. They're heads down beneath the cube walls.

Interference from corporate software security: ve must haff control uff all ze machinen. This means the computer you knew and loved yesterday may not be the same computer you boot up this morning.

Hard-copy (paper) printers located out of the cube room. You walk over to the print station to get your printout. Usually that's a signature document.

Manuals all online. We don't need no stinking manual.

Some cubes are stark: no personals, a wall calendar, whiteboard, computer monitor, bare desk, chair. Others are a home away from home with family pics, "I love you mommy" kiddie art, potted flowers and/or plants, desktop strewn with books and papers, even teddy bears.

Here's what it's like at the office where I work:

The guy next to me fields calls from collectors trying to get the money he owes them and does his best to come up with creative excuses that will buy him more time.

The girl across the way from me handles her Avon orders and speaks to her daughter 10-15 times a day.

The girl in the office next to her thinks she's a witch. Yeah, that's right.

I post messages on AW all day.

And, such is a typical day in the great american workplace! I hope this helps.

I can only nod my head in agreement with almost everyone above.

My favorite cubicle moments revolve around the fact that I sit on the other side of the cube wall (it's high, about 2/3 way up from floor to ceiling) from the copy machine. It's amazing to me how many of my co-workers haven't quite grasped the concept of cube wall does not equal sound proof. I've come to recognize those who should never audition for American Idol and have been treated to numerous juicy bits of gossip.

Of course, there was the guy who wore air traffic controller headphones to listen to music and thought that since he couldn't hear them, no one else in the vacinity could hear them either. By 'them' I mean bodlily function noises of all sorts, many complemented by authentic smells. Zero hour was typically 1 - 2 p.m. Many in the area tried to schedule meetings elsewhere in that time frame, especially when he had takeout from the local Mexican restaurant.

And if you've got some spare time for humorous in a sad pathetic sort of way (because so many of us can relate), check out the movie 'Office Space'.

One thing I see no one has mentioned: In most cubicles you can't position yourself to face the entrance. (Managers, or people whose jobs require a lot of visitors, sometimes have a peninsula-style work surface with a couple of visitor chars on the other side.) In some, you have to sit with your back towards the entrance. At best, it's to one side of you. That means that if you tend to get engrossed in what you're doing--whether that's actual work or surfing the net--people who walk softly can sneak up on you and see your screen before you know anyone is there. I've seen people attach mirrors to their monitors for that reason.

The overall layout of a cube farm can be a lot like a suburban neighborhood. The house that I share a back fence with is several winding blocks away by street. The same way with cubicles--you may share a partition with, and overhear the phone conversations of, someone you don't even know, because he works in a different department and his cubicle is accessed off a different main corridor.

RGame said:

I've never worked in that kind of atmosphere myself. What the heck do they do?

Click to expand...

Nothing much.

I work in a corporate office, in the legal department. My cubicle is fairly small; my 2 bosses' offices are regular, average sized, windowed rooms.

I have a desktop computer in my office, and there's always a whole bunch of papers in stacks around it (and other areas of my desk, heh). I also have a 2 filing cabinets that were built into the cubicle: One is a 2-drawer lateral, where I store one boss' expense reports (I always keep a paper copy of anything I do online, as you never know when 1) someone is going to ask for a paper copy and/or 2) the damned internet connection will be down). I also have built-in cabinets (think of those like in your kitchen) for storing even more stuff, lol. Out of sight means no nagging by the neatness Nazis.

Anyway...I type letters and other important things, do some filing, all right here in my cubicle. (The longest and most tedious things I type are plan documents for different types of employee plans - pensions, that sort of thing. As the federal government/IRS/whatever likes to add/delete regulations, my boss has to add/delete those things from such plans every few years so that said plans are in compliance.)

I don't have a printer in my office as it's too small, but there is a big printer in another cubicle on the other side of where I sit; it's part of a computer network. Also on the network is one of the copiers; in a pinch, I can send a print job to the copier, although it prints out pretty slowly. I can also do PDFs off the copier, which has made my life a whole lot easier. It's especially good as I don't have access to Adobe Writer or whatever the frig it's called now. (The downside is that there's a limit to the number of pages in a PDF using the copier method.)

What else do I do? Work on my WIP whenever I can. I also have papers stuck up with pushpins with phone numbers and other things that are somewhat important (like my notary public license). At this point in time, almost everything I do is computer related, so whenever there's been a power failure, I flail around, wondering what to do.

What else? I do my one boss' chron filing (that's chronological filing) of what he sends out via mail and email on the computer, although I still have paper copies of what he sends out (which I put into 3-ring notebooks). I order office supplies for myself and my two bosses.

~Nancy

FennelGiraffe said:

One thing I see no one has mentioned: In most cubicles you can't position yourself to face the entrance. (Managers, or people whose jobs require a lot of visitors, sometimes have a peninsula-style work surface with a couple of visitor chars on the other side.) In some, you have to sit with your back towards the entrance. At best, it's to one side of you. That means that if you tend to get engrossed in what you're doing--whether that's actual work or surfing the net--people who walk softly can sneak up on you and see your screen before you know anyone is there. I've seen people attach mirrors to their monitors for that reason.

Click to expand...

Ack, that's very true. I know it's true for me and most of the others here in cubes (although there is one who is facing the entrance). I sit with my back to the entrance, even as I type this.

Wow, a mirror attached to the monitor, huh? Never thought of that. But then again, I'm not really interested in knowing who enters my tiny cube.

~Nancy

Don't state his specific job - you've already got him in a cubicle, so you may as well emphasize the blandness of his job. He could be one of a million people - let him blend in with the rest of his environment.

Can't forget office politics (did anyone say that already? I just skimmed)

If you're going to write about cube land and haven't actually been there yourself, go watch the movie Office Space. Or that TV show "The Office".

A lot of companies still haven't fully entered the computer age, so there's often a lot of paper around. And don't forget the person who has sticky notes all over everything.

Some of the office culture depends on the height of the cube walls. If you can see over them people will relate differently. If they're too high to see over when you stand up, you'll still have people calling out to each other over the walls.

As for what people actually do, there's always the person who takes multiple personal phone calls, and there's the guy from a different department who comes around to hang out every day at the same time. Then there's the person whose work isn't up to snuff and yet for some reason the bosses haven't noticed it, so everybody talks about him/her behind his/her back, but nobody actually goes to the bosses to complain (usually something happens eventually so that this person gets fired). There's the person with the cluttered desk and the boss who always complains about it (the person with the clutter is always me). There's the person who chooses to eat lunch at his/her desk and constantly has people interrupting with work to be done. Then there's the person who constantly complains about the job but won't look for a new one.

Office jobs suck.

drachin8 said:

My cubicle land is almost all programmers. Right now I can hear the snapping of keys from multiple directions, each a different percussive rhythm dependent on the typist. All else is dead silence. Every once in a while, the office door opens and closes. And soon, the halls will be filled with a zombie-like shuffle as the programmers make their ways to the breakrooms to nuke lunch and eat. A few of them will start up a game of cards. There used to be the occasional loud laughter or the spatter of zips throughout the day indicating a nerf gun war, but almost all the fun people are gone now. So dead silence it is, except the tap tap tapping of our fingers.




-Michelle

Click to expand...

Our cube farm is a small IT shop. Programmers on one one side, networking on the other, help desk beyond the network dudes. We have the key thing going on, but we are a bunch of gossip mongers, so it's always noisey. Plus everyone plays music at different levels...we're all in to rock music at least. Lots of cussing and bitching is the norm. We listen to each others phone calls, personal and otherwise, so we know who is doing what. We all know who the hated users are and why. We have a frig and coffee station, so we are always bringing in snacks and it usually smells like burned coffee because no one ever shuts the burner off. Lots of web surfing, bullshitting, I write on the sly, and occasionally, we do a little work when we can't get out of it.

The cubes vary in size in mybuilding. On my side they're a decent size, maybe 6 feet by about 5 feet and we have graphic artists and accounting. The same is with downstairs although I have no idea what they do. On the otherside of the building where the data entry is, their cubes about roughly 1/3 this size and they cram about 2 and a ahlf people into the space that I sit alone. The Alt + Tab is an officer worker's best friend and while I play my music, believe it or not it's pretty stifled around me. It's even better when two people who are in rows to my immediate left and right (there's a taller cube all in between) speak to each other in speaker phone. All their missing is TDX or whatever that sound thing on movies is. I've been known to toss a cough drop over the cube wall to the hackers and there are times when I want to go home healthy because the floor sounds like a sick ward for pneumonia victims.

I interned at a government contractor and lived in a cube for three months.

Everything you have seen on Office Space is true. I had a boss that spoke like Lumbergh. The woman in the cube next to mine sounded distinctly like Gary Coleman and had a very phone-intensive position.

And now, to make everyone jealous... I'm at a new company and I have an office. I'm an entry-level programmer. Life is sweet.

quickWit said:

Here's what it's like at the office where I work:

The guy next to me fields calls from collectors trying to get the money he owes them and does his best to come up with creative excuses that will buy him more time.

The girl across the way from me handles her Avon orders and speaks to her daughter 10-15 times a day.

The girl in the office next to her thinks she's a witch. Yeah, that's right.

I post messages on AW all day.

And, such is a typical day in the great american workplace! I hope this helps.

Click to expand...

*looks over cubicle wall and waves at QuickWit*

Log on to AW every 5 minutes, then surf the web for 3 hours, then answer the phone for a minute, then talk to Pam at the water cooler for 2 hours, then back to the computer and log on to AW again.

I usually had an office but when I was at Scholastic in New York we didn't even have cubicles. We had five sections, and each section had a U-shape desk and 8 to 10 people shared the same desk. It was bad. Then later the project manager claimed an office with a window overlooking Soho and he invited me to join him (because he had to work with me the most). That was sweet.