S.O.S. How do I get someone to change cubes at work?

Puncture your eardrums with a freshly-sharpened pencil. A moment of pain, a lifetime of bliss.

Limburger cheese.

Put it behind - under - in her desk

get one of those digital recorders, record her for a couple of days and blast her own conversation back at her on a loop until she goes insane.

There was a time when you could take folk like that out back and beat them with a hose. Now they've got their unions, there's not much you can do.
I had a similar problem. The only thing I could do was distract myself with work in the hope of blocking her out.
It didn't work as I'd planned, but it did work: I got promoted and move Waaaaaaay across the office.
Stick with it, things have a way of working out anyway.

Earplugs. Any stink you put in her cube will travel to yours too.

rwam said:

Not sure if the smell would even bother me. In fact, every time I caught a whiff, it would remind me of my secret victory.

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I love the smell of skunk in the morning. Smells like... Victory.

rwam said:

Complaining to mgmt is not an option. Such things, no matter how tactfully done, are frowned upon and I've got a reputation as a non-complainer I don't want to tarnish.

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Sorry, but this strikes me as incongruious. (I'll look up the definition and spelling later.) But if you've already got a rep as a non-complainer wouldn't your complaining therefore hold MORE weight?

"Wow. Rwam hardly ever complains. We'd better check into this."

Pee on her chair every morning before she comes in.

Now I see how you got your screen name.

Useful peeing tip # 234: Sit in the back of movie theaters. Because of the way the theater floor slopes down toward the front, you never have to get up to go to the bathroom.

Leave an anonymous note in her cube telling her to "STFU!"

Or you could poison her.

Is it you she yaps at or is she just chatty in general?

Pee on her chair every morning before she comes in.

Actually soaking a person's fabric office chair with water is a time-honored prank, especially if it's a fat person. Get the whole chair wet so that it's a uniform color.

Other ideas: Go on that person's computer (making sure no one sees you of course) and subscribe to a bunch of porn sites or "casual sex" dating sites and use her comp to print out a bunch of offensive material on the shared printer. Download a bunch of screensavers from ad sites that will fill her comp with adware and spyware. Create a profile on Yahoo that has a suggestive photo on it and download "Yahoo messenger" to load on startup and set to "always available" (with no icon on system tray or start menu so it will be harder to find) so that she will get a million IMs a day from horny perverts. These are just a few ideas I have. (Playing pranks on people and just being an asshole in general has been a hobby of mine for most of my life; on Rotteneggs.com I was ranked 23rd for awhile out of over 60,000 members! )

I don't work in an office anymore but I generally use magic to get rid of people I don't like. Naturally, not everyone has this available to them, but I thought I would mention it because it works better than pranks and you run much less of a risk of getting fired. If you have a local voodoo person, go buy some "hot foot" oil and "go away" dust; get instructions for using them, of course.

I hope this was helpful!

Have parking lot baseball bat attacks gone out of fashion these days?

It is so hard to keep up with current office etiquette.

No, no, no. Don't call it complaint (ever). Put it in writing and call it A Proposal to Improve Overall Interoffice Efficiency (which just happens to required moving the *****). Throw in lot of sports analogies like, "becoming better team players" and "winning one for the XYZ Corporation" and "a Hail Mary pass the competition will never suspect". Make sure to laud your supervisors for their far-sighted outlook and wisdom in considering your proposal in a positive light. Surely you can come up with something to make this work; if you can't think of anything offhand, look through old Dilbert cartoon strip until you find an answer.

I hope that helps.

And if that don't work, put sardines in the back of her desk drawer.

Quit bathing. Wear the same socks for a month, the same ones you work out in. Take an abstinence pledge with regards to anti-perspirants. Eat garlic for breakfast and put your toothbrush into retirement. Lean close over this person while you say good mornng. Let go with a peanut butter belch as you do so. You won't have to do another thing. This person will beg management for a different cube.

Oh oh oh...I've got it!!!

Pee in her chair *while* she is in it!!! Trust me, she'll get your point.

If you don't mind the smell then stink up your own cube. You won't have to worry about cameras. The stink will travel to hers and eventually one of you will be moved.


Edit:Janet beat me to it.

rwam said:

Sorry, but I'm at wits end here. The woman who sits on the other side of my cube simply WILL NOT SHUT THE **** UP! While the simple solution would be to gently confront her, this practical approach conflicts with my 'passive-aggressive avoid confrontation at all costs' ideology.

Complaining to mgmt is not an option. Such things, no matter how tactfully done, are frowned upon and I've got a reputation as a non-complainer I don't want to tarnish.

Instead, I'm thinking about doing something to her cube that causes invisible, yet irreparable damage (specifically, skunk juice) which will motivate her to move away from me. Only problem is that the guy next to her gets in early and the girl next to her leaves late. And even if there were a window of time to do something like this, there's cameras that would catch what I did.

Any ideas? Please help me before I snap and rip this windbag's throat out!

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If complaining to the management is not an option, how much less help will complaining to us be? Nearly every person on earth who works in a cube works in the cube they were assigned to work in. If you can't stand being near her, the only good and legitimate solutions are:

a) ask management if you can move
b) learn to ignore it.
c) get a different job.