A message to all you cubicle dwellers...

So after spending many years in the cubicles, feeling like the Dilbert cartoons hit just a bit too close to home...I have a few comments.

Don't be so sure that the cubes are a bad thing.

Now, before I'm lynched when we hit the tarmac at SFO (whenever that might be) by my fellow khaki-wearing tech workers who actually know what URL stands for, let me explain...

I used to hate cubicles as much as the next person.

A symbol of corporate tyranny and attempts to divide the workers? Perhaps.

A way to isolate employees and prevent them from actually ever seeing natural daylight during the workday? Maybe.

However, now that I've worked in Europe for a year, two different countries, I'm not so convinced.

You see, now I've been indoctrinated into the "open work environment".

This is where individual desks are grouped into "pods" that are supposed to foster "collaboration" and "teamwork".

What this means in practical terms is that you are exposed to every activity of your co-workers that, up until this time, was hidden behind those 5-foot movable walls of gray felt. Including, but not limited to:
- nose-blowing that sounds like a broken trumpet
- nail clipping (ewwwww!)
- getting up to use the toilet 25 times a day
- getting up to refill the kettle for tea 15 times a day
- getting up to make the tea 15 times a day, after the kettle has boiled, of course
- receiving a phone call on your work phone and shouting at the top of your voice
- receiving a phone call on your personal mobile phone that you forgot to put on silent mode so your co-workers hear a bad electronic rendition of "With or Without You" several times a day
- repeatedly sighing heavily when you forget to save your stupid document like any rational human being should and then you close Word
- rogue personal bill-paying
- constant interruptions by the other people coming in to use the kettle because theirs is broken
- going on endless coffee breaks

Now, none of these things are necessarily bad things. However, when you sit in an office with 50 other people (UK) and 5 other people (France), it becomes somewhat annoying.

Contrary to popular myth and the actual documents you received with your DVD player so you STILL can't set the time correctly, it actually does require concentration to write a document. (A shout out to my fellow tech writers who can back me up on this!) Having so much noise and motion in your peripheral vision ALL DAY LONG is a bit taxing. The fact that we are able to produce anything at all is almost a miracle.

So the next time you feel yourself hating your cubicle, go find a nice landscape picture online, print it on the color printer, and hang it on your wall right next to the list of items I described above that you have also printed out.

It could be worse.