Cubiclers, Stand Up!

After a few years of the beige box, even geeks start itching to stand up, and may even want to go outside! Cubicles designed for standing are becoming fashionable at trade shows, but have not yet found their way into many offices. I would love to have a cubicle with an area for working while standing, but still with a lower surface and chair for sitting. Most people use laptops now, so they would be able to easily move them from the lower desk to the higher desk. But that wouldn’t solve much.

Cubicles are demoralizing. When I started working, I was in a building where everyone had an office. Real walls and doors. The work environment was very social and it was easy to find collaborative spaces. All you had to do was gather people in an office and close the door. Or find a hall space where everyone could chat without interrupting others. On the other hand, if there are people in the hall interrupting you, just close your door.

Companies may argue that cubicles can be moved and reconfigured easily. But I have only seen that happen once in the six years that I’ve been working in a cubicle workplace, and that merely involved the addition of two cubicles. I can’t believe that real walls and doors would have been significantly more expensive than cubicles. Using cubicles saves nothing.

Even though you are closer to your co-workers in a cubicle farm and can hear them all day long, it is somehow isolating. I feel much more intrusive when I visit someone in their cubicle. Maybe it’s because it looks like they are in a small, cozy, sleepy nest and I don’t want to wake them from their private nightmare... er, from their productivity. Also, everyone feels like they need to whisper, so collaboration is done in whispers and regretful outbursts of noise. Real rooms made of real walls and real doors are familiar, bright, and inviting social spaces.


Quick Escape Strategies

But I don’t see my cubicle much anymore, since I now work from home almost every day. The modern office doesn’t depend so much on those wires running under your desk. Wireless networks and VPN connections mean you don’t have to crouch under your cubicle desk, blubbering, insane, foaming at the mouth, dry-erase marker poised to defend against intruders, like you used to.

Take your laptop out into the wilds of your building and find alternative work areas where the wireless network reaches. The cafeteria, or a chair near a window. Maybe a cubicle near some other co-workers is unoccupied, so work there for a while to enjoy a change of scenery. Ask your boss to expense a couple of bean bag chairs where people can flop out with their laptops.

But those solutions assume you have a laptop at work. If you’ve still got one of those big, old-fashioned desktop computer thingies, then you’re truly a prisoner in your cubicle. It seems strange to think that your skills are useless once you leave your cubicle. Should you separate yourself from your computer and leave the confines of the cubicle, your productivity drops to zero. Or, looking at it another way, you become completely disconnected from your job!


Chained To The Cubicle, Or The Laptop?

So, to summarize: if you have a laptop, you can work anywhere and anytime, freeing you from the cubicle. However, if you have a desktop computer, then when you leave your cubicle, you leave your work behind. I suspect that companies are making this conclusion too, opting to give their employees laptops, and circumventing the entire cubicle argument. One day we may look back fondly to our cubicles. No, that's crazy.