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The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth - Softcover

Thompson, James F.

 
9780812976762: The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0812976762 ISBN 13: 9780812976762
Verlag: Villard, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Help. . . . Cubicle Life Is Killing Me!

Leaving no stone unturned, no ergonomic chair unadjusted, and no leftovers in the communal fridge uneaten, this hilarious guide to cubicle life will be the salvation for the more than forty million Americans stuck in cubicles. By turns uproariously funny and enormously useful, each chapter tackles a different area of cubicle life and includes a “cube tip,” a quiz, illustrations, and examples that will have you laughing out loud. Discover

• how not to disturb colleagues with unwanted sounds and smells, such as the crunch-crunch of your sour-cream-and-onion chips and the unmistakable odor of your spicy Thai shrimp
• how to knock when visiting other cubicles and how to devise politically correct ways of saying “Do not disturb”
• the do’s and definite don’ts of cubicle decoration
• how to set up a security system that will rebuff potential thieves

The Cubicle Survival Guide could very well change your life and set you climbing the corporate ladder to success!*

* Results not guaranteed. Pay raises and promotions are up to your boss, but using this book
couldn’t hurt.

Praise for The Cubicle Survival Guide:

“A spiritual air conditioner for the cubicled soul.”
— Turk Regan, author of Pimp My Cubicle: Take Your Workspace from Boring to Bling!

"James Thompson’s The Cubicle Survival Guide offers the rare, and definitely appreciated, combination of laugh-out-loud humor and sound advice for surviving the jungle that is Corporate America. On some days, there’s nothing more motivating to fresh air-starved cube dwellers than a book that will simply crack them up. This is that book.”
— Alexandra Levit, Author, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College

"If you must work (and I don't recommend it), The Cubicle Survival Guide provides a wonderful way to slack off and stay entertained. You can easily kill two weeks with this book."
— Josh Aiello, Author, 60 People to Avoid at the Water Cooler

“Thompson provides a humorous yet thought-provoking look at what employees in today's large organizations must deal with besides their jobs.”
— Malcolm O. Munro, Author, From Cave to Cubicle

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

James F. Thompson is a writer and editor who lives in New York City. He has an extensive publishing background that spans books, travel guides, print magazines, and various online publications. He specializes in arts and culture, travel, food and beverages, sports, humor, history, branding, and business writing. He holds a BA in English from Virginia Tech and an MA in writing from Johns Hopkins University. Thompson has taught English in Japan, ESL in a jail, and literature on an active navy destroyer. He is the author of The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One

Perspective

Over the centuries humankind has adapted to all kinds of environments and climates. As our surroundings evolve, so do we. Eskimos adjusted to arctic conditions by building igloos and hunting in sealskin canoes. In Los Angeles, where the weather is perfect, people have decided they need to be perfect, too, and survive on green-tea hand lotion and Botox injections. For thirteen hundred years the residents of Inuyama, Japan, have provided for their families with ukai, a traditional style of river fishing that utilizes cormorants on leashes. Nevertheless, despite its impressive history, the human race has had difficulty harmonizing with the proliferation of cubicle environments. Some treat their cube like an Exxon bathroom; others, like a fabric chamber of corporate policy. Perhaps in the future the harsh cubicle landscape won't produce a homogenized corporate humankind, but an individualistic Australian-like wildlife of humanity, teeming with evolutionary freaks such as the platypus, koala bear, and saltwater crocodile. Yet to envision the future of cubicles, we must take a look at their history.

Where did cubicles officially come from? And why?

Cubicles were originally designed so that office workers could freely discuss and trade ideas without being tempted to shake hands or exchange pictures of their children. Every dimension of the cubicle partition has a specific, tactical purpose. Though invented back in the 1960s by Bob Probst, a professor of fine arts at the University of Colorado, cubicles became an unpopular cultural phenomenon in America around the same time actual money was replaced by the idea of stock options and entry-level twenty-somethings began renting limousines for no reason other than it was a Saturday night.

Today those twenty-somethings drive SUVs, and the only fallout from the fusion-like implosion of the dot-com era is a nuclear winter of cubicle farms inhabited by lithe humans who toil in confined spaces in exchange for compensation. Despite sensitivity training, ergonomic keyboards, and much-needed health insurance that includes psychotherapy, cubicle dwellers can't escape the oppressive monotony and homogenization of their existences. Fear not, The Cubicle Survival Guide is here to help.

Shhhh . . . They're Not

Real Walls

First, know your surroundings. Most cubicle dwellers have no idea what their walls are made of or why. Today most cubicles are relatively uniform and constructed from a one- or two-inch steel frame that supports a wood core wrapped in neutrally colored fabric so it can be utilized as a bulletin board. Many cubicles come with various accessory options such as shelves, cabinets, or over-desk storage. However, the characteristic that has made the cubicle omnipresent in capitalistic ventures across the planet is that it is, as one seller puts it, "Easy to assemble and move without tools." In other words, you can reconfigure how and where employees work within minutes.

So don't get comfortable. The days of lifelong employment and company loyalty are long gone. Global and national economies are constantly ebbing and flowing, sometimes drastically, which means businesses are, too. They need the ability to adapt and reconfigure their mission statements, their corporate profiles, and, yes, their employee structure. Likewise, employees are often, even in their own cubicles, searching for the next step in their professional lives.

Cubicles serve as the drab metaphor and stark, impersonal reality of the modern employee-employer relationship: Expendability rules. This is why one can earn an advanced degree in human resources.

Considering America's long love affair with the right to privacy and individuality, it seems paradoxical that forty million of us voluntarily work in cubicles. The traditional American pioneer spirit seems at odds with the reality of our modern culture. So what happened to our American love of distinctiveness? Technology. The cubicle farm, after all, was cultivated around the bumper crop of computer technology. However, before you blame Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for your carpal tunnel and slipped vertebrae, remember that cowboys today use high-tech cell phones to herd cattle and the real James Bond chases enemies of the state across software and bandwidths. So don't despair. You're not the only one interacting with the rest of the world through your computer screen. And you're certainly not the only one who feels depersonalized by the superconnected world we live in. Cubicles are the result of our times, not our personalities.

Corporations often have difficulty appreciating individual talents because they focus on the bottom line: how the department is performing as a whole. Most American cubicle dwellers know that business is about profit margins, and they accept this reality. Unfortunately, the folks who communicate with "corporate" often only notice individual office workers when they're doing something wrong. Like eating microwave popcorn and stinking up the hallway. Or inappropriately expressing themselves with sexy calendars, deeply personal screensavers, and outlandish attempts to make their work spaces quaint and comfortable. For some reason even the most intelligent, educated, and well-meaning people cross the invisible corporate line.

For example, no one at Cubers International knows that Larry worked fifty-five hours last week. Everyone knows, however, thanks to the picture tacked onto his cubicle wall, that he got trashed last Halloween.

Kathy over in Cubers International's executive resources loves going to the beach in a bikini; apparently she got a boob job sometime between the summer of 2004 and 2005.

According to the buttons pinned along the top of her cubicle wall, Gertrude Patterson is ultraliberal and collected several souvenirs at the pro-rights rally last month. Her boss, a quiet neo-conservative whose sparse office is decorated with a stuffed largemouth bass, not only silently disapproves of her buttons but is also allergic to the Ecuadorian tiger lily on her desk. He mentions his allergy problem to Carlton Frye in human resources, whom no one knows is not even registered to vote. Though Gertrude will never be fired because no one wants lawyers around, she will also never get a promotion. Decorating her cubicle with touchy political beliefs is in poor taste, and her inability to understand corporate decorum demonstrates a lack of perspective and emotional intelligence. Subconsciously the colleagues she has made uncomfortable will avoid interacting with her. Eventually, upset by her working conditions, Gertrude will quit Cubers International. Unbeknownst to her, she'll quit her next job for the same reasons. And the next. Two years later she'll move back in with her mother and begin collecting stray cats.

When the police come to arrest Gertrude Patterson because of neighborhood health code violations, they will find 738 cats, many of them covered in fleas and living in the bedroom walls. When they escort Gertrude into the backseat of the police car, she will sob to an officer, "Life is not fair." She's right. It's not. Especially life in a cubicle. It needs a guidebook. Today Gertrude would be running her own Fortune 500 telecommunications company if only she'd had a copy of The Cubicle Survival Guide. Don't laugh. There is more to your job than how well you work. There's how well you "work."

Offices are like casinos in that they are designed around manipulating, controlling, and profiting from human behavior. Make no mistake, where you sit, the direction you face, the size and dimensions of your workstation were meticulously planned by people you have probably never met. So, welcome: Corporate America has been waiting for you.

Being stuck in a cubicle is like being stuck in an...

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Verlag
Villard
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812976762
ISBN 13 
9780812976762
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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