Cubicle Wars - Round One

Office cubicles are perhaps the most depressing thing about corporate America. In actual fact, I have a bigger desk then I ever had in my life, but never before in my life have I had furry walls that you can put push pins in. It’s also weird to think that this little 50 square feet of space is like my private living quarters in the building. If I had a big enough sheet, I just might bring it in and try to create a doorway by pinning it up. But equally weird is that mere feet from you is another little private, cubicle apartment that someone else lives in for 8 hours a day. You know you can hear each others phone calls, but you pretend you can’t. You know you can hear them talking to themselves while they work, but you pretend you can’t. You know you can hear them banging their head against the desk near the end of the day, but you pretend you can’t. Mostly because you’re too busy banging your own head against the desk.

I have an interesting cubicle neighbor, who I used to just refer to as “girl with a limp”, but has now become “ghetto girl with a limp” after my work friend, who is much older and wiser and more savvy with our department gossip, told me she is very ghetto. Last week, I overhead ghetto girl on the phone, and this is the side I heard:

"Hello? …No! … No way…. Girl, are you for real? …. Well where’s he gonna go then? … No, not there, Shaniqua would never let him do that! …. Do you think? …. No, girl, no way!”

I was sitting on the other side of the furry wall with my fingers frozen over the keyboard, engrossed in her end of the conversation. I was whispering to myself “What’d he do? Where can’t he go? Why do I care?” But you can’t help but care, and listen. She’s also having some sort of dispute with some insurance company, I’m assuming it’s a ghetto one. She doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, because every time the boss who sits behind us steps away, she’s on the phone to some insurance guy, reciting her policy number to him, which I have now heard so many times that I’ve memorized it and it floats through my dreams when I’m asleep.

Hmm.. now that I think of it, I know a lot of personal information about her. I could totally steal her identity! But what would I want with a limpy, ghetto identity? Hmm… Maybe I’ll file that little thought away, in the folder titled “Things That May Come In Useful When You’re In the FBI”. Done.

It’s also strange to me that we all pretend we aren’t in close proximity to each other. I’ve worked a lot lately with this woman who’s desk is like the mirror image of mine, so there’s again just a wall between us. Sometimes she’ll come by my desk and leave some papers there. So then I’ll have to get up and walk all the way down the row and around the corner to give them back, meanwhile if there wasn’t a wall there, we would be staring into each other’s faces. I so often want to just be like “Hey! You over there… “ and then hand the thing over the top.

I’m thinking of inventing little doors for cubicles, so we can make this whole place more efficient. I will call them “Cubey Holes”. You can talk through them, hand things through them, or put your hand through them and mess up the papers on the other persons desk when they’re not there.

But back to this Patty girl who is mere inches from me. Often she will call me. CALL ME! On the phone! Our phone’s probably plug into the same jack! And she’ll be like “Hi, this is Patty.” I’m like, yeah I know, I can hear you talking without even putting the phone to my ear.. carry on.” I’m surprised she doesn’t go like “Hi, this is Patty from Corporate Accounting on the 7th floor.” Then I could be all “Oh yes, I believe I’ve spoken with you before.”

So just today she left this stack of papers on my desk, so I wanted to call her up and be like “Incoming!” and then chuck it over the top of our cubes. Hey, I would have put a paperclip on them!

It's Like A Crime Wave!

I had a dream about writing my blog yesterday, so I guess that’s mean it’s due time I update this thing. When your subconscious starts pestering you, it’s time to take action. But now I realize that I haven’t updated my blog since December 7th?! That’s appalling! So much has happened since then. Christmas parties, Christmas gift exchanges, the obligatory office Christmas sweaters, the office New Years hang-overs… all sorts of fun stuff! Plus I think I have an excuse for being so busy. In the past month, the Chargers lost their chance at the super bowl and Jennifer and Brad broke up, so I have been busy grappling for a meaning to life. I’ve managed to accomplish this by continuing to not care about football and to read People magazine. Oh and plus there was some kind of wave thing in Thailand.

OK now that I’ve officially lost my football fan readers, anyone from the Thailand area, and anyone involved in humanitarian efforts, I’ll go on. (damn there goes my readership)
Today’s blog will be about the latest addition to my hum-drum corporate life – my iPod! I got one for Christmas this year, after much non-subtle hint dropping. I have named it Ike. Ike the iPod. And it now keeps me entertained for hours while I’m working away. I would consider myself to be pretty un-iPod savvy, so I took advice about how to care for little Ike whenever it was offered. One of my friends told me before I got one that the first thing I should do is get a case for it so it doesn’t get messed up. I just laughed at him and asked him what kind of a klutz he took me for. Within ten minutes of using it, I’d scratched the screen. Damn friends being right. But the only type of cases I’ve found that you can get are rubber sleeves that try to be trendy and are either neon green or have bongs printed on them. I am so not down with this. One, because I already have a bong design on my cell phone case, and two, I like Ike being white. Is that racist?

I’m also very wary of people around me in the office now. Ike is a pretty nice little piece of hardware and I’m more scared then ever about him being stolen. This is probably because of an incident a few weeks ago, which of course I will now go off on a tangent about to entertain you.

At my orientation on the first day, we were warned that personal items shouldn’t be left on your desk, no matter how long you’re gone for, because things get stolen all the time. I didn’t really listen to this part of the presentation too carefully because I’m naïve and don’t believe anyone would steal from me cause I’m cute, and also because the security officer giving us this warning said he used to be an FBI agent and I was trying to figure out how a man whose belt was hanging on for dear life was able to pass the pull-up test to get into the academy. Plus, I work in the corner of my office, so I could easily narrow down the list of suspects to girl-with-a-limp or my boss. But even so, I’m not about to take any chances. Not any more at least.

One day, when I was ready to leave for my usual stroll to the deli across the street with my office friend, I was shocked to find that my favorite sunglasses were gone! I hadn’t heeded the warnings of Johnny Security Guard at my orientation, and I’d made it a habit to leave my sunglasses right next to my computer whenever I left for the day! I was so pissed and wasted no time spreading nasty rumors around the office about how some cleaning person clearly stole my sunglasses. I turned everyone in the office to my side and they all banded with me in my plight against the cleaning crew. I even tried to get it added to the weekly staff meeting’s agenda.

Topic of Discussion 1: Year-End Close and Financial Reporting Implications.
Topic of Discussion 2: Heather’s Sunglasses Have Gone Missing.

But it didn’t go over well and we moved on to something else, which I didn’t listen to. I think it was something about deadlines.

So after spending weeks looking for a cleaning lady sporting a pair of Chanel sunglasses, I opened my filing cabinet and found my sunglasses sitting there. Now I can’t wear them anymore because people might recognize them from the wanted posters I put up around the office, which had on it a woman wearing a maid’s uniform wearing my sunglasses. After all, I don’t want to look like a fool.

OK now I’ve noticed this blog has strayed from it’s stated topic of discussion, Ike the iPod. But that’s OK because he’s been neglected while I’ve been writing this post. Oh yeah, and so has my work. So I’d better get back to one of them.