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!