But does he get to keep his stapler?

About a million years ago, I worked in a very large tech support center for a very large company, which subcontracted to a much larger company. I was trained by a very poor computer program, about how to deal with computer calls. After a month, I began working nights, and was the sole night guy for our group, but there were several other groups with other night guys throughout the building. The room that I worked in was several hundred feet wide by several more hundred feet long, broken up into little villages by 5.5 foot cubicles.

We had major thoroughfares, minor avenues, side streets, and dead-ends built among the cubicles. When some loud noise would erupt, people would stand up and look over them to see what was going on. This phemenon was known as "prairie-dogging," which sort of puts the entire lifestyle in the complex into perspective.

At the time, the $8.25 an hour that I was paid to work there for 60 hours a week was far and away the most money that I had ever made in my life. I dropped out of school to make more of it. I took overtime whenever it was offered.

It was Hell on earth.

A few years later, when the movie Office Space came out, it hit me squarely between the eyes. The cube culture.
The middle managers.
The consultants who swooped in with no clue about what they were affecting, and how it was going to end up.

The sensory deprivation that contributed to intense, profane (seriously!) rage, and a need to blow off steam.

I don't think I could do it again.
_ _ _


Wired magazine held a contest to see who had the saddest cubicle. The winner's cube doesn't look too bad, until you learn that: it's walled entirely with heavily-used file cabinets. There's no windows (well, that's standard), and the overhead lights are broken. It's adjacent to a parking garage. And it's next to a poorly-ventilated restroom, and the employee microwave.

Niiiiiiice.

I think I can safely scoreboard that guy.