The cube farm environment is already unpleasant enough with its ugly, drab walls and the steady, droning hum of incessant noise that sucks all the life out of people and turns them into brain-drained zombies, but at least once a week, something else happens.
Someone answers a cell phone.
No, I’m not talking about the people who are stuck in the cubes next to yours, and who are going about their daily activities, and happen to need to answer a phone because you and your cube neighbors have no privacy whatsoever. Nope, that’s something that can’t really be helped until the cube revolution finally begins and all the cube walls are torn asunder and tossed into the bottomless abyss where they belong.
It’s not that at all. Not this time at least.
What it is is when someone not residing in the cube farm, who can’t live for 5 minutes without a device perma-attached to the eardrum, decides to take a call right outside your cubicle, where they’ll pace up and down gabbing and gabbing about all sorts of unimportant (to me and to most other people) things. Not only do I hear the gabber gabbing, but I also get to hear the person who is gabbing back from the other side. I may not have any clue who you are, but I do know what you’re having for dinner that night, and that you forgot to pick your daughter up from school, and even that you “really don’t have time for this conversation” because you’re in the middle of a very important meeting. (Er…why did you leave the meeting to answer the phone? It’s called “voice mail.” Duh!)
I’ve heard that there is this big area called “the outdoors” (or even “elevator lobby”) that might be nicer than the nearby cube farm hallways for your private conversations. I unbelievably won’t be disappointed if I don’t find out about how you are angry about your speeding ticket, or happen to involuntarily overhear you getting into another argument with your dog. (Granted, that one would be more interesting than most of the others.)
2 Comments »Categories: Business, Rants
Tags: cube farms suck, no privacy in the office, noisy cube farms, noisy offices, rude people with cell phones



