Welcome to Cube Land! Enjoy your stay!

"Welcome to Cube Land!" was one of the first things a new colleague said to me when I arrived in California. It is a strange place in some ways. These tiny personal ecosystems sprout up around each buidling and rain down on us with sights such as pictures of pets or children, the odd plant here and there, and in some of them a veritable managerie of stuffed animals, crappy toys and nik naks that claim "I got laid in Las Vegas!" - well, who doesn't?

These are places where people disappear for 8 hours most days and only surface to make a run for the restroom or the vending machine. Lets face it, if you are going to spend a lot of time there, you want to make it feel as homely as possible. The items listed above are all what I would call, acceptable items. However, people don't stop there. Recently, I saw an armchair in a cube. Now this might seem like a good idea on the face of it. But do you really want to get that comfortable in the office? I mean, I don't want to walk past that cube and see the person so relaxed that they feel the need to take strip down to their underwear and begin picking their toe nails whilst on a conference call. And whats next? A sofa? a futon? a four poster bed? I believe each company that lives in Cube Land should have a code of conduct that each employee signs when they join. It has rules on security of information, and why surfing for porn in your lunch break is a bad thing. But most of all, you agree to not get too comfortable in your cube, after all, if they wanted us to be comfortable, they wouldn't have given us the job in the first place.