Cyber Monday

It's Cyber Monday, which means a lot of people will be shopping online in Cube City instead of doing their work.

I wonder how many cube dwellers participate in Cyber Monday. Do employers take this Monday after Thanksgiving into account with the other times their employees do personal time on the company dime?

Scissor Girl decided to find out. According to this article about Cyber Monday, the boss's Internet will get a workout today. The writer of this article sticks up for us minions and says we'll actually save our employers some money today because we won't spend extra time during our lunch hours getting trapped in long checkout lines.

So shop away, dear cube dwellers. Maybe we can someday get our employers to turn Cyber Monday into a national holiday. That's the biggest thing on my wish list today.

Thursday Thanks

Scissor Girl is thankful that Thanksgiving always falls on Thursday. While I'm thankful that I get paid for not coming to Cube City tomorrow, I'm more thankful that I get paid for not coming to the weekly staffing meeting. Like Thanksgiving, the staffing meeting always falls on Thursday.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Thursday, everyone!

The Cube Whisperer

A dear friend of mine in a different Cube City has worked at the same large, established corporation for her entire career. She's probably put close to 30 years into that place and has spent most of her time in a cushy office. However, since we all know that employee benefits get worse instead of better as the years go by, it's no surprise that her loyalty and service have been rewarded with a downgrade to a cubicle.

Whenever I talk to her on the phone during office hours now, she'll whisper. She's just not comfortable with cubicle life at all. It's kind of funny to me. She shuts down when her cube neighbors talk, laugh, gossip, or yell at their kids on the phone because she's just not used to hearing all those voices when she's trying to concentrate on her work. It's really hard to have a conversation with her when she's whispering into the phone, and I hope she gets her cushy office back someday. If not, she will be known to me as the Cube Whisperer.

Bags Fly Free

Scissor Girl had a great weekend at home with her significant stapler, which made coming to Cube City that much harder today. I guess I'm just year-end tired, and I don't know how to cure the exhaustion and the frightening carry-on bags stowed under my eyes. I'm starting to remember that I'm a dumb ass for being in Cube City during a holiday week, though. This is going to be a short week from hell. When will I learn to take flight from Cube City at the holidays? How many mechanical problems is it going to take? If I ever figure it out, I'll share my secrets here with you.

I'm wishing my fellow cube dwellers a short week from a more heavenly place than hell, whatever that looks like to you. You are now free to move about the cubicle.

The Seagull

There's a guy in Cube City who apparently thinks a lot of himself. He's like a seagull. He'll fly into a room, shit all over your work, and leave without offering alternative ideas or solutions. I know there are flocks of seagulls in Cube City. This is nothing new. I just wish the seagulls would migrate elsewhere.

Give Me a Break

I did a volunteer gig for Cube City last weekend. In truth, I got volunteered after it became clear to the organizers that too few cube dwellers were willing to voluntarily give up their weekends.

Sigh.

You know, it was a good experience. The nonprofit organization we helped couldn't have been more thankful, and meeting their needs was both interesting and rewarding. But working the weekend is exhausting. It takes a toll on your soul. I'm just now starting to recover from the reality of working the weekend without a break, probably because I'm really focusing on the upcoming weekend of not working.

I guess it just irks me that people have the nerve to volunteer you when you communicate a complete lack of interest in volunteering yourself. 'Tis the season to give, I suppose, but give me a break.

More Evidence Has Surfaced

You know I've drawn many parallels between Cube City and prison. Well, dear cube dwellers, the parallels continue.

I work in a division of Cube City that requires anything we create to go through several rounds of legal review. Yesterday, I received notice that a project I'd completely forgotten about had resurfaced from the depths of legal review. The project had been locked down in the client's legal process for so long that I had forgotten what it looked like, or that it had even existed.

As I made the updates needed to satisfy the project's legal reviewers, I found myself wondering what it would be like if we put projects through our nation's criminal justice system. Would the projects go to trial any quicker than human beings? Probably not, but the snail's pace of legal review is simply stunning to me at times. I believe it should be a crime for legal review to take so long, but the jury is still out on that one.