The Death of the Cubicle
And the regeneration of your soul.
I recently wrote about the soul sucking nature of cubicles and my experience with them. Before Covid I spent my days sharing a cubicle with a coworker — the first time in a decade. Is this a California thing?
Let’s not forget the fact that even before Covid cubicles were spreading more germs than my kid’s fingers after a trip to Dave and Busters. But they also interrupt the much needed deep thinking introverts like myself need to survive and thrive. In fact, cubicles turned into the worst-rated setting in workplace satisfaction surveys.
The creator of the cubicle, Propst, stated that the problem with companies using cubicles was that “Lots are run by crass people who can take the same kind of equipment and create hellholes. They make little bitty cubicles and stuff people in them. Barren, rat-hole places.”
You Can Do It At Home
If you’re stuck in a cubicle, why are you even coming to work. Some people have no choice but to go into work — service workers, doctors, business owners, etc. But staring at a computer screen can be done anywhere. And nowadays if you’re kid yells “this is boring” into your zoom call no one cares because we’ve already normalized it.
Give that cube space to someone who really needs it. Maybe a homeless person? California is already turning hotels unable to survive the Covid downturn into housing for the homeless, why not office buildings?
Many of the jobs that were performed from a cubicle before the outbreak can be done or already are being done far more safely from home. A survey in early April conducted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers found that 34% of those employed four weeks earlier had been commuting, but at the time of the survey were working remotely. Working from home has become more successful than anyone would have predicted, with many people reporting their productivity had increased during the first two months of shelter in place. In fact, more than 90% of Dell’s 165,000 full-time global staff are working remotely during the pandemic, compared with 30%…