Last Tuesday Archive

“You a paper pusher now, baby.”

Jasmine has occupied her cubicle in the state office building for more than five years. I have been in mine less than three months. I still require her daily guidance. She is helping me read legal jargon, navigate the TOMIS computer program, and accept my new position in the world.

My alarm clock goes off with millions of alarm clocks across the time zone. We are all on the 8:00 to 4:30 — give or take thirty minutes — Monday through Friday schedule. I sleep a bit later than most. My body has yet to adopt this sleep pattern.

All of us then put on the uniform of the powerless, the khakis of button pushers, the knee length skirts of lower to middle management, the oxfords of bureaucrats. Our wardrobe is from JCPenney, or Target, some of it may even come off the Walmart rack. We’re not paid enough to dress really well, but we are required to look pretentiously important with something called business casual. If we really were important, we’d wear quality suits or other expensive fashions. If we were really honest with ourselves, our clients, and our co-workers, we’d wear jeans, or short skirts, or flip flops, or a whole assortment of other items that expressed our true selves.

Permitting such apparent personality would not suit the business environment.

Breakfast is often taken while in traffic. All these other people commuting, on this road not by choice but by the necessary pursuit of the next direct deposit.

Finally, after walking through the usual quiet, insincere “good mornings,” we reach our cubicles. We’ve tried to personalize the cold atmosphere with photos, maybe a stuffed animal, a Titans poster. Nothing too controversial, nothing too revealing, nothing too interesting. Boring gray three-quarter walls dressed up with decorations only moderately less colorless.

Most of us have no windows through which to acknowledge the outside. Better to not remind us there is a whole world going on out there, passing us by while we stare into a flat screen.

For most of us, we start our morning with a quick email check, then open Firefox and discreetly surf through the sites IT hasn’t blocked. Facebook, ESPN for some scores, CNN for the news, Gmail, and — hopefully — the Nashville Feed. But we can’t dawdle long anywhere. Cubicles offer little protection from the vigilant supervisor. Open up a document, do some real work that means nothing, check the clock. Still four hours to lunch.

Our supervisors, the ones in the offices with windows facing our carpeted outer walls, may have convinced themselves of their own false importance by now. They have been doing the same inconsequential tasks long enough to earn a position where they can oversee the inconsequential tasks of others. A title and a little extra recognition on the biweekly check might have persuaded them they have some form of power.

But, in reality, there are no alphas in the cubicle environment. All true leaders have pushed up into a world where they can dress themselves, whether it is in expensive suits or Steve Jobs-ish jeans. They have shown authentic independent thinking and rejected cubicled employment. The alphas don’t tolerate the pointlessly rigid structures of today’s offices long.

Your boss is not an alpha. He is only in charge if everyone buys into the system someone well above his pay grade set in place generations ago. If we accept this is all there is, our supervisor can go on deluding himself.

At midday we are granted recess. One hour to seek out fast food, maybe TGI’s if the day is special enough, but usually we are in the cold break room with a few sporadic co-workers. They sit quietly across from each other, reading the paper while barely acknowledging the Lean Cuisine they are picking at with a plastic fork. A crossword puzzle might provide them with an excuse not to make conversation and the only sense of accomplishment they feel that day.

I prefer to sit alone and read. A good story distracts me from the recognition that I am becoming as mundane as my surroundings. I’m already beginning to blend in with the stainless steel microwave, the diet colas, and the insulated lunch bags. I read about interesting people rather than becoming one.

Many will try to find satisfaction and purpose outside of the work week. Make some babies. Buy a new truck. Add on a family room. Build up enough debt to lock themselves inside their cubicle until retirement.

After a short lunch we get back to that file, to that desktop, to that clock with petrified hands. In another four long hours we will be back on an overcrowded road. And we’re looking forward to it.

This is recession era employment. When, no matter how sucky our lives may be five days a week, we are still “grateful to have a job.”

I cannot say I am grateful. I am tolerant of this job. I half-ass my way through it for little appreciation and a mediocre paycheck. I’ve done the math. Just five more checks and I can jump back into the real world with a stringy safety net. It won’t last long, but I’ve got to get out before I start to accept this world as normal. These Dockers™ are squeezing the life out of me.

Leaving this job during a heavy recession is not taking a risk. Staying here is the bigger risk.

What better time to re-claim ourselves. We have little to lose, except for maybe a red stapler.

Kick over your cubicle and join me back in a world where eight hours each day you have an opportunity for personal satisfaction. Pursue what will bring some sort of fulfillment to you. Claim a bit of control over your own existence.

Do something that actually puts your name on the world. Something where you can say “I did this…because I wanted to.” No other explanation should be required.

mDave jumped out of the corporate world and now works for himself in the relaxed morning office of Edgehill Studios Café. That’s what a little scrote might get you.

I will soon hook a Uhaul trailer to my car, point the hood west, and drive until I find somewhere that can hold my interest. There, I will live and work (outside of a cubicle).

What are you going to do?

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