Cubicles

You know what I hate about working in a cubicle environment? It’s not so much the beige walls, or the fluorescent lighting, or really even the isolationist atmosphere it creates (although that is not preferred). Instead it’s the perceived perception of solitude.

When people are in a cube, they become unaware of everyone else around them, and thus find themselves feeling at liberty to carry on with their daily routines as if they were the only one in the office.

Case in point: there is a coworker of mine that does not have the friendliest personality a person could have, mixed with a “not-my-problem-so-fix-it” attitude, and a general negative disposition in general for anyone from which she has to request a service who does not respond immediately and to her liking.

This only gets to be a problem around lunch time, when it becomes “off-the-clock” time for her. She retrieves her lunch food items from a local restaurant, and returns with them to her desk, and then proceeds to handle her personal business via the company’s customer-service phone lines.

I’m sure this wouldn’t be a problem if she would handle it quietly – but that is not what happens. Every day it’s an argument/conflict with another company’s customer service rep on the phone, while the rest of us are trying to work. Normally it has something to do with her kids, and personal business...but it’s always uncomfortable to hear.

Because of this, we all know more than we want to know about her family life, and it’s fairly stressful (at least to me) to have to hear someone argue with someone else on the other end of the phone – when everything could be resolved if she would not be such a bitch to them!

I’ve asked about it, and apparently it’s not that big a problem yet – but I disagree. If I can hear her in my cubicle, I’m sure other people in her department – Customer Service – who have people on the phone can hear her also…as well as the customers, possibly.

My take on it is: if you have personal business – either handle it quietly, or go find a payphone/cell phone to use outside the building. I know she has a cell phone of her own, because she has called the warehouse in the mornings to come unlock the door. Go out to the warehouse, or out back behind the building, and handle your bitchyass business there. No one else in the office wants to hear about how your kids can’t get a doctor’s appointment, or how you can’t afford to pay them when you DO get an appointment.

Shit, woman. You’re not the only person in the office.