Cubicle woes

Its almost a year since I moved into my new locale and one thing I miss is my office. I used to share an office space with P and those were the good times. Since this blog is not about P, but time for me to gripe over my grand move from a private office, to a completely public cubicle. Whoever thought cubicles are supposed to increase productivity was trying to tell you that by not building offices they are going to save a lot of money which is related to productivity. But I am frequently told that I am darn lucky to have such a wonderful cubicle and I am not supposed to complain.

Since my cubicle is right adjacent to a window through which we can get a direct view of the coffee shop below and if you look further, you used to see some open space. Now this limited open space is being fast occupied by the "real" estate. So, I play host to quite a few of my colleagues who bring in their friends and start pointing to the construction area at least a couple of kilometers away, and telling them excitedly that one of those pillars belong to them. The pillars slowly graduate to walls, and the current status is that they've have roofs. After 5 minutes, they are finally done with identifying their roof from a bunch of 50 similar ones, where all this while they have been hogging my space without my permission. Now courtesy demands that they pay me back for my time and space and I get my favor returned, when they decide to stay back and allow me to listen to their monologue on how their respective houses are turning out to be and which store they are buying their door knobs from, and which marble looks best. Which somehow shifts into kids play area and diapers. I am yet to comprehend that transition and how that gets made. I haven't had a real estate visitor in a while now. God bless the builders.

Right adjacent to my row, sit a wonderful set of HR admins. Now, I don't know how it happens, but how do all admins turn out to be women. And seriously who puts a bunch of women together at a work place? My friend from undergrad always used to chide me saying that we girls giggle a lot. And I would vehemently deny such a preposterous accusation. Now, I know the truth. OMG! I am quite a party to enlightening conversations like, "Hey V, you dint tell me 'hi' Am not going to talk to you today", with V explaining why she committed such a crime. And am suddenly smiling hoping for a quiet day coz some one's not gonna talk, but such joys are short lived. Their everyday routine is to sit down and have lunch, *in office* during work hours, *together*. Imagine a whole hour of giggling, sharing food, and gossiping. I am thinking I should change my lunch timings to match theirs, so I can be spared of incessant cackling. But to their credit, not all conversations are boring. The best one was when two of them were arguing about who would be doing some piece of work (I swear this was some official work) on a Friday evening (the emphasis lies on the fact that it was a Friday evening). So J tell C: "I think you should do it". And C retorts, "You think? Why would I have to do it". The clincher comes from J: "Coz you are not married". Oh man, I have no explanation for this. It made my day, coz I laugh every time I narrate this.

But before you think its bad enough, I must mention my dear colleague whose cubicle is to my left. So Mr. A and Mr. M who sits on my right, talk over the speaker phone, to each other. So when am not listening to tips on the stock market, or who's who in the team, I am holding my dear table because Mr. A starts banging on his desk when his code doesn't work.

So, by the time the day passes and am all done with my patience, I have a few others walking by my desk and standing. I still haven't gotten used to the fact that people actually come to peep through the window to admire the very little nature they can see. And out of politeness make conversation to me. When we are done with discussing the weather, I have some smart people reiterate my good fortunes. And this is the best part. God is supposedly kind to me, because I can *always* see the good looking hunks who come down for coffee to the coffee shop. And you know how many of those I can find in a software company. Ah .. such good times.

P will tell you that someone is finally having their revenge. A year back we would chatter so much that our neighbors had to close their doors, and managers would discuss on how they can separate us. And now I am paying back.