Working In A Cubicle

[QuietNow]

After 10 years in an office by myself, our work group is being shifted into cubicles. And not just real cubicles with shoulder high walls, but basically a large room with desks lined around the walls and 3 foot dividers between you and the next person. The worst is that you are facing either a wall or a corner, with your back to the room.

It's been almost 2 months since the news was confirmed. And I can't stop shaking. I'm taking medication now, but it hasn't had a lot of time to really start working (and it's a new one. I have bad side effects with SSRIs).

I'm planning on building a divider. Supposedly this office arrangement is simply because they have no space, but if that is the case, then artwork that happens to be banner-hung floor to ceiling shouldn't be an issue. (Hey, I'll leave a door space, I just don't want to be so much in the open. Ok, maybe a sliding door panel Japanese screen style.)

My office mates are two new men who are about 15-20 years younger than me. I'm having nightly dreams of them attacking me. Yeah, they do tend to make occasional nasty comments about my work. One of them can't talk to me without digging in. The other just snaps at me whenever I ask a question about the new system. I'll state that my performance reviews have always been good (stellar last year, in fact). I haven't had working relationships this bad in years. (But it's been a while since I worked with young men that need to 'prove' themselves)

I'm waking up between 3:12-3:16 am every night for about a month or so at least. Can't stop crying. Can't focus. There are several times in a day that I can't read because the words don't look like a language anymore but an abstract art piece instead.

There's no help for it. I'm going into that cubicle in a couple of months. I am trying to adjust now, but I can't stop shaking. (I was talking to the manager in his office today with my back firmly planted against a wall. A piece of paper fluttered off the bulletin board that I was leaning against. It fell past my shoulder in front of me and I turned into a shaky spooky wreck instantly. Had to go stand in my office for a minute before I could return and talk again.)

So the question and why I posted this in this forum. How have the working PSTD folk handled cubicles? Dividers? Cardboard doors? Sensors? Mirrors? Harry Potter-style cloaks of invisibility?

 

[wolfalohalani]

If you look in the auto supply store you can find little wide-angle mirrors you can stick to your rear-view mirrors so you can see more. I've found that pasting a couple of these to my monitor makes me feel a whole lot less spooky if I need to sit with my back facing an open space. Also, see if you can get one of the seats in a corner of the room - at least that way you can turn your back to the wall and get a little break.

wolfalohalani

 

[Manic11]

QuietNow,

I remember when I had to have a very similar arrangement like that in high school. I was terrified. I also remember having to do things that just terrified me.
One day at work, my department Manager told me to speak to the Store Manager (who scares me as he is a very large man) about a co-worker who got hurt on the job. I was the only witness. I was just supposed to go over what happened, why I was there when it happened as it was not my department, what time it happened, etc but I couldn't stop shaking since I found out I had to talk to him. When I get into his office I was shaking, sweating like a pig, stuttering, I had a lot of trouble breathing, I could feel my face was beat red and I had trouble talking. He then thought I was lying.
Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is that I understand how you're feeling! I wish I knew how to help. I'd love to have all the answers but know that we're behind you! :Hug_emoticon:

Manic

P.S. That was extremely brave of you to speak to your boss about that. Good for you!!

 

[helena]

If you have to go into a cubicle, try increasing the height around your space by placing files/ calendars etc if you want to feel more secure.

If having your back to the room is a problem (which I assume it would be) then refuse to sit like that. It would be unreasonable for a manager to force someone to sit facing a wall against their will.

With the two new guys, don't let them know this worries you. Keep your mental guard up as much as your physical - however bad you feel, pretend you are okay until you know them better and can trust them.

Whenever I have to face a hostile work situation I sometimes imagine I have a suit of armour around my body and I focus on the pit of my stomach to stay strong.

See it as a challenge to overcome - another one, but still something you can win.

Good luck and let us know how you get on

 

[QuietNow]

Some Progress on the Cubicle Work Situation

It's been about a month since I checked in on this, and I wanted to give an update.

The cubicle is really a room of an open bay of desks facing the wall around the perimeter with knee-high walls between each desk so that it facilitates 'open communication'. Every single one of us is taken aback by the arrangement. That doesn't feel like 'open communication' for senior people that have job requirements of thinking and solving problems. It has the feel of an environment where management feels that we are in need of constant watching and a disbelief of management that we need any quiet or focus time. (But hey, I may just be paranoid, eh?) Well, management *is* trying to make us more into button-pushers, so maybe this is a glimpse of the future.

In fact, one of the co-workers that I'll be sharing this office with was just as freaked out about it as I was. He started making comments about coming in on the weekend with his hand drill and dismantling the cubicle furniture to turn the desk to the center instead of the wall.

Two weeks ago, he quit. (man, I hope my relationship with him did not have anything to do with it) He took another job that pays more but the drive is much further. (He's the one that was snapping and shouting at me openly and had me avoiding talking at all. So, I have to say that I'm not sad.)

When my manager came in to tell me about it, he opened the conversation by saying that 'we're going to order the higher cubicle walls for you and your desk will be arranged so that you can face the center of the room. We also want you to decide on a set of noise-canceling headphones that we'll order for you.'

Well. gee. THAT'S an abrupt turn-around from 'don't know if we can do anything, we'll see.'

I think they need to keep me. I do like to think that I actually add value where I am. I have a pathetically eager need to please people, and that works well when you are in a service-oriented job. They've felt that I'm a good employee in the past. It's just that these are way too many changes for me to handle easily. And the cubicle was insurmountable for me.

And just knowing that it's going to be less out-in-the-open has impacted me like a giant thumb lifting off the top of my head. Suddenly, with the trigger [not really gone] suppressed, I'm functional again. I'm writing computer code and solving problems. I'm hopeful.

The medication started working, too, which is helping. But it doesn't eliminate the emotional flooding --just kind of dampens it. And all of this past trauma has stirred up and still has me not sleeping well. My shoulder is killing me from the stress.

I'm still planning on making that cubicle less cubicle-like. I'm thinking art work, fabric coverings to make it less impersonal, and I'm definitely building a door of some sort. I am not well enough yet to handle being that much in the open.

Banner art. I've already started planning a banner art piece around the perimeter of the top to the ceiling. PVC pipe is really cheap and makes a good hanging rod. There are hooks that will go in the ceiling tile edges. Muslin is really cheap. Fabric paint isn't as cheap, but can be gotten easily. I'm planning to make a sequence of Cretan Bull Leapers and Palace paintings around the perimeter of the cubicle. (If I get really ambitious, maybe next year I could do a couple of seasonal themed ones. If I'm not ambitious, the painted backdrop becomes plain fabric that I find cheap on the clearance rack of the fabric store.)

The drawback here is there is almost no lighting in that big open room. They put an odd arrangement of energy-saving light, and it isn't enough. I'll have to bring in lighting. I'm waiting to see what the cube really looks like to handle that.

I still really like the idea of a Harry Potter-style cloak of invisibility. Maybe I should just hem up a big square of black cloth and every so often 'pretend to be invisible' under the cloth? :rolleyes: (I think my sense of humor is beginning to emerge again. It's been gone for months.)

 

[Ursa]

A japanese screen could do as a door.
I sugest you to record somewhere the unhealthy comments from your co-workers. We never know when we need something like that.

Best wishes!

 

[QuietNow]

Yesterday the cubicles were built in the bullpen room. The room down the hall had more traditional squares with private areas. The room that I'm assigned to was built with four corner units and a long center desk, desks facing into the corner, and the entire diagonal corner where your back is open to the room.

All of the promised changes to the floor plan were missing. The walls are 60" high, not 72" so taller people can pop their heads over the top. There is no way to easily modify the panels to allow privacy. (Actually, none that I can see) The windows and radiator/air units (and temp controls) for the room are blocked in with a large table across the back of the room. There's pretty much almost no storage space in the cubicle --about 2/3 as much as in a normal cubicle. There's not even a cubicle that has privacy if I sit under the desk. I'm fully visible in every cubicle.

Because the diagonal entrances are shared with the cubicle next to yours, it becomes very difficult to modify the entrance. I can fix the 60" height issues with a long running banner-style artwork. But the sitting position is not workable. And there's no way to make it workable with the existing cubicle furniture. Plus, the lighting in the ceiling was only installed to light half the room over the cubes, and there's only one electrical circuit in the room. When I asked the electrician installing it if the electric was beefy enough to handle 5 desk spaces with up to 3 computers each and small appliances (and floor lamps), he said that no, it certainly wasn't and that he was surprised that only one whip (circuit) had been requested.

The worst is that while sitting, I'm within touching distance of my neighbor.

I'm pretty darn sure that the University hired the Marquis De Sade to design this space. It's designed for constant irritation to the inhabitants.

So, what do I do? Hmm. Take some measurements and drawings and see if there is a possible construction solution maybe with the cast-off modular furniture parts at our dead furniture depot for campus. If not, then see if I can create a curved door like a shower curtain or the vertical blinds to pull when I'm in there. That means that the cubicle with the window is out because I'd be stealing 1/3 of the light in the room from the rest of the inhabitants.

I have requested a work-from-home schedule with one day a week to start and increasing it to two (or possibly more) later. I will also begin reserving empty conference rooms around the building for a couple of hours daily with a subject of "Technical Work Session". I can work there alone --thank god for laptops. I'll mount a board with my schedule and contact on it daily on the cube. I'm on IM for work purposes anyway (I kinda hate IM in general). I'm also drastically shifting my hours. Instead of 10:00 am - 6:30 pm so that I can get my child off to school on the bus and do the hour long drive into work, I'll shift to 5:30 am - 2:00 pm. I'm already now getting in at 7:00 am and picking up my child from after school care. That means that I'll have approximately 5 to 5.5 hours of overlap with my coworkers minus one hour for their lunch. I don't really go out and eat anymore. In fact, I'm finding that I rarely am eating. If I decide to do lunch later, I can extend my hours to 2:30 pm.

Thanks, Ursa, for your suggestion about the Japanese screen. I'm not sure that it will work effectively because of the layout, but it may screen me enough from the outside. As for the comments, ugh, yeah. I have more to tell on this story that deserves a separate posting.

 

[QuietNow]

Well, a ton has happened. I'm posting part of it in another thread.

The cubicle furniture that was really not workable was actually changed. Management didn't move me into the cubicle area until the new furniture arrived.

The old cubicle design was an open square. Each person sat in a corner of the square facing the corner. Those low walls between.

The new design got rid of the low walls. All of the panels are the 60" ones. The panels divide the cubes into small rectangles or squares. However, they're still designed to sit facing into corners with your back to the center. Ugh.

Two of my coworkers had claimed cubes when I moved in. I chose the second largest one in the corner by the window. It hadn't been claimed because it was diagonal to the room door, and when you sit in it, people in the hall can see you. And if you are sitting with your back to the center of the room and facing into the corner, your computer screen is visible too.

Well, I just don't sit like that. The cube is a large rectangle. The largest cube is 11 feet x 7.5 feet (3.6 m x 2.5 m for you outside the U.S. people). I'm in the second largest cube which is 7 feet x 10 feet (2.3 m x 3.3 m). It has a diagonal opening at one end of the rectangle which is 4 feet wide (1.3 m). But because it is diagonal to the opening, there are no walls that people can pop heads over because a long side and short side of the rectangle is the room wall (long side has the large window --lots of natural light). The other long side borders the huge cubicle and that has one of those wall lockers hanging on that side, so it's not easy to pop a head over. The remaining short side has the printer alcove next to it, so no neighbor.

I was very dismayed when I first saw it because it wasn't designed to have you sit facing the center of the room. However, I did a couple of self-accommodations which help immensely.

I brought in a small rolling laptop table (bought at Sams Club in the U.S.) that we've had for 10 years in the basement area. I set my laptop on that and just don't sit facing inward. I brought in a floor lamp and set it up in a corner of the cube (technically it's outside the cube in a small alcove between the window and heating duct that is outside my cube wall but between the cube and the room wall). I use the floor lamp in evening hours when that poor lighting that was installed isn't sufficient.

The last is raising eyebrows, unfortunately. I'm treating it as a joke or humor and have tried to make it less obtrusive, but there's no way. It's the talk of the town, and while I put it up to sort of draw the fire and see what sort of resistance I'd face, I don't necessarily want it to be as noticed as it is.

I cable-tied two 7 foot (2.3 m) pvc pipe lengths upright using the cubicle brackets. I threaded the cable ties in one cubicle standard hole and out another then around the pvc pipe. About 4 of those cable ties down its length. The printed words on the pvc pipe are turned to face inward to the cubicle so that outside the cubicle they kind of match the cubicle's plastic edges (kind of a putty gray white with medium blue cloth walls. On a black carpet.). Then, I put T-connectors on top with a top bar. And hung a curtain on it. Well, I didn't want to spend money if management was going to object, so I took the shower curtain that had been in my daughters bathroom until she got old enough to choose pink princesses. The curtain is canvas with pastel drawings of puppies and kittens on it in green, blue, yellow, and pink. The blue puppies' color exactly matches the cubicle wall color. It cost less than $10 to do because pvc pipe is about $1.50 for 10 feet (3.3 m) of 3/4 inch wide pipe. I bought 3 lengths of it and a package of metal shower curtain rings. If I'd had to buy a curtain the cost would have been $20-$30, but I just used what I had.

Most of the time the curtain is pulled back and tucked behind the visitor's chair that I keep in the cube. It attracted a lot of attention the first two weeks, and now people ignore it. And several have asked how they can do that for their cubicle.

Hey, I might have a future as a cubicle environmental engineer. Creating livable spaces out of sterile cubes.

The curtain drew a lot of fire. And I'm sitting with the laptop table facing into the room. Another surprising development is that the overhead compartment for my cube is on the long wall sharing with the other cube and for the first week I kept banging my head into it. Then I discovered that I'm actually short enough to sit under it which allows me to push back another 2 feet (.6 m) into the cube. That means that I'm no longer visible from the hallway and actually am behind the wall. And under the cabinet. (yes, that's a bit odd, but no one even raises an eyebrow now) And occasionally I pull the curtain shut when the movement gets really distracting. That turns the cubicle into a room and amazingly makes it soothing. The large window provides natural light.

So, it's working out. I still have to take a decent amount of medication to make this work. I'm on two drugs daily with a fast-acting tranquilizer in my purse for really bad moments. I have been very very sparing with that.

Now, the downside. Every once in a while, people just "materialize" in front of my cubicle opening. Because it is a cubicle room, people don't view the door to the room like the door to an office. They walk in to your cubicle opening. And usually just announce a presence by starting to talk. That has made me jump, hyperventilate, actually scream [twice now], and shudder. Once I went under that wall cabinet backwards really fast. (Looks like a squid retreating into a cave.) I have had days where I can't get off the floor and spend the day sitting on the floor under that wall cabinet with my laptop. I take my shoes off and laugh about my "pretend beach day" to my coworkers.

I can't talk in there. And neither can anyone else. The silence is beyond library or cathedral type and more into crypt. There are staccato bursts of conversation quickly damped. You'd think that would be welcome since too much noise drives me crazy. But it's oppressive. I can't really work with music on, so I'm just trying to live with it. I may think up a solution later.

I think that I've screamed enough (luckily it was more of a short sharp scream not a bloodcurdling scream nor a simple 'eep!'). That's made people aware that they can't just walk in. People have started knocking at the door or announcing at the door. I've also started shutting that door mostly just leaving it cracked under the guise of safety and security since things get stolen all the time in the buildings and we have no locking drawers anymore. (That's just brilliant, let me tell you. My purse sits out on the desk.) Tomorrow I'm bringing in a leather door hanger with two huge sleigh bells on it. It's in the shape of a cat silhouette. I bought it years ago when my daughter first got tall enough to open a door so that we'd get alerted if she tried to go out the front door. With the door mostly shut, anyone coming in will cause the bells to jingle. A poor man's doorbell, so to speak.

In future, I have to make the cubicle walls inside look less like cubicle walls. I'm going to build a cardboard bookshelf, I think. 8 inches deep covering the entire cubicle wall that I face with the shelf having some more fluid lines than just a straight boxy look. (google Le Cartonnistes Associes and Eric Guiomar to see what I mean. It's a hobby I have.) Probably in deep purples, teals, blues, and gold. Begin slowly changing the inside of the cubicle into something that is less --well, sterile. Less cubicle-y. Without triggering management to come down and beat on me.

Once the management ignores the curtain, I'm planning on a cardboard door based off of a Japanese shoji screen. Sliding door that can unhook and fold back out of the way. Make the screen openings about the size of a sheet of paper or so. And use them as an oversized photo album. It's hard for management to complain about it if it looks more like a picture or an artwork or something innocuous.

The only way that any of this will make sense is if I show pictures. Let me work on a flicker account or something so that I can show it. That will take a bit.

 

[QuietNow]

Oh, and the coworker that quit returned to work with us in June. And now the other coworker has resigned to take another job. Musical coworkers.

 

[QuietNow]

Actually, along with those "pretend beach days", I just had an idea that it might be helpful if I brought in one of those very colorful huge beach towels that I have and stow it in the cube (rolled and stowed behind the rolling file cabinet under the desk area). On days when the environment is really getting to me, spreading it on the icky black carpet on the cubicle floor and sitting on it might be mentally refreshing.

Did I mention that I swatted a black housefly today in the cubicle? It fell on the floor on that carpet. I went to pick it up with a kleenex and couldn't find it. Black carpet, black fly, no path to victory there. I even tried putting an eyeball on the floor and trying to see if it stuck up but I couldn't get the right angle. (And I possibly looked stranger to passing crowds than I usually do.)

Maybe the carpet just ate it. I have some theories that that carpet is really an alien creature that's just plotting our overthrow quietly.

 

[intothelight]

Hi Quietnow,

I love your sense of humor ;-). Little has made me smile today and this did. Keep up standing up for yourself.

Intothelight

 

[QuietNow]

Well, there's a bit more to tell in this story. But right now I'm in the hospital in the Trauma Center for PTSD. I've been here a couple of weeks now in intensive therapy. When I get out and am able to have some time to structure the timeline, I'll post about it.

Yes, it's related to work. And the cubicle.