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The Ultimate Cubicle
kimba writes "Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has developed the ultimate cubicle with design company IDEO (the same guys that made the Palm V and the new sexy Cisco IP phones). Lying in a hammock watching boss-cam... shweeeet." Still, nothing beats a wireless laptop on a shaded porch, beverage in hand.
I want a cube which makes it easy to route and hide cables, not one which makes it easy to hang my shirt (cos I always carry a spare shirt with me, naturally)
Who needs an aquarium? Or a mechanical flower that wiltes when you leave? And simulated sun movement? Give me a break.
The ultimate cube has a place to put a stereo with CD's, lots of desk space, a fridge, and wall space to hang pictures, artwork, and other necessities (read: vendor calendars and commonly referenced notes).
Where's the monitor in that Dilbert office?
... there is no filing cabinet ... there's a desk side thingy that will hold about 20 folders.
Where's the O'Reilly books?
Where's the stacks of paper?
Where's the refrigerator?
Where's the desk space?
Where's the filing cabinet?
Oh yeah
You know what? This isn't Dilbert's cubicle. This is the PHB's cubicle (if he had a cubicle). It's a bunch of crap with no actual facilities for geek work.
Where's the giant whiteboard? I worked in a place once where we did some physical re-modelling. The boss asked us what kind of facilities we wanted in the conference room. I said "whiteboard. Floor-to-ceiling whiteboard. Just tile that whole wall in melanine." He did it, and we used it.
The fold-down visitor chair is a neat idea though.
IIRC Scott Adams worked for Pac Bell, which may not be quite multinational but is definitely right up there on the bureaucracy scale :)
(in response to other comments about Scott Adams) I've always understood the "work avoidance" aspect of Dilbert to be a way of coping rather than an actual dislike of work; if you've lived with ever-shifting deadlines, incompetent management, employee mistreatment, and complete corporate disorganization for long enough, I imagine you'd try to find something to do at work that didn't involve running in circles as well. Dilbert isn't fantasy or escapism at all; people really are like that in the great big world of work, and if you just can't bring yourself to believe that, then thank your lucky stars that you work at somewhere small, nimble, and non-meeting-oriented. Me, I'm definitely loosing my laser-like focus on the customer :)
Dilbert's a good guy, not a slacker; he's just surrounded by other people who are well past their Peter Principle level of incompetence.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Why new cubes... thought by 2000 we would be working from home?
Ok, Japan has a big economy too, but it's also a very small country with a lot of people, making space an expensive resource - that's hardly true for the US.
So really, why shouldn't USians have a decent work environment?
I agree with Tom Tomorrow:
Scott Adams has an absurdist sense of humor that appeals to me sometimes. It's just that all the articles praising Dilbert were painting it as this radical critique of corporate culture, and I'm sorry, it's just not. The extent to which it critiques corporate culture is to say that bosses are dumb and cubicles are small. I don't necessarily dislike the strip, but Scott Adams shouldn't smile and accept the media's crowning him a radical critic when what he's doing is essentially Blondie updated for the '90s.
It's cool that Fred Durst is so talented.