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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.
No offense to you slashdot editors, but you guys have no idea what life in a cube farm is like. It isn't all that bad...
Add some desktop items and toys from a good place (like thinkgeek), maybe a nice Aeron chair, and everything is peachy for your day to day work.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Ideo's take:
http://www.ideo.com/dilbert/
you a winna , ha ha ha
Instead I've got a Hot Desk.
While this can mean free & easy living, it also means you have to pack the entire contents of your working life into your laptop-bag every evening, and set it all up again the next morning, and you don't have a monitor to stick post-it notes on.
I yearn for a desk (or even a cube!) where I could actually feel at home, and not like some sort of transient drifting soul through the sea of employment.
Gosh, when I go to work I like to get things done. I like to write my programs; I like to run my tests; I like to read research papers. Scott Adams seems to think that the best kind of work is no work. If you hate what you're doing, this is true. If you like your job, it's not. I want a quiet, well lit cube with lots of desk space. Yes, an office would be better, but you make the best of what you have. The article was kind of funny, but not in the way it was intended to be funny. Scott Adams is out of touch with the white collar working community, and it shows both in the article and in his comic strip.
The middle mind speaks!
Is anyone else reminded of the car Homer designed?
--
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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)
Must be nice to have cashed in the Andover and VA stock early.
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Seriously, I can't believe they designed a "perfect cube" and didn't include a means in which to have a readily available supply of alcohol within arms reach...
~ now you know
"Even your wastebasket will kind of vibrate with happiness when trash is thrown into it. So you want the cubicle to love you and care for you, kind of a womb experience."
Does anybody get the feeling that Scott Adams is channeling Douglass Adams? I'm reminded of the doors -- "Please enjoy your trip through this door."
Mind you, in the Newsweek blurb, they mention that you (paraphrasing) "might be rewarded from the boss with the aquarium add-on". Great - the ability to personalize one's cubicle is now a reward rather than a norm?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
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).
THIS is what we call Ultimate Cubicle.
The chair is OK, but I'd like to see a padded, leather, reclining one. Oh, and with a built in Massager.
You've never worked at a startup...
You've never worked at a startup
I had to perfom an on-site security audit of a firm in Atlanta last year, and it was my first visit to the stats in a work-capacity.
There were people sleeping everywhere! They were working hellish hours, and then just crashed out in a sleeping bag on the floor!
I've never experienced this in the UK! I have always at least made it to a hotel for some sleep, or at least to the bar to unwind my mashed-out logic functions!
I've been told (by one of the workers) that games companies often work like this when getting close to a deadline. People bring in sleeping bags and crash on the floor of their office!
A certain Derby based games company have showers, games rooms etc. too to help their workers relax when a 16 hour work day is necessary.
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
Finally, a place where I can buy business hammocks.
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.
I just want a cube with a god damned decent computer in it. I'm programming on an outdated POS Pentium 166 while the Sales Executives are checking their email on brand-spanking new PIII laptops. WTF is that about?
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Why new cubes... thought by 2000 we would be working from home?
Once he was a genius. Then along came the pathetically bad Dilbert TV series, and now this stupid ultimate cubicle thing. When I saw the article on CNN, I assumed he had actually designed a functional cubicle with amenities people really need, and was interested. Instead I find I wasted 20 seconds and 2 mouse clicks to read crap about a boss-cam and hammocks. And some design firm actually is advertising their involvement with this ?
No, the ultimate cubicle is not being in the ofice at all!
The cube might be interesting, I'll never know, as the storywas worthless. there is appearently an aquarium, but I have no clue how it fits. There is a Hammock, but I can't tell if anyone could take a nap in it. there might be a fold down chair, which could be useful or useless, but I can't tell because it isn't shown.
In other words this is a fluff story lacking the meat any engineer would want. there are no pictures. There are some neat gimics (the coffee warme/cola cooler might be useful) but appearently no attention was paid to accually getting work done. Where is the comptuer? does it interface to the white board so I can save my notes? Does the sun simulation lighting not cause excessive glare on my screen?
whoever thought of the chair that automaticly calls your phone after it is in use too long (to get people out of teh cube) should be shot. the only people who can use this function are in customer service and will get critical calls often enough that it isn't an issue. The rest of us know the someone personally in our cube is higher priority then the phone and let voice mail take the call. (Unless we have callerID and suspect the call is a family emergency)
I don't want a mechanic flower that wilts. If I want a flower I want a real one. Depending on how green my thumb is I might or might not want the cube to take care of the flower. (some like to do the work themselves, some just want the green). And those who want flowers want a good ventalation/filtration system so that I can smell it in my cube, but he guy in the next cube won't die from allergys. (I happen to work with someone deathly allergic to some plants)
So if my boss is reading this: there are some neat ideas here that we should consider for our cubes, but it isn't the ultimate cube.
reply in general to all people posting things like "that's stupid", "scott adams is a corporate whore", "that won't help me get any work done" -- you all need to lighten up. Anybody who takes cubicle designs from the author of 'dilbert' as a serious thing needs to be examined. It's funny. It's not intended to increase productivity, it's intended to make you laugh. Get a grip.
do not read this line twice.
That rant being said, I want a cubicle size commensurate with my job load, if we can't backfill two people, so I have to work harder to make up for that, I want two cubicles.
:-)
Isn't that a bit like being pissed about being kicked in the nuts, and demanding TWO kicks in the nuts?
If you go to IDEO's site they have some goods pages with animation describing some of the features. It's a pop-up so I can't link to it directly. I looked there before reading the CNN article, so I actually liked the CNN article. YMMV.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I didn't think it was something for real. I figured Scott Adams, being a cartoonist, created it as something amusing and Dilbertish.
I was an intern at M&M Mars and I noticed that there were no cubicles at all. The company noted studies that showed that employee's were more productive in war rooms and they hated tiny cubes. I remember reading a simuliar news article here on /. about this a few months ago. So basically they took all the cubicles out and just had rows of desks. They even took out the offices! It looks so much nicer not to mention you can't really goof off with everyone watching so productivity is way up. If you ever need something you can just go up to someones desk and ask. No waiting behind an office door. Also you can find someone easier by just glancing across the room. In other words I felt more free and less confined.
If I were a CEO I would make sure no cubicles were installed at all. I could save costs with productivity and the employee's would like it more.
http://saveie6.com/
He started Dilbert while he was working in a cubicle at PacBell.
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The ultimate cubicle has a toilet, to put all shit your boss hands you.
Here in Amerika (spelling intentionally perturbed in protest of the stalin-esk laws that we call the DCMA) we are spoiled rotten. we live in homes that have 860-2000 square feet if you are a normal human being or more if you're a really overpaid creature. many-many in japan live in much less. and they do so comfortabaly(sp?). in reality we dont need that much room. (except for storage of the massive amounts of crap we collect... I really dont need my collection of remote control aircraft,12 computers,electronics engineering lab, etc...)
what I would love to see is this same "cubicle" principal to a living space. make a 120 Square foot serviceable apartment. (ok, 140SQ foot... you have to add a bathroom) does anyone have any links to ultra-compact living spaces?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Here's a radio interview with Tom Kelley, their general manager. And here's a fascinating web page showing all the cool stuff they've worked on.
Whatever happened to his Dilberito? Wasn't he selling some kind of vegetarian microwavable burrito that was supposed to be the perfect cubicle food?
I was going to at least buy a couple to see if they were any good, but I never saw them anywhere...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Man.
If that's not enough of a reason to love these guys, I don't know what.
The Logitech CyberMan II was the king-hell perfecto par excellence of game controllers. And it was gorgeous and sexy.
But of course, nobody bought it so nobody developed for it so no body bought it...
It will come back. The world continues to spin, and lost clues are merely buried to be discovered anew when we rebuild our civilization.
--Blair
...we don't get to choose what company makes our cubicle. Therefore, 90% of the ideas that make his cubicle so "cool" are actually useless.
Imagine if EVERYONE in your office had that nifty fold-out chair that rings your phone. Gee, I wonder if your co-workers and boss would catch on to that trick?
I can see it now. Co-worker sits down in fold-out chair. It's set to ring your phone in 5 minutes. At 4:59 on the clock, your wife calls. "Honey, would you like to go out to dinner tonight? I can hire a sitter."
Your co-worker laughs at this lame attempt to kick him out of the cube, grabs the phone out of your hand, and yells "Fuck you, I ain't going nowhere!" into the phone, and hangs it up for you.
Hey, that would make a great Dilbert cartoon. Almost.
"And like that