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Cube House
drkanta writes "Hey, I decided to decorate my cube for a holiday decoration contest. Well, I went all out and had a lot of fun and turned my cube into a house. I thought it was very very funny. What bugged me was that some people asked me where I saw this before to get my idea. What? Saw something like this before? My question is: has anyone done something like this before?"
I think this is the coolest thing I have seen in a long time. You are now my hero. Course most of the guys I work with say it is gay.
I've done it, lots of times. I make them out of tinfoil. It's stops the cosmic rays, you know.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Where are the TSP reports I asked for two days ago?
...is currently taking a long hard look at just how much he's paying you.
Some of Pixars' work areas have more imaginative cube mods, decorations etc than this
Where do you work that you can get away with doing this.
Yes I have seen this before, but then the walls were padded....
I see there's a pink slip attached to your monitor too! I wonder what THAT'S doing there!
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Did you win the contest?
See subject; :)
Other than that, I think JWZ made himself a cubicle tent once. Netscape made him take it down as I recall. I'd love to see more examples of clear fire hazards, so if anyone has any more keep posting.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Just what *do* you do at work if you have that much free time!? lol This reminds of that "While You Were Out" show...they should do it for cubicles.
Can I see you in my office, please? I think we have a few things to discuss....
- Your Pointy Haired Boss
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
I read this thinking he decorated his Mac Cube... and thought that was pretty cool. Maybe put some christmas lights inside or something... but this is just his work cube... not as cool.. IMO.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Wouldn't it get pretty warm in there?
I thought things got out of hand at *my* office during the holiday season. On a more serious note- clearly the individual who made the house/cubes company is not in downsizing mode. Still Looks like a big "Lay *me* off please" sign to me...
5.5 Hour of Pay to decorate your CUBE. cool I still have you beat, getting paid 8 hours a day to surfing slashdot.org
has anyone done something like this before?
True Story: In 1982 or so I had a job stocking shelves (hey, I was 16) Anyhow, I got pretty stoned at dinner break and had a great idea.. I bought a can of gold spray paint in the store then proceeded to completely spray paint a urinal in the men's room. Then I wrote in felt marker Needless to say when my boss called me in the next day and I was straight I didn't think the idea was too smart.
Trolling is a art,
My server could use a good slashdotting... ;)
http://scottkuma.net/CubeHouse/
>What bugged me was that some people asked me
Wow, so you must work with some uncreative people, if they think that anything cool has to have been ripped off. I hope they don't have the same attitude to the actual WORK that you do.>where I saw this before to get my idea.
there was a whole interview on some evening magazine type tv show in the SF bay area a few years back, where some guy did that PERMANENTLY to his cube.
he used wood for all the framing and used real wood shingles for the roof!!!
his boss said, ok, but that no one else was allowed to do it.
I have not looked at the article yet.
I procured cardboard shipping boxes with the intent of converting my cubicle into an interior office.
There is no good reason the walls do not continue straight up.
comment directly in my journal
Is it just me or all the offices look alike. Man my office has exactly the same layout, floor, cube and ceiling. And then again you get to spend 5.5 hours doing things other than "work". Hope you are using "cover page" on all your reports :-)
as if cubes don't trap the smell of a fart already enough...
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
greg minshalls cube house at ipsilon around 98 or 99
Since I started to work at home, I have turned my house into a cube. Much to my wife's consternation, I might add...
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
He works for a college in their CS department. Of course he won't get in trouble for it. Probably also hangs out "after hours" and tries to hang with all the residents and be cool. :)
Server is starting to get slashdotted.
I put up a temporary mirror.
- tristan
Right... if by I have to work you mean surfing slashdot and by staying after work you mean getting all the work you avoided finished at home?
"The truth suffers from too much analysis"
And I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll ./ your house down!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Actually yes, while I was at one job I turned my cube into a tiki hut complete with thatch roof. My boss was pissed and was going to scream at me until the VP of the company came by and congratulated me on such a great morale builder and said that others should be so industrious.
:)
Nearly everything for your own Tiki hut can be purchased at Archie McPhee's
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
1. doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of a cubicle - getting up and looking at all the others... 2. personaly i'd like to see a borg cube(icle)... 'scuse me, while i
"Everything's been thought of before. The trick is to think of it again."
Don't get your knickers in a knot just because someone else once had the same brilliant idea you had. It happens. A lot. It doesn't in any way diminish your own insight, no matter what some dimwitted nebish in the third cube over says.
Or even what you think.
I've always liked Pete Seeger's definition of "sophmoric," the itch to be original. Let it go.
I've never had the "pleasure" of working in a cube farm, but I tend to work in open office like enviroments of one sort or another. I like to dress up my space on a periodic basis. Right now it's a simulated Japanese tatami room, floor seating with the computer on a kotatsu with nonfunctioning wooden hibachi ( actually, it functions as a waste basket). A scroll painting and a rack of swords as a finishing touch. Very comfortable actually, and a damned sight cheaper than an Aeron. It's pretty easy to do in a cube space.
In the past I've done a simulated traditional Mongolian yurt, the rectangular Tibetan equivilent, various native American styles and an English country cottage.
Of course on a workaday basis it helps to have enough authority that no one can give you shit over it.
Next Christmas you might want to try a traditional middle eastern house or nomadic tent for the true Christmas spirit.
KFG
At one start up I worked at, we had a cubicle decorating contest for who got the close parking spots in the middle of January. My cubicle group (4 cubicles with doorways facing inwards) use white plastic to create a biohazard tent. It actually was nice because it blocked light from outside and helped us regulate the temperature.
The downside was when someone let one rip, well it lingered.
I love the cube creativity. I expressed such "creativity" twice at my previous employer...though the "previous-ness" has nothing to do with my cube creativity.
...
This is all true, as I have MPEG movies of both of these. If someone wants a copy, I'm happy to share, just email it to me at cubicoasters_on_slashdot@emailias.com. If anyone has some bandwidth and wants to host them, I'd be very happy to forward them to you, too.
Cubi-coaster 1997: Christmas 1997, I converted my cubicle into a "ball and gutter" kinetic energy machine. Basically, it's a small version of the contraptions you would find in a good science museum or in a progressive airport or mall (for entertaining the public). It started with a slingshot of a small plastic ball across the cubicle into a funnel made of paper that led to the other gutters (made of paper, tape, paperclips)...through a loop-the-loop, and down into a trashcan. But this was no ordinary trashcan. I had rigged it as a "triggered catapult" (I kid you not!) to throw the ball back up into the original funnel across the cube one more time. It only made two laps because I had to re-cock the trashcan catapult.
Cubi-coaster 1998: Christmas 1998, I created a motorized version using several pingpong balls. Using a desktop fan and removing the blade, I created a "chairlift" with fishing line and paperclips (for the "chairs"). The balls would be lifted out of a paper tube and dropped into a clear plastic funnel (made of overhead transparencies and tape) near the ceiling. It could then go one of two ways through clear plastic tubes, across highly-tensioned parallel "rails" of fishline, and over a couple of other pendulum-like devices. This was perpetual, thanks to the motor/fan.
This was a lot of fun and sure drew a lot of visitors. Friends commented that for the "next year" that I'd either have to expand to "outside the building" or would have to quit work...I chose the latter.
Happy to share...both then and now! Happy Holidays!
"Total cost of the project: $34
...pissing off all your non-christian co-workers: priceless
Total cost of the project after I return "unneeded items": $14
Total time to build, including sawing, etc: 5.5 hours."
Sorry, I keep forgetting to add the tongue-in-cheek emoticon to the bottom of my posts...
...a submarine. I work as a reserve officer and spend several weeks every summer at a nearby air force base. This summer, a few guys in my office took it upon themselves to turn another office-mates cube into a submarine like environment. Using nothing but card-board and duct tape, they enclosed the cube from floor to ceiling. At the cube entrance they left a fully functioning hatch-style door complete with wheel. They then proceeded to decorate the outside to look like steel and rivets (not quite as much effort as your cube-house though).
By the way, good job on the cube-house!
If you're gonna' comment, read the whole thread.
Unless you're into redundancy.
The lovable comic artist, Scott Adams, famous for "Dilbert" had a strip with this idea in there. During a tight labor market for Engineers, Wally was enjoying the new found freedom, and hired a construction worker to build him a cubicle roof.
One of my co-workers went to Hong Kong on business last year. When he returned, his cube was tented with plastic sheeting. We hung up SARS warning signs and facemasks. We even put a facemask on his bowling trophy guy. He wasn't impressed.
Everyone's house is very different. So walking into the animation area you get the feeling of entering a village full of very short, very eccentric people.
Not all random numbers are created equally.
We do this stuff at our office all the time. Usually for birthdays and the such. I really should throw together a web page with all the pics sometime.
The best ones so far where.
We took a bunch of cubicles and covered them with taped together black trash bags. This created a very cool cave. We put plants and a fog machine in as well.
Our boss is from Alabama, so for his birthday we decorated the whole office like some kind of back woods farm. We took his desk out and replaced it with a piece of plywood, and put a bail of straw in his office. We all dressed up in overalls and even staged a wedding ( the groom was at gun point and the bride about 8 months along ).
The next year we staged a murder mystery with our unexpecting boss at the middle of it. His brother was murdered and he had to figure out who it was. We staged it like a 30's private eye office.
For my birthday the guys decorated my office like a rave. Including a bunch of techno and monitors with cheesy colorful screen savers. Again the smoke machine was brought in, and they all laughed as I got lung cancer and couldn't even see my screen.
We've made people where bunny suits like at an amunsment park, had a toga party theme, made people work in a tent all day, and a whole lot of other things.
We've been slacking as of late with less revenues and more stress, but this stuff can really really boost morale in your office. We are a small company with very few rules, so we can get away with this stuff, if you can go for it.
Seriously, though, it's cool that his company lets him do things like that. Sounds like reasonable, human employers, which of course means a reasonable, fun place to work, which means better productivity.
I know many places that would have you called in their office for daring have such a "distraction on the floor."
"Sufferin' succotash."
http://www.jwz.org/tent-of-doom/
RFC1925
Box noted in highly unusual place by cleaning staff.
MPs forcibly evacutated building.
Bomb squad noted problems with security and downtime due to location in network control center.
In case box contained explosive device, it was immediately disrupted with small demolition charges. Minor damage to surrounding equipment.
There was one casualty. How he avoided the evacuation and reached the vicinity of the box has not been determined.
You insensitive clod! I don't celebrate Christmas!
Turned mine into a dump for old computer gear. Hang on, that's what every sysadmin does! You just never know whether a DecStation5000 will turn up to plug that old digitiser tablet into - all those empty boxes damp sound in the office, and that big pile of AT keyboards and big 10Mb/s switches are valuble thermal mass keeping the office temperature from fluctuating too quickly.