My six year cubicle nightmare is at end. Yesterday the boxes moved to my new 12x12 window office, and today I made major progress on “settling in”. Having been raised in a small farmhouse, living a lot of time outside in Northern WI hunting, fishing, and generally knocking around, I’ve always prided myself on being “able to deal with anything”. I guess I DID “deal with it”, but it was anything but easy. Today felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders and my steps were much lighter.
Being a solid member of the “Religious Right”, I’m one that believes that there are “absolutes”, but believing that SOME things are absolute, doesn’t mean that ALL are. A lot of human existence is very relative. How bad is it to work in a cube? In the overall scheme of things, not bad, BUT relative to my own office for ME, very bad. Much worse than I would have ever thought possible, and a bit of an exercise in “space based socialism”.
As I’ll cover too many times, one of the cornerstones of the left agenda is “equality of outcome”. Most often they mean “economics” when they think that, but space in a workplace is a pretty good metaphor. When I joined the company I very soon figured out that I would enjoy having my own office … at the time I really didn’t know why. I might have thought “status”, and there is certainly some status involved, but sometimes we “know” more than we think we know. Getting to a position where I would have my own office was a great motivator.
After 15 years in my own office, six years in the cubes has aught me that I’m WAY more susceptible to noises from the environment than I ever dreamed. I knew I had a preference for working on computer terminals in low light (out of the question in a cube). Today I realized that the worst of it for me was the “white noise”, the constant wind-tunnel effect that is supposed to make the din of cubeland bearable. I felt like I was on some good combination tranquilizer / brain focus drug today, feeling both more alert and more relaxed. I walked back over to the wasteland of people stalls, and the feeling of dread returned with the wall-o-noise. Once you have lived in hell, even a whiff of sulfur brings back bad memories.
Is any of this reasonable or rational? Probably not, but it is to ME! For all the liberals claims of “diversity”, “caring for people”, “paying attention to the human side of things”, etc, equality of outcome is the EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT! I hate cubes, and had I not have spent 20 years with the company with kids in school, etc, I know they would have motivated me out of the company. They DID motivate me to work from home far more than I ever used to. If there was a ghost of a chance to be promoted out of them in the technical ranks at our company, then they would have encouraged me on that path. People are often driven by motivations that are “irrational”.
Cubes appeal to the socialist ethic. Everyone gets the “minimum”, so “nobody can complain”. No matter how hard you work, there is no way to escape … liberal nirvana. Does that really appeal to “human nature”? No, of course not, it appeals to some abstract concept of “fairness”. My left brain can spew out some rational reasons for hatred of working in a sterile box, but it is really my right brain that provides the emotional loathing. Can I “adapt” … well certainly, humans have adapted to concentration camps and still found some joy.“Man’s Search For Meaning”, byVictor Frankel is well worth a read … short, and would help you survive situations even worse than 6-years in a cube.
If the envy of your neighbor is more important than your own condition, or your potential to improve your condition, then you are a likely a socialist at heart. We all have to have a heart, and if that is yours, maybe it is just as implacable as I found my heart’s hatred of the cubes to be. Just don’t mistake such thinking as somehow “caring for people”. It is caring for some abstract view of people that will always have at least one voice in opposition as long as I draw breath.
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