Office life, is there anything better? Not only do you get the luxurious 6′ x 6′ cube, but you get to enjoy your wonderful coworkers, who always behave appropriately, and respect your space. They would never do anything to annoy you, or make your office life less enjoyable.

What? You don’t work in an office like this? Oh, that’s right, neither do I because I just fabricated that fantasy out of thin air. It does not exist. No matter where you work, or what your profession, you will undoubtedly encounter people in your work place who just don’t follow proper office etiquette.

There are a few simple rules to follow in order to prevent you from becoming “That Guy”…as in “Oh man, I hate That Guy. Maybe he’ll get hit by a bus.”

Recognize if you’re a loud talker

Let’s say that the average person speaks at a level of 5. At some point or another, you will encounter someone who, for some unknown reason, speaks at a level of 10. Perhaps their parents were hearing impaired, or maybe it’s just that they think everything they say is so important that everyone in the office needs to hear it. Whatever the cause, it’s insanely annoying. Please stop, I’m about 10 seconds away from kicking a hole through your cubicle wall.

What I really don’t understand, is how a loud talker doesn’t realize that they are AT LEAST twice as loud as everyone in the office. You don’t have to yell through the phone in order for it to reach the other side. There’s some sort of technology that takes care of that stuff.

Hopefully you’ll never be in a worst case scenario of having two extremely high level people in your office who are both loud talkers, and are friendly with each other.  They stomp around the office with their combined sonic powers, destroying everything in the way.  It’s like a Godzilla movie, except instead of buildings and Japanese people, it’s cubicles and lowly office employees. Of course, the worst part is that you can’t say anything about it, because of their rank.

Don’t “cube jack” me

Sitting in a cramped little cube doing work is bad enough. Please don’t make it worse by randomly invading my space with no warning. I don’t necessarily have any problems with you, or the things you’d like to discuss. Just give me some sort of heads up first. Give me a call, or send me an IM to see if I’m even free. Don’t just walk over, and expect me to drop whatever I’m doing.

Sometimes it takes me a little while to get caffeinated, and really turn my brain on in the morning. So if you see me log onto IM, please don’t walk over to my cube 1 minute later, expecting me to be ready to go. Wait at least 20 minutes for me to get over my morning cube depression, splash a few cups of coffee on my face, and regain the ability to deal with people without wanting to hurt them.

Cell phones on vibrate please

First of all, I’ll admit it…I used to watch Sex And The City with my wife, and totally enjoyed it. That still doesn’t mean I’m going to be ok with you using the theme song as your ring tone in the office. If you have a ring tone of any kind, please, PLEASE don’t forget that it’s not on vibrate, and then go to the bathroom for a good 20 minute session. For some reason, that is going to be the exact 20 minutes when several people are going to need to get in touch with you, and cause the Sex And The City theme song (or whatever annoying song you’ve chosen) to continually blast out of your cube. Not fun for the rest of us.

So far, I’ve managed not to take action. However, you may not sit near people as kind as I am, and your phone may mysteriously be smashed into bits, or be randomly throw into your drawer. Proceed with caution. Just play it safe and keep that thing on vibrate.

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There is more to come on office etiquette at a later time, as there is much more to say on this topic in general.

In college, I used to have hopes and dreams of my post college world. What big company would I work for? What meaningful projects would I be involved with? What kind of amazingly interesting people would I meet? I would be working, but it would be what I wanted, and it would be fun. I’m not sure how everyone else would mess it up, but I would break free from the grind, and enjoy what I was doing, and look forward to getting up in the morning to start my day.

As a graduate with an IT degree, and some web knowledge I was ready for what the world had to offer. The first job was some low level web work in a small office. I had my own little corner. It was part of a double cube that I shared with someone in almost the same exact same situation. Things were shaping up nicely, and I assumed I was on my way to success.

Nothing achieved in my cube was that impressive, but that’s normal for a first job, right? You get your foot in the door, keep paying your dues, make a few friends in the industry, and prove your worth in general. Sooner or later, you would naturally move up some sort of ladder, and find yourself in a position of some worth. The things you said would matter to people within the company, and you would be able to make some important decisions.

I wish I knew how wrong I was. I’ve seen it work like that in the movies, but no, I was just wrong. For some people the cube is just a temporary stop on their path to something meaningful. Unfortunately, for many of us, it’s a very long stay in a place we’d rather not be, doing things we’d rather not do.

Having been a cubicle dweller for quite some time now, I realize just how hard it is to break free and move on to bigger and better things. It has become a trap, and a destroyer of my dreams. It manages to suffocate my thought, and extinguish my hope.

I sit here and wonder how it all went wrong, and if I should embark on a life long quest to find the creator of the office cube, and kill his mom before he is ever conceived. Yes, perhaps I’ve seen The Terminator too many times, but I am driven to this level of thought by the cube induced insanity.

The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that I see lots of other people going through the same thing. I used to think that a cube was a transitory phase of your work history. A step on the way to greatness. After meeting several 50+ year old coworkers also trapped in the cube, I now realize that I’m not special. Most jobs are in a cube. There’s just not enough space for everyone to have an office, so only the top few get one.

A cubicle is not always temporary, sometimes that’s just the way it is. You have a cube job. Your dreams of an office with an actual door are now gone. You’d better get used to it, and learn to deal with your tiny surroundings. The cubicle now owns you, and your dreams will be reshaped and bent to the will of 3 little walls.

Thanks a lot Cube.