While I talk a lot of smack about life in a little cubicle, I recognize that it does occasionally bring some joy to my life. Mostly, this comes in the form of unexpected free food! That may not sound like anything that exciting, but when you’ve been staring at a little computer screen for hours, and you’re possibly a little simple minded like myself, that’s all it takes to make it a good day.

The random pizza party

Once or twice a year, your company may have one of those “Uh oh, we just laid off another 30 people, what can we do to trick the others into being nice, docile, non-rampaging employees” moments.  Fixing budgets, and improving business models is tricky stuff. You know what’s not tricky? PIZZA! Everyone loves pizza. All sorts of bad things can be going on, but if we get that random 11:00am email entitled “Free pizza in the conference room at 12”, BAM, it was a good day. Is management taking advantage of the Peons desire for tasty unhealthy foods, yes. Do we love it, of course.

Big Wig lunch conference scraps

Sometimes, the Big Wigs roll into town, and take control of a conference room for half the day discussing things my feeble brain simply could not comprehend. While I couldn’t care less what they were discussing (unless it’s about who’s getting the axe next), being the battered office veteran that I am, I know we’re in for a treat.

If the meeting is taking place anywhere near lunchtime, do yourself a favor, and just hold out! The second you go out to buy lunch, you’re going to come back into the office, and see that they’re feasting on a pile of gourmet sandwiches. There’s some sort of rule that says “if you’ve got a bunch of guys in suits talking about stuff, make sure to buy them twice the amount of food they could possibly eat, just to make it look more pimped out”. What that means for the little guy is free sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches…the Big Wig conferences only get the GOOD sandwiches from the expensive deli, not the cheap grade D sliced meat stuff you’d normally buy for yourself to save cash. Take advantage, have a little snack at 12, and wait till their meeting is over at 2, then when they all leave it’s open season, and time to FEAST!

Mystery goodies

Sometimes, for reasons you don’t understand, someone from your office wakes up in the morning in a super good mood. That person then decides to buy a few boxes of Entenmann’s donuts for the office to share. I’ve never been able to predict when this will happen, but it’s better that way. The identity of this charitable unhealthy breakfast giver always remains a mystery. Perhaps they just enjoy seeing one less person about to rip a wall off of their cubicle. Think about it, how can you be mad after a donut?!

Post Holiday dessert leftovers

I’ve seen this one time and time again. People get or make a ridiculous amount of dessert for some holiday occasion, and are immediately disgusted with it after everyone leaves their house. What to do in a situation like that? Simple, unload all of the stuff on your office coworkers. Right after Halloween, I PROMISE you, you’ll find at least one huge bowl of left over candy. After Christmas, a pile of cookies, brownies etc. After Thanksgiving, maybe a leftover pumpkin pie. All you need to know is, around the holidays be ready, because there are always a few thousand random calories that need a home.

The main rule to free office food is basically just to keep your eyes open, and be ready! You never know when it’ll happen, but you know that at some point, it will happen. That alone is enough to keep strong in the never ending office battle.

Whether you love your job or not, the day to day activities tend to get repetitive. Same people, same responsibilities, same environment. Having some variety mixed in can go a long way to preventing burn out. Having the opportunity to go to a work conference, while always a mixed bag of tricks, is usually a welcomed change to break up the monotony.

The knowledge of your peers
These types of things always seem to come at a bad time. You’ve got deadlines, and things to take care of. Why do you have to go away for a few days to hear boring speeches, and sit through training sessions? While these things may be true, you should also recognize it as an opportunity. It’s already happening, so if you just embrace it, you’ll get much more out of it.

People from many different locations, and job environments usually wind up at these things. Sometimes, it’s refreshing to see who they are, and how their situation relates to yours. That in itself can make you feel better, knowing that you’re not alone. Others share the same concerns, and problems. Often at these conferences, someone may have approached things from a different angle, and already come up with a solution that you can share with your coworkers. No matter the type of conference, or the industry involved, it can always help to absorb the shared knowledge of your peers.

Some downtime with coworkers
Besides the actual work related knowledge you may gain from these conferences, you will inevitably spend a lot of personal time with your coworkers. In your office, you may see each other from 9-5, but while traveling, you may find yourself with a room mate, or having a few beers after the educational portion of the day. Believe it or not, this can go a long way to improving your in-office situation. The more comfortable you are with someone, the easier it is to deal with a difficult situation. Being on your own is never fun, so sharing in an experience like this with a coworker will always make you feel more like a team. You might still be stuck working at the job, but at least you’ll gain another person to complain to!

Time to get away
Regardless of what you learn, or how much closer to your coworkers you may become, going to a conference usually means getting away! Even if you’re from a great city like Manhattan, going somewhere else is always refreshing. You get to see what the it’s like in another city, and hopefully see what the locals do for fun. Different sights, bars, restaurants, whatever. It’s different, so it’s more interesting than the stuff that you see every day going to and from your local office.

Act on that newfound info
One thing I’ve learned from going to a few of these types of conferences, is that if you get home and don’t take some sort of action on the new information you’ve attained, it tends to get lost. You have have learned about some new programs, or techniques. They made a lot of sense and were fresh in your mind at the time, but a month later, you’re not quite sure why it was so relevant. When you get back, just go through some notes, take another look at the slides/handouts/websites, and let it really sink in. Only then can you really put it to work.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and I’ve seen a few TV shows where they were making it a point to actually give thanks for some of the things in their lives. Being totally uncreative, I’ve decided to steal that idea. The more I thought about it, even though I can talk trash about working in a cube for hours, there’s quite a bit that I can be thankful for as well.

While working in an office cubicle, and being lost among a sea of horrid half-walls and industrial carpet is not exactly living the high life, at least it is a living. By ‘a living’, of course I mean it pays my bills…most of them anyway. With the state of the U.S. economy still in recovery mode, this year I am thankful that I still have a decent job. Sure, I may not love everything I’m doing, or get some sort of deep down satisfaction at the end of each day, but I’m a lot better off than those who didn’t make it through the 4 rounds of job cuts my company went through earlier this year.

I squeaked through with a 10% pay cut for half of the year, but at the end of it all, I still had a full time job. Every once in a while, I actually recognize how bad the finances were at my company in order for them to be forced to lay off so many people. In those times of recognition, like right now, I say thank you for that pay cut, and thank you for letting me lead my simple lifestyle without making too many changes.

As we all know, the office can be filled with a bunch of annoying characters. Maybe they’re trying to make awkward conversation with you in the kitchen, or jumping into your cube unexpectedly, ignoring some basic cube etiquette. Maybe they smell, or don’t even recognize the things you do. There’s tons of things to complain about with coworkers, but hey, they spice up the potential monotony of the day as well. If everyone in my office had a completely neutral personality, with no quirks or issues to deal with, I’d have a lot less to talk about.

That’s not even a reference to Office Cube Life, I mean in general. Whether you’re in the elevator, out at lunch, or having a beer…coworkers give you a lot of material to talk about with your friends and other coworkers. So this year, I say thank you to the guy that forgets to flush in the bathroom. I say thanks to the guy that doesn’t even know I exist, and ignores me because I’m not in a suit. You guys may not be my buddies, or the type of people I’d want to be stuck in an elevator with, but you make my day a little more interesting.

At the end of the day, I’m very happy to have my little web job. Who am I to complain, when there are whole families struggling to stay afloat, and I’m still paying $80 a month for my gym membership. Just this once, everything is okay with life, and I love working in my little office cubicle.

I love Friday. There I said it. Sometimes even the most obvious fact needs to be said out loud. After all….I’m talking about Friday here! I know every one of you out there loves Friday just as much as I do. I usually don’t like sharing things to this extent, but I will make an exception for the benefit of office workers everywhere and allow you all to love the one I hold closest to my heart.

Everyone has had one of those weeks where everything was going wrong, taking longer than expected, getting on your nerves and just destroying all of the joy in life. It seems hopeless, like there is no way for your misery to end. We’ve all been there, and we’ve all made it through. Why? Because everyone knows from early on in life that no matter how miserable your week is, you’ll eventually hit Friday. It serves as a beacon in the night, guiding you through the darkness. Once that whistle blows, you’re off the clock and freedom is yours!

Not only does Friday give you some motivation to make it through the work week, it’s also the most understanding of days. Maybe you went out on Thursday night, and have a killer hangover. That’s okay, because Friday understands. Maybe you’re thinking about an upcoming concert on Saturday and have already mentally checked out for the week. That’s fine, Friday never expects too much out of you anyway. Friday even has a lot of clout in the business world, influencing managers and bosses everywhere to be a little more relaxed than usual. Just think how often you’ve heard something to the effect of “Don’t worry, it’s Friday. We can worry about it next week”.

Any day that has it’s own slogan has got to be a good one. You never hear anyone say TGIM (Thank God It’s Monday), it’s TGIF! People love this day so much, they even started a restaurant chain named after that slogan: TGI Friday’s. Just think about that for a second. Some people were going to start a restaurant, and it came time to pick the name. They sat around, and thought “Let just make it easy, and name it something that is impossible not to love…something about Friday…we can’t lose!”

So the next time you find yourself crammed in a cube working on boring things that don’t interest you just so you can pay your rent, just take a second and think of Friday. You know it’ll always be there, waiting and ready to give you some much needed relaxation.

In closing, I find that I am moved to write Friday a poem. I’ll give it a fitting, clever name…how about “Friday, A Poem”

The week is young, and the pain it starts,
As if Monday’s only purpose is to blacken our hearts;
Forever it goes, the work never ending,
A happy employee, but always pretending;
Will it end before I meet my grave,
A whisper of encouragement, ‘Just Be Brave’;
From where did it come, a voice far away,
But then I realize, it came from Friday;
A simple reminder that I’m strong enough to survive,
And make it until the weekend, when my soul may thrive;
Thank you Friday, for guiding me through,
No other way to say it, I truly love you.

You’ve finally gotten to work after an extra rough commute, are barely sitting down, and the annoying guy in your cube farm immediately comes up to you asking questions your brain isn’t ready to handle. All you can think is “I haven’t even had my coffee yet, why is he over here. I wish I worked from home, then this would never happen”. Well, this may be shocking to hear, but “telecommuting” isn’t always that great.

When you’re actually working from home for a while, you begin to realize that the cube life actually does have a few benefits over your house or apartment. Let’s take a few moments to recognize that everything really isn’t so bad in the workplace.

Your office chair is awesome

Face it, you’re never going to drop $1,500 on that super comfortable air mesh, spring loaded, lumbar supporting, multi–angle adjustable chair that you have in your office. The $150 imitation version from Staples looks pretty cool, but after a few hours at home, you realize that there is no substitute for the real thing. When you’re having a bad day, the last thing you want is physical discomfort as well. Knowing that when you get back to your cube, you’ll at least have a great chair to sit on is definitely a huge advantage.

I’ll get so much more done at home…well, maybe

One comment I’ve heard thrown around a lot is “I get so much more done at home without all of the distractions at work”.  While this may be valid for some occupations, I have found the opposite to be true.

Sure, you’re at home, and can work in your boxers. You’re going to be a swift, work demolishing machine now that you can do whatever you want without disturbing, or being disturbed by your coworkers, right? A little TV for some background noise, and you’re ready to rumble. Oh wait, is that the new trailer for that Bruce Willis movie Surrogates? I like sci-fi, let me look it up online real quick. Oh shoot, I never did the dishes, and they’d better be clean before my wife gets home, or else. Ah lunchtime, I’ll just watch an episode…or two…of something I recorded last week.

Like it or not, being AT work helps you avoid all of the random distractions that may come up while sitting around in your home. Also, those little disturbances from your cube neighbors may actually help you focus, or at least motivate you to get something done so they’ll get off your back.

Working at home is lonely

Even in the age of the Internet, where you can be constantly connected via IM, Facebook, Twitter etc., working all alone can still be lonely. You may go through an entire day of working at home, then realize you haven’t moved more than 20 feet in the past 8 hours. You also haven’t even spoken more than a few words (to yourself). This is fine for a day or two, but it will quickly remind you of how much you miss the random social interaction you get from your office.

You may think that working from home is a panacea and will fix all of your problems, but trust me it isn’t and it won’t. It has its’ advantages for some, but for the majority, I believe that working in a real office will enable you to stay more focused on your work, and keep you at least mildly social.