Top 5 Worst Things About Cubicle Life

Have you ever thought that your soul was actually melting away while sitting in your cubicle?   I was recently thinking about “Escape from Cubicle Nation” by Pam Slims, and can’t help but wonder how much working in a cube actually harms your well being.  It can’t be good for you to not see the light of day for 8+ hours, breath the same recycled air, and feel like a corporate drone day in and out for 40+ years.

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Top 5 Worst Things about Working in a Cubicle (in no particular order):

1. Shouting over cubicle walls, because people are too lazy to get up
2. No privacy, no personal space, no sanctuary
3. Creative inspiration forget about it!  Grey/beige and fluorescent lights are the only inspiration and they suck the life out of you
4. Surround sound conference calls.  As though they aren’t bad enough, everyone is booked solid all day so the only option is to dial in on speaker phone and multitask…
5. Negative energy.  Sometimes it is hard not to hang up the phone and let out a huge sigh or a big fuck you back to the phone/email.  If you work in a place where everyone does this all day, its exhausting and depressing.

“So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that’s on the worst day of my life.” -Peter Gibbons, Office Space

Do you ever feel completely drained of all life and energy from sitting in a cube all day?  I would love to hear other reasons you want to escape from your cube in the comments.

Buy Your Own “Paid” Maternity Leave

The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave. Eligible employees are entitled to:

• Twelve workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for:
  • the birth of a child and to care for the newborn child within one year of birth;
  • the placement with the employee of a child for adoption or foster care and to care for the newly placed child within one year of placement;

Let’s break this down a little.  These twelve workweeks are UNPAID, unless your company chooses otherwise.  You can also pay for short term disability coverage with your insurance plan so you can have some income during those 12 weeks.

From my experience, I have had to pay $14 more per pay period to increase my short term disability pay.  Did you know that having a baby leaves a woman disabled for up to 12 weeks?  I had no idea that having a baby is a disability.  I am not sure if there is research out there but I would assume that the only people in my company buying additional short term disability coverage are women.  Do you think the dude in the cube next to you even has to think about it?  I pay $14 more/check so that I can get paid 60% of my regular salary after having a baby.

I do not have any children, but my husband and I have begun to discuss starting a family.  There is quite an increase in pregnant women in my office these days so I started asking questions and I was absolutely horrified by the answers.  According to the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division nursing mothers must be provided with “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk.”

One woman I spoke with said that she was nursing at her last company and they gave her a conference room to use.  However they didn’t put any signs on the doors, or give her the ability to reserve the room.  While pumping one day another coworker started pounding on the door because he needed a conference room ASAP.  He pounded and screamed and repeatedly tried opening the door and then complained about it to the whole office.  In return they told her she was “disrupting” the workplace and they told her to use the storage closet.  This closet clearly didn’t lock, but they put a screen up that she could stand behind.  The worst part is that instead of standing up for herself she just found another job.  I wonder what happened to the next woman there that needed to nurse?

This same person had another baby at a different company and they told her to use the executive bathroom.  Clearly another violation and she did stand up for herself yet again.  Another coworker planned on “pumping in my car”.  She didn’t know who to ask or where to go so she was preparing to set up shop in the parking lot.

While discussing this with other women I found out that 3-4 years ago and executive once instructed them to “avoid hiring women of child bearing age.” I have no words for this one, but it infuriated me.

What truly infuriates me are these women that are too afraid of rocking the boat or standing up for themselves and other women.  Particularly because these women have been working in corporate America for 35+ years.  They have lived through Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co and Roe v Wade.  For everyone that has forgotten the journey towards equal treatment and rights, please take some time and watch Makers Women Who Make America on PBS or AOL.

Unless men start having babies, women are going to have to keep fighting the good fight.

Millennials in a Gen X-Baby Boomer Workplace

It never occurred to me that I was a millennial. (Typically millennials are the children of either Baby Boomers or some Gen-Xers. We are also often referred to as the Boomerang Generation or Peter Pan Generation.)-thank you Wikipedia.

Learning the ins and outs of the workplace has been a challenge for me. I have never quite been able to understand why I always felt so differently about work than many of my coworkers. I started working when I was 15 and have had a job ever since. My parents never told me I had to get a job. I just figured that if I wanted to buy things I would need to work.

After graduating college ahead of schedule, I couldn’t wait to get a “real” job and take control over “my” life. It has taken me 8 years to figure out that its not just this job or that job that I haven’t enjoyed or in some case damn near couldn’t stand. I’ve realized that most jobs do in fact totally suck. After all of that hard work and money for an education everyone winds up in the same leaky, shitty boat. I remember crying in the bathroom at my first job almost daily because I had no idea what I was doing (shout out to Sheryl Sandberg for saying that its ok to admit you cry at work). I had my first panic attack at work 2 years later and it has been a train wreck ever since.  (I will expand more on panic attacks in a later post.)

Then a session at SXSW Interactive helped me figure out where all of these crazy emotions were coming from. It turns out I am not alone!

Jennifer Selke and Tim Street lead one of the best sessions that I attended at SXSW; Praise & A’s: Maximizing a Millennial Workforce.  Unlike 99% of the sessions at SXSW, this one was rather small and intimate (30-40 people) and I learned a few things:

• Millennials will make up 34% of the workforce by 2014

• 73% want a job where they can make an impact compared to 53% of everyone else

• Millennials want to know how the little things that they do fit into the larger picture

• Millennials want to feel valued/important

In just one session they listed my issues for the past 8 years. I just thought I was crazy – me – that it wasn’t an entire generation having the same challenges. That never ending feeling of “is this it?” Being told repeatedly by parents and coworkers that no one actually enjoys their jobs, it is just a fact of life.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way, which is what this blog is all about. Start by identifying what it is that you are struggling with.  Is it the day to day tasks, the beige cubicle farm, coworkers that don’t inspire you, bosses that are already checked out?

Or maybe you are super lucky and you have a job that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning and get started.  If you do, please please leave a comment, I would love to hear all about what you do and why you like it so much.  Perhaps it will help others out as well.

Quarter Life Crisis-Slap Some Sense into Adulthood

A few years back I thought I was having a quarter life crisis, 5 years later I realize it is just life.  (I would also like to clarify that I am NOT one of those people that say well life is just hard, and we can’t be happy all the time.)

So life isn’t exactly what you thought.  But did you really think about what you wanted it to be?  To me, that is the kicker; I just assumed if I did all the things I was “supposed” to do things would turn out ok.  What I never realized is that I never spent any time defining what “OK” actually meant to me.  Most people have an idea about the bigger issues.  Do you want to get married, have kids, travel the world, become president?  Those things turn life into a checklist, so ok you went to college, got a decent job, found a partner, bought a house, had a kid.  Now what?  What fills your day, makes you tick, gets your ass out of bed in the morning?

More often than not, checking off that list isn’t enough to keep you going day in and day out.

Over the past few months I have started to learn that it is not just me.  It is not wrong to want more out of life, challenge the status quo, and try to make a difference in this mad mad world.  I hope breaking down my own experiences of navigating the corporate jungle gym (often failing) as a millennial and a woman in search of a meaningful life will empower you to take charge of your own life.