LOOKING FOR DILBERT by Susie Michelle Cortright
A few months ago I started an article that I never finished. It was triggered by one of my early morning visits to downtown Los Angeles, in which I saw hundreds of people rushing through Hills, Spring, Beaudry, and Los Angeles street, on their way to "their offices" on the 14th, 16th, or 25th floor in one of those large buildings. And then to think that due to the wobbly soil of this region the constructions are kept relatively flat compared to other metropolises..
What struck me that day was the unbelievable, almost comical similarity and synchrony between all these people: they were all armed with some sort of attaché-case -- the men simply carrying it, the women elegantly dragging it on an stylish carriage -- they were all dressed in black, marine blue or gray suits, mostly made from the same synthetic fabric; they all had typical hairstyles -- the ones that are listed as "professional" in P.R. books -- and they were all in a hurry. Some of them were trying to sip on their cup of coffee that they apparently had taken with them from home while waiting for the pedestrian lights to jump on green in order to cross the street. They had all just parked their trendy SUV's on one of the multiple massive parking lots in the city. And soon their daily routine would start: the everlasting chain of events would be set into action, and their engines would be ignited full-speed.
Up till very recently I did not know why I had not finished that article, but now I realize why: I had yet to experience the inside of these buildings! Although I had visited some of them briefly to pick up something or meet with someone in the past months, I had never really encountered the real bulwark in which these synchronous people bivouacked day after day after day. But I finally did! Last week I had to visit a friend for a partial fulfillment of a project in one of those modern-days encampments, and my poor, old-fashioned, rural, uncultured self experienced a horrendous shock. What I finally saw was the very epitome of what I had only spotted in movies and cartoons so far: the cubicle system.
My appointment turned out to be located on the seventeenth floor of one of those colossal structures, so I took the elevator and stepped into the above described world of which I had only imagined its existence in my worst nightmare: on either side of the elevator was a humongous hallway, leading to hundreds of people crammed into hundreds of minuscule cubicles. There was the fuzzy noise of hundreds of voices either on the telephone or talking to each other; there were people leaning against each other's cubicle in conversation; and there was a total lack of privacy.
"So," I thought, "Here's where some people come to work when they have earned their advanced degrees. How encouraging!" I thought of the vulnerability of all these people if one of them was ever stricken by a contagious disease. I thought of the impossibility for these workers to hold a private conversation, either on the phone or with a visitor. And I thought of the brutal assassination of their creativity in this unspiritual environment. And one more thing: I actually looked for Dilbert.
That's when I realized how far I had allowed myself to freak out by the sight of the workplace of many people in our modern civilization. And I caught myself wondering what the person who initially suggested these cubicles must have thought. What were his or her justifications? Saving space? Breaking down barriers? Establishing an eternal open-door policy? Noble enough. Yet, I'm afraid the downside of this contrivance was grossly overlooked at the time of its development. For here, in this space where so many of the cubicle system's founders' fellow-humans have to spend about a third of their lives, their most natural human assets such as dignity, creativity, inspiration, privacy, and personality, have been taken away!
The sad part is, that it will be hard or impossible to change the "cubicle farms" as some insiders seem to skeptically refer to this workplace set-up. For no matter how hard the ones who have to work in it will initially protest; the job market presents a grim picture of too much supply and too little demand to have much choice. And by the time that they finally reach a position where they could claim a more venerable work environment, they are so used to the current system of narrow-situatedness and narrow-privateness, that they may have degenerated into narrow-mindedness.
Burbank, California; August 1, 2003; Joan Marques, MBA, Doctoral Candidate (URL: http://www.joanmarques.com)
About the Author:
Joan Marques, holds an MBA, is a doctoral candidate in Organizational Leadership, and a university instructor in Business and Management in Burbank, California. You may visit her web site at www.joanmarques.com
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