My Cubicle

My Cubicle Song - have a listen...

I envy the chap in the song. He has got a 6 foot square cubicle - luxury! I would kill for 6 feet of office space right now.

Proximus has a fetish about desks and who sits where. They employ a removal company on a full time basis as they are always moving their staff around. I started on the 14th floor at a tiny desk that to my amazement was meant for two people - fortunately there wasn't anyone at the other half of the desk so I had a bit of space.

After 4 months I was moved to the 1st floor where I was crammed in on a long table with a metre to myself and people on either side. A metre is not a lot of space for a PC a phone, papers, keyboard, mouse, note book, scrap paper, coffee cup etc. Each day was a struggle to make sure I didn't encroach on my neighbours and to fend them off as they encroached on my space - and of course there was no privacy.

Fortunately I 'outlived' my neighbours and eventually I had the whole row to myself. That really pissed everyone off as there are, believe it or not, rules in Proximus about how much space a each grade of staff can use, with lowly contractors at the bottom of the list. The office secretary wanted to move me to a more crowded location, but I was saved by another piece of Belgian bureaucracy which manifested itself through the Proximus 'short move' rule which states 'thou shall not move less than 25m', so she couldn't cram me in to some really crowded desks nearby.

Two months ago I changed teams and was moved to the 2nd floor where I was in a little cubicle I shared with my boss. It was about 4 metres long and 2 metres wide and he sat at the far end occupying 3 metres and I had my regulation 1 metre. It was OK except when he had meetings.

I've just been moved again and I now sit in the area about 30 metres from where used to sit 2 months ago. My new 'desk' is just outside some meeting rooms in the middle of the 1st floor - I couldn't be further away from a window anywhere else in the whole building. I can see daylight over my left shoulder through a window, but it is about 25 metres away. All the light that gets to me is artificial.

I am now sitting at a unscreened bench with a PC on it with my neighbour less than a metre away - the only upside is that I am at the end of the row, but that does mean all the other 4 people on my bench have to walk past me to get to their seat. I no longer have a phone, or any screens around me and my desk, and oh yes, all the cupboards that hem me in from behind are locked and I've not got any where to put my stuff!