You don’t want to be in your cubicle, but you have to be in your cubicle.
If you’re going to continue rotting away at a job you hate, you might as well make your space a reflection of who you are. Or at least who you’ve become since you’ve worked at this soul sucking job.
1. Make multiple copies of Beatrix Kiddo’s ‘Death List 5’ and display them one at a time with different names crossed out. If anyone asks you who Elle Driver is, whistle that tune Elle was whistling when she was going to kill Beatrix. If you don’t get these references, Go watch Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2.
2. Remember when it was cool to have beaded curtains instead of doors? Yeah, make a curtain out of those cheap plastic shot glasses you get at the party supply store, or champagne glasses if you want to get all fancy. This can also come in handy if people around you are making noise you don’t like. Just direct a fan at your shot glass curtain and turn it into wind chimes. That might help drown out your ukulele playing coworker.
I’m not even kidding. There’s a guy here who plays his ukulele all the time.
3. Keep a few ‘days since’ tallies. For example 27 0 days since I last thought about spitting on a coworker. Or 49 have passed since faking an illness to use a sick day.
4. Draw a chalk outline just behind your chair. If anyone questions you about it, just growl at them until they stop asking.
5. Other people’s pictures. Why spend money on expensive frames when so many people already have them at their desks? Gather up a dozen or so and brighten up your space with other people’s attractive families! If you are confronted about your thievery, pretend like you don’t know how they got there and give them back. Then go get them again when no one is watching. It will turn into a fun game for the whole office!
Or you could decorate like I do. Outdated kid pictures and an unopened roll of paper towels.
As far as becoming a movie star? This blog post isn’t going to make you a movie star! Get your head out of the clouds and get back to work!
I love the idea of stealing other peoples pictures! I’m going to have to suggest that one to my husband. You are a genius!
And medicated. I get my best ideas on medication
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, glad to see you’re feeling a smidge better!
Another fun tip for you, if you’ve got a free ad section in your local paper, advertise the ukelele as free to a good home with your office telephone number and the guy’s extension
Heh heh
HAHAHA..that would be hysterical!
One day I was bored (okay…that’s a lie, I’m bored every day….but I was especially bored this day) and I decided I needed something to amuse myself so I “borrowed” one of the stuffed toys on my coworker’s desk. I decided I would do it like they do with those garden gnomes so I created a fake email account for the critter which was a reindeer. I called it “Junesreindeer@yahoo.ca” and I started taking pictures of the reindeer at different places, with little notes from the critter about what it was doing and sending emails from the yahoo account to the cow-irker. The critter went to the movies, on the bus, to Tim Hortons for coffee, I have a pic of him sitting on a bus bench waiting for a bus, at the vet clinic, out for drinks with friends, etc. The coworker had NO idea it was me (I am the ‘quiet one’…and no, you can’t check my freezer). I played her for over two weeks before I got busted. It was mildly amusing for me and it drove her crazy not knowing who it was, which gave me even more satisfaction given how she annoys the f*ck out of me most days. I do like the idea of other people’s pictures. 🙂 Or maybe putting random pictures on people’s desks and see how long it takes for them to notice.
hahaha! It’s always the ‘quiet’ ones. I’m mostly quiet at work, too.
That is brilliant. Kudos to you for annoying her!
This is frickin AWESOME!!! I am so doing the shot glass thing…. if I ever get an ACTUAL cubical (I work in IT, on the computer all day long, and don’t have my own desk. Tell me how brilliant the people I work for are).
Yeah, that makes all the sense for an IT person to not even have a desk. WTF?
Mmmmm. Sharing a desk. Gotta LOVE that. ew.
Ha! This is amazing, I love it. Especially the Kill Bill references. Yep, this one must go to the twitter now.
Well, at least I didn’t waste my whole work day.
Sometimes I think about buying a cubicle to keep at home…that way when I’m studying I can pretend I’m actually a productive member of society. But then I’d need a water cooler and a tie.
A tie!!! Dammit…that’s what I’m missing.
I’ve never worked in an office, much less a cubicle, so I’ve never decorated one. I did live in a warehouse space in West Oakland next door to a place called “Dave’s Cheap” where people would drive past and inquire out of their car windows whether any “cubicles” were available. The consensus in our space was that they weren’t seeking office furniture.
Glad to hear that you’re feeling better.
Probably were not looking for office furniture. I think my ideas would have worked in your warehouse space.
Way back in the mid 80s as an April Fool’s day joke I put an ad in the local paper: New comedian in town wants to try out his jokes. Call Pete at xxx-xxxx between 9 and 3.
At 9 am it began. “Pete. Call on line 1.” “Pete, calls on lines 2 and 3.”
It was hysterical to everyone but Pete. One of our engineers had seen the ad in the Sunday paper and once the joke was on, he told people about it.
Pete refused the phone calls, but another manager started taking his calls and telling jokes.
After a while the receptionist started telling people it was a joke and most laughed saying that “whoever” put the ad in the paper got not only Pete, but every single person who called.
Pete went home early, by the way.
And everyone knew it was me.
Good times.
I forgot to mention: Pete was my boss.
He thought he was a really funny guy.
And there were almost 100 calls for him that April 1st.
HAHAHAAHAH awesome joke!!!!
I don’t have this job anymore…this isn’t why (that’s a really long story). But you know sometimes it would get slow on the weekends https://www.facebook.com/groups/102002536523848/
hahahah
We would probably get in trouble if we were co-workers. My favorite cubicle decorations were a rubber chicken on a noose and a stuffed animal stabbed by a letter opener (there may or may not have been red playdough running down the animal). I kept a lot of people away from my cubicle back then.
HA! I need something on a noose at my desk. I do have a voodoo doll..but it doesn’t seem to scare anyone.
Lol!
Thank you for the giggle. Any chance of an update on how to creatively make your home workspace more fun? The preschooler is unfazed, no matter how eccentric the activity of the day.
Hmmm….tequila? Not for the preschooler..for you.
Love these; I would totally do the bead curtain or the “days since” countdown…
I like the little tiny 1″ square postit notes that I saw on the wall of an office once, right under a sign that read:
“COMPLAINT BOX– please fill out form below. Please use complete sentences.”
Hahahah…awesome
Very amusing Michelle. I could use a few of these ideas in my class of nine year olds! 16 days since someone picked their nose etc 🙂
Perfect!!! Man, I loved it when my kids were small..but I do not miss the nose picking years.
I’ve never been a cube dweller, so I tend to read these things out to my husband with the pre-amble, “Oh listen to this! It’s funny!” and as a cube-dweller he never, ever laughs. (He just gets a vaguely sinister faraway look.)
I’m terribly jealous. I certainly didn’t MEAN to end up a cube dweller.
I don’t have a cubicle. I did for a little while back in Ought-4, but it was short-lived. Today, I share an office with my coworker and the window looks out to the morgue. It’s quite pleasant.
interesting…creepy….but interesting