Cube Life

Cube Life: Those who spend 40+ hours working in a corporate, 4-walled, open–roofed workspace. This is also where you spend the majority of your waking hours. 

I was walking around the sales floor today and couldn’t help but notice all the cube decorations in everyone’s space. I swear some looked like artful masterpieces of sales and company-name puns on selling. People tacked up wrapping paper backgrounds, hung pictures and others clipped photos of the Officespace characters with open message bubbles. In passing conversation I found out about a 7ft. cardboard cutout bear and even threw out a suggested viking hat…because why not?!  I thought, you know what - when you are "dialing for dollars" in your cube… at least it’s something to look at. You can casually make work fun by swapping out some items each day. Of course we need to keep it clean and appropriate, but a 7ft teddy bear is hilarious and about as clean as you can get. I guess the top performer gets the bear in their cube as recognition. Cool idea - HR agrees.

This reminds me of a funny story…

When we first opened the office we had a consultant working with the leadership team. We were touring the office before closing on the lease and I said, “these are nice cubes!” His response was, “Don’t call them cubes, it’s bad for recruiting. Call them workspace.” Huh?? Seriously?

Well, let’s keep it real here... they are cubes! They also happen to be workspaces. These technicalities are made of ridiculousness. The fact of the matter is whether you call them workspaces or cubes, if your pipeline is backing out because of that…you have bigger problems! Like say... employment branding maybe?  He is not and never was a recruiter, but regardless how can one make a blanket statement like that? As if all people would be turned off from the word - cube. Businesses everywhere have office environments that are cubicle concept. I would Imagine our candidates even expect the job they are applying for requires them to work in a cubicle. So, let’s not paint a Zebra blue here… and just keep it real.

What fun things does your office do with their cubes? Any fun non-monetary sales reward ideas or experiences you would like to share?