For all my office coworkers, past and present,
and for office workers everywhere, with love
As minute changes can result in great discoveries, so small adjustments can turn a routine job one dreads into a professional performance one can look forward to with anticipation each morning.
Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow
Only connect!
M. Forster, Howards End
Contents
Introduction
PART I: Thinking Outside the Cubicle: Whats Really Going On?
The Office World Has Walls
The Office World Has a History
Sometimes Its About Where You Work
Sometimes Its About Differences
Sometimes Its About Crazymakers
Sometimes Its About You
PART II: Starting Fresh in the Office: The First Big Steps
Make a Work Companion
Make a Job Transformation Plan
Optimize Your Energy
PART III: From Blues and Battles to Peace: One Change at a Time
Peace with the Place
Peace with the Chaos
Peace with the Overwhelm
Peace with the Tasks
Peace with the Disconnect
Peace with the Boss
Peace with the Coworkers
Peace with the Culture
Peace with the Game
PART IV: Beyond Peace: Working Together for Quality of Life in the Office
Become a Change Agent
Break Down the Walls
Conclusion: Walls and Wings
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Useful Resources
Index
Introduction
We gotta get out of this placeif its the last thing we ever do!
The words of the old Animals song wail through your mind after a particularly unpleasant conversation with one of your coworkers. Retreating to your cubicle, you imagine yourself magically entering the green pastures of your screen saver and dancing off toward the bright blue sky, away from here, imprisoned in a job that suits you about as well as a doghouse suits a canary. But instead, you start clicking your way through the forty-odd e-mails that accumulated while you were having the unpleasant conversation.
Meanwhile, you brace yourself for the next attack. What will it be? Someone from Accounting calling to say you did your expense report wrong and must do the whole thing over? Your bosss partner demanding information ASAP for a project that doesnt have to be done for at least another six months? Or that neat-freak colleague making sardonic remarks about the piles of papers on your desk?
You glance around your cubicle for comfort, but your eyes meet only an inorganic desert of gray, white, and beigethey yearn for something green, natural hardwood floors, or a colorful painting. Machines beep and arguments buzz beyond the flimsy half walls. Theres a crick in your neck that refuses to go away no matter what you do, your legs itch for a good run in the park, and you can feel your brain cells dying in your head. Why did you bother to go to college if this was where you were going to end up? Most of all, you long for good old unconditional love, for someone in your workplace with whom you can share your joys, gripes, and great ideas who wont ever give you that I-cant-believe-how-unprofessional-youre-being look.
Oh, yes, you know youre lucky to have work at all in todays economy, that millions of unemployed would love to have your job, but the fact remains: Youd give anything not to have to flush away enormous chunks of your life typing nonsense into a plastic box when your real passion is playing the saxophone, quilting, writing novels, climbing rocks, or taking care of your own kids. So far, youve managed to survive by telling yourself that you just have to get through the day, but you wonder how much longer you can go on this way, living always for five oclock, for Friday night, for the day when you can go back to school, marry someone rich, retire, or do whatever else will take you out of the office world once and for all.
The weird thing is, everyone around you seems perfectly happy. Your coworkers smile and make squeaky-clean small talk, never say no to the boss, rarely take lunch breaks, and seem to find filling out forms in an online system that constantly spits out error messages fascinating. At times you suspect that youre working with some new, updated brand of Stepford wives whove been adjusted to fit the office scene rather than the home and come in both genders. Dont they realize that theres a whole wonderful world out there that theyre missing? Is there something the matter with them, or something the matter with you?
In truth, its probably neither. Human beings are an extremely variable species, and just as some people are made healthier and others sick by eating shellfish, individuals have different levels of tolerance for an office world that was not designed for human health or happiness but for productivity. That world has never been ideal for Homo who didnt start out in cubicles. And in the early twenty-first century, twisted out of shape by the unregulated, runaway market forces of what former secretary of labor Robert B. Reich calls supercapitalism, that world has become increasingly hazardous to the mental and physical health of all of us, sometimes in ways were not even aware of.
While some folks love their jobs, countless others experience the office situation as unnatural, undemocratic, ungenerous, and unrelenting. Unnatural because office work involves confinement to a closed, mostly inorganic environment; the wearing of neckties and high heels instead of clothes made for human comfort; and superficial interchanges instead of genuine conversations. Undemocratic because there are no elections for those in charge, and exercising any of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights may put ones pursuit of happiness in jeopardy. Ungenerous because todays lower-status office job provides the employee with only mediocre pay and benefits, minimal job security, insufficient vacation time, and little genuine food for the senses, intellect, emotions, or ego. Unrelenting because demands on office workers have become ever more unrealistic as organizations have downsized personnel without downsizing their missions. In such formidable circumstances, how you feel about your own office job may depend mostly on how well youre able to tolerate artificiality, tyranny, deprivation, and stress.
For as long as offices have existed, some folks have fit more comfortably into them than others. Some people are naturally orderly, compliant, attentive, goal-driven, detail-oriented, uncritical, even-tempered, and conforming. Office work, especially clerical or administrative work, suits these people pretty well, though some aspects may still affect them more negatively than they realize. Others are programmed to think for themselves, daydream, feel feelings, look at the big picture, question authority, empathize, love the outdoors, and create big paper piles and big ideas. These people are almost guaranteed to hate office work. Still othersprobably most of ushave some traits of both types.
As professional organizer Julie Morgenstern points out in Never Check E-mail in the when problems occur, workers tend to ask themselves, Is it me or is it them? In many cases, I believe that its neither. Instead, the problem is bizarre fun house of distorting mirrors that I call the office world, though most of whom are unaware of will often try to make you think its Dont let them succeed. If you dread coming to work every day, its most likely because present-day offices can be tough places for human beings to be, especially sensitive, intelligent, creative, freedom-loving people like you.
