Working Wounded Blog: Cubicle Blues

Aug. 2, 2006 — -- You'd expect the "father" of the cubicle to be a proud parent. Heck, his invention multiplied faster than rabbits. But you'd be wrong.

Thirty years ago, Robert Probst sought to create the perfect work environment for the office furnishings company Herman Miller. In search of the "office of the future," he designed the perfect environment for maximum satisfaction and productivity. He called his creation "the action office." Yep… the cubicle.

At the time Probst was looking for something better than the open bullpen that was the norm for much of the last century. He wanted to create a space that would allow privacy, personalization and the maximum in flexibility. For example, his original creation had a variety of surfaces that you could work from, and each was a different height.

So much for privacy, personalization and flexibility. Just before his death in 2000, Probst called his creation "monolithic insanity" in Fortune magazine.

There are many reasons why the "action office" devolved in the cube. Soaring real estate prices, corporations trying to get more bang for the buck by packing employees in like sardines, and even the tax code (corporations can write off cubicles much faster than they can write off their investment in walls in an office building).

There is a part of me that believes that the successor to the cube will be emptying out our huge office buildings in a massive wave of telecommuting. This makes sense for so many reasons -- spiraling gas prices, increasing real estate costs and the fact that so many homes now have broadband access. The only problem with this picture is that we barely know how to manage the people we can see at work, so few of us have even the foggiest idea of how to manage people we can't see.

All of this leads back to the "action office." It's clear that business is now 0 for 2 when it comes to designing the perfect office. The bullpen plan didn't work. The cubicle has spawned Dilbert and a massive amount of griping from most of the people who've worked in one.