Cube Life Boundaries

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I know I work in a little cardboard and steel box. It's a cube. Same as a million other cubes in the business world, but this one is mine. I've recently realized that just because it looks like mine, it really isn't mine - or at least the people that I work with seem to think it's as much theirs as mine.

Boundaries. Plain and simple.

If I go to talk to someone in their home, I don't re-arrange the furniture because I think it looks better one way than another. I don't even tell them I think they could do better with the couch, or chair in this location. I am a gracious guest and keep my thoughts to myself. After all, I could be totally missing the point of the sunlight in the room, or a heating vent, or any of a hundred different things that would make the choice they made the right choice.

At work it's the same thing. I don't walk into a co-worker's cube and decide that their phone is in the wrong place, or their papers should be stacked here. I try not to even go into the cube itself. They're barely big enough for a person in a chair, there's no need to walk into these tiny places and start poking, moving, and disturbing things.

But there are many that don't believe as I do.

There are people that simply walk into my cube, decide that they need to grab a pad of paper, borrow a pencil and start writing. They don't even ask. While I understand that they don't personally mean to piss me off, they're doing a good job of it and I want to tell them Hey, jerk! Do I go into your house and move your stuff? Take what I want without asking? But I can't. If I do that I'll be branded a trouble-maker, and while I wouldn't mind this branding, I know that there are folks that will be very glad that I keep quiet and simply put things back and get another pad of paper.

But I wish they'd just stay out of my bloody cube!