Cubicles in movies

In the real world, a significant percentage of people work in cubicles. But when’s the last time you’ve seen someone working in a cubicle in a movie? Besides Office Space?

Hollywood is presenting an inaccurate picture of life in American.

Comments

[IHTG]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4z9mdu4ZE0

[Davver]

Why would anyone want to watch someone in a cubicle?

[anonymous]

what percentage of the work force works in cubicles? Most cubicle workers have very little privacy. IT usually has administrator access to their PCs and can review any file stored there. Their web and phone activity gets recorded. And they are lucky if the cubicle isn't positioned in a high traffic area, with their screen visible to everyone who walks by.

[anonymous]

what percentage of the work force works in cubicles? Most cubicle workers have very little privacy. IT usually has administrator access to their PCs and can review any file stored there. Their web and phone activity gets recorded. And they are lucky if the cubicle isn't positioned in a high traffic area, with their screen visible to everyone who walks by.

[Wade Nichols]

Last night actually, my wife was watching "I Love You Man" when I got home.

http://iloveyoumanus.mblade.iloopmobile.com/images/PaulRudd.jpg

[Peter A]

In the real world a significant percentage of Americans are obese and unattractive. Hollywood's job is to present an innacurate picture of life in America.

[outlaw josey wales]

If you work a cubicle you are prole. If you matter at all you have your own office with a door.

[albert magnus]

Off the top of my head, in American Beauty, Kevin Spacey works in a cubicle. In Moneyball, Jonah Hill starts off in a big office with cubicles. I think Fight Club, Ed Norton's character works in a cubicle.

Though a television show, the cops in The Wire work in cubicles.

[bud]

I work in the high-tech sector, and cube farms are the norm. The only people with offices with doors are those with confidentiality issues - high level supervisors (the guys who can fire you) and business types dealing with balance sheet and cash flow issues.

I had my last "office" in 1979.

[Doug]

@outlaw

What? Pretty much everyone in Silicon Valley is in a cubicle. People on Wall Street don't even get a cubicle, they just set at long desks side by side, like a call center. Meanwhile cops, car mechanics and car salesman all have offices.

[Q*bert]

For the most part, Hollywood movies don't show characters at their jobs at all since the work world rarely makes for interesting drama. There are a few exceptions like cops and doctors. But even those professional environments are romanticized. Cubicles are really only exploited for comedic value--like in The Office. I believe the Matrix included some cubicle scenes, and in this case, they were presented as analogs to the horrific egg-sacs that the characters actually inhabited. Nice to know that 40 million Americans spend their days in comically depressing and/or psychologically horrific conditions.

[Park Slope Pubby]

I love these rules about class. Somebody else does my laundry (somebody I pay), which yesterday I was assured means I am upperclass. I don't have my own office. Today I'm told I'm definitely a prole. This is all really truly dumb. But kind of a guilty pleasure.

[HS: If you live in Park Slope, you are upper middle class or at least have pretentions of being upper middle class. If you work in a cubicle in Manhattan, you can still be upper middle class (but on the lower end of it).]

[Duwwd]

Before cubicles were invented lower value office workers either had no privacy in giant rooms or worked in buildings with many narrow hallways and small windowless offices.

All that said, I have a huge office and it really is great. I can pace a bit on the phone change my clothes if needed have small meetings with access to my desktop etc.

I'm in San Diego which is far from a cheap town but still has office rents 60% to 70% less than manhattan.

[superdestroyer]

HS,

What about having someone else shine your shoes? I have found it is great to go to the shoe shine stand instead of doing it myself.

[John]

Remember Mr. Incredible's "office" at the beginning of the movie?

[2ndTry]

Zuck has a cubicle. I think he's worth billions. Prole!

[Ian]

[HS: If you live in Park Slope, you are upper middle class or at least have pretentions of being upper middle class. If you work in a cubicle in Manhattan, you can still be upper middle class (but on the lower end of it).]

So a trader working a desk at Goldman is low class? In certain types of jobs, cubicle-type work is par for the course, and really shouldn't reflect poorly on the person.

[The Secret of NAM]

We need a federal desk czar to redistribute the corner office to the people. Put the boss in storage room B or HS will give Marxist pamphlets to hispanic-studies majors at the nearest Occupy.

EFL!
(Egalite, Fraternite, Liberte)

[Davver]

Ian,

Pointing out trading floors is exactly the kind of nerdy gotcha shit that people hate. Trading floors exist to facilitate communication. People don't have offices for a functional reason. Those high enough on the food chain that they don't need to shout at the trader next to them have offices.

[John]

Relevant Article regards private offices.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html

[Tanizaki]

HS, I have been wondering about what you would think of the USA drama series, "Suits".

In case you are not familiar with the show, it is about a high IQ college dropout who never went to law school. He used to use his brain to take the LSAT for law school applicants, and ends up getting hired at a BIGLAW firm that hires Harvard graduates. (a minor running story line is hiding the fact that he never went to law school)

Even though this is a BIGLAW firm in Manhattan, the managing (and founding) partner is a black woman. I questioned how realistic this is. I also noticed that the hot paralegal has an office with a stunning view, while the main character and other associates work in cubicles. I have never roamed the halls of a NYC BIGLAW firm, but I cannot imagine that associates would be in cubicles. (At my firm, all lawyers and paralegals have offices - secretaries and other staff have cubicles)

The black female named partner is not the only anti-HBD component. The hot paralegal who is the love interest is explained as being really smart but having "test anxiety". This is the explanation for why she is not a lawyer. Some people just can't do well on tests!

[HS: I haven't seen the show, but it sounds completely unrealistic. At BIGLAW, lawyers, even associates, have window offices, and paralegals and support staff have inner windowless offices or cubicles or open work spaces. And of course, you can't work as a lawyer without a law degree. It's illegal: unauthorized practice of law.]

[Cube Ant]

"For the most part, Hollywood movies don't show characters at their jobs at all since the work world rarely makes for interesting drama."

Ha! In real life it makes for LOTS of drama.

Where I work a real office with a door corresponds to $100k a year and above. Of course this varies very widely by industry and company. We have cubicles of 3 different sizes (at $70k a year I have a mid-sized cube) and offices of 3 different sizes as well. The height of cubicle walls is pretty important in regards to one's quality of life. Where I work the walls are about five and a half feet high. I've seen them much lower at other places. Not being next to either a copy machine or one's boss is great too.

By the way, where I work the guys with offices are supposed to always keep their doors open. They don't have much privacy. The idea is that subordinates must always feel welcome to come in with questions. Which we do, all the time. For me an office with a door is a symbol of rank, like an extra bar on a shoulder board would be to a lieutenant, not of much extra privacy. Those little refrigerators that people usually keep in their offices have acquired the same sort of an association in my mind. They're not even that expensive. I have a full-sized fridge in my apartment. But whenever I see those little half-sized ones in a store, I'm thinking of money and power.

[superdestroyer]

John,

the real point of the silicon vally article is that programmers and techie types are generally introverts who lose energy being around other people. Putting them in a private office makes them more productive. Putting a type=A extrovert in an office just means that they will wander out of their office or talk on the phone all of the time.

[Blue Willow]

I have a private office and do my own laundry. I also sleep with dogs and make my own clothes. I'm a middle-aged-creeping-towards-elderly white female who has math degrees and is interested in HBD. I'm sort of a cross between a SWPL and a prol, I think. According to the liberal elites anyone who even THINKS about HBD is far-right chav/prole. I feel sympathetic towards the English Defense League partly because they seem to be mostly working class people. I used to belong to the NDP party in Canada because they were left-winger who sided with unions and working people. That was years ago. Now the NDP is made up of elites and immigrants and I have switched my allegiance to the Conservative party. But I'm rambling.

[John]

I take your point superdestroyed , but he also makes the point of private office being high status. People are often willing to accept lower wages/longer hours if they get the status that comes with a private office.

Lots of extrovert types love offices too, pherhaps not so much for the piece and quiet but more for the status and also they get to call lesser employees into their office to discuss things or in order to dress them down , this makes them feel powerful.

[Tanizaki]

"And of course, you can't work as a lawyer without a law degree. It's illegal: unauthorized practice of law."

Actually, the show is set in New York, which is one of a handful of states that grants law licenses even without a law degree. But in the case of this show, the guy would have never got his license because New York requires at least a year of law school for reading onto the bar exam, and the character was expelled from college for selling exams. LA Law also had a storyline once where Corbin Bersen's secretary was studying for the bar. I don't recall if she ever passed.

"By the way, where I work the guys with offices are supposed to always keep their doors open."

I don't believe we have such a policy, although I could imagine it being a issue if someone always had the door shut. I generally keep mine open unless I need to shut out the idiocy that can rise from the cubicles. (I am not interested in hearing reality tv updates or family drama).

I do love my refrigerator. I cannot imagine what it must be like to write one's name on one's lunch and pray that no one else takes it.

[WRB]

"If you work a cubicle you are prole"

When I worked at Teradyne, even Alex D'Arbeloff (the CEO) had a cubicle. His ancestors were aristocrats who escaped Bolshevik rule.

When serious stuff had to be done, the execs went to a conference room.

[mikeraw]

Dude, a lot of people work in cubicles. I know I do, and I'm in the oil and gas industry.

[Duncan Idaho]

In an era where formal signs of prestige and old fashioned notions of seniority are hard to come by the distribution of office space is very important.

I turned down a chance to have an office twice as large with better lighting because it was in a less desirable location in the building.
I was a little amazed at how easy it was to turn down.

Frankly I was most productive when I shared one large open plan office with four other people where we played CD's (pre-MP3) all day long. We lounged, snacked and somehow managed to get a ton of work done. We made very small salaries at the time.

[RF Interference]

"I cannot imagine what it must be like to write one's name on one's lunch and pray that no one else takes it."

I make a comfortable living despite working in a low walled cubicle. My shirts are all tailored and other people do my shoe shining and laundering. That bit about the small refrigerators is the truth. A couple years back, coworker A brought in a birthday cake for coworker B and my place of employment. The cake had coworker B's name written on it in frosting. Some third party ate half of the previously untouched birthday cake before coworker A could present it to coworker B. It's like Lord of the Flies with communal refrigerators.

[Kyo]

Note from Asia: be thankful for small blessings.

Most Japanese companies don't even have cubicles -- everyone works at long, cafeteria-style tables formed from desks stuck together with no partitions between them. Everyone can see and hear everyone else all the time.

Ambient temperature in the 80s in the summer (which will get worse thanks to post-earthquake power-saving measures); high 70s in winter. Want something cool to drink? Buy it at the vending machine.

I'd *love* a communal refrigerator and a cubicle with partitions.