cubicle hacks
December 5, 2006 by Cash
Life in a cubicle can be a soul draining experience.
Between the loss of privacy, micro management and an employer’s constant attempts to treat us in as childlike a fashion as humanly possible, it can take a lot of caffeine and years of therapy to undo the damage done.
Fortunately, there are a few tricks I’ve found to make the experience mildly more tolerable. I’ll share 5 of mine, and ask that all of you comment the hell out of this post to share your own ideas.
Urban Monarchs of the world.. unite and take over.
1) FUCK THE FIREWALL
My perversely anal employer recently thwarted my ability to utilize this one, but hopefully it can still help some of you.
If you’re tired of seeing “Surf Control - Category: Employee Maintains a Will To Live” everytime you try to access your favorite site, Google may have a cure. Google’s “Cached” version feature allows you to see a stored image of most pages its matrix-like bots have crawled.
Simply click the word “Cached” under the description of a site you’ve searched for on Google.
(It’s good for static pages, but won’t help much with checking up on your eBay auctions and the like.) (See the example below):
2) STOPPING THE SNEAK UP
In my office, the carpet seems exceptionally good at silencing coworkers approaching from behind. This can be bad news bears when I’m in the midst of an instant message, personal email, or general web surfing fun.
The solution? A small, fish eye style mirror attached to my monitor.
Available in the auto department of your local Super Target, Wal Mart, etc (they’re intended to be used to expand the field of vision on your side rear view mirrors)
3) KEYSTROKE ESCAPE HATCH
Used in tandem with #2, this can be a lifesaver.
If you’re looking at something your boss might not appreciate, a good habit to get into is resting your left thumb on the “Alt” key and keeping your middle finger on the “Tab” key.
Why? Hitting Alt, Tab and then releasing together will immediately switch your window to another open application. Practice makes perfect on this one. I like to keep a full sized version of a Word document open to insure it fills the entire screen when I switch over.
4) STEALTH SURFER
In my old cube, which was impossibly short and in the middle of a busy walkway even completely ‘legitimate’ surfing (i.e. news, weather, etc) could be frowned upon. The solution?
- Open web browser in a small window
- Type URL
- Do a “Ctrl+A” to select the entire contents of the screen.
- Ctrl+C to copy
- Open notepad, and “Ctrl+V” to paste
Now I could read at my leisure in a relatively transparent fashion to those around me. Keeping the notepad window small (with word wrap turned on) and floating over a legitimate work document (word, excel, whatever) proved the most effective technique.
5) BUSTING THE BIOHAZARD - COFFEE EDITION
In most places I’ve worked, one of the ‘perks’ of the job was free ‘coffee’ available in the pantry area. In every case, the coffee has been undrinkable, D-grade sludge I wouldn’t feed to a stalker ex-girlfriend.
In my current office, this effect is compounded 99x by the fact that the grounds dispenser is literally within 1/2 inch of the garbage chute. Even if you’re not the germaphobe that I am, you can visualize a trash pile steaming and stacked well above the spot where the grounds of your precious brew meets the filter.
Gawd I just puked in my mouth a bit thinking of it.
The solution? Instant coffee. Almost as cheap as the swill they’re offering (the Taster’s Choice I buy comes out to 8 cents a cup) it’s easy to make. Add a tsp to your cup and then use the hot water dispenser on the coffee maker to fill er’ up. If you’re not keen on black coffee like I am, bring some powdered Coffeemate in to flavor it up a bit.
Gentlemen: Start your commenting engines. God knows I’ve missed dozens of good ideas you’re dying to share.
I know someone with a Kitchen Aide Mixer… It’s real nice.
I found that weighted juggling balls really seem to help with the carpal tunnel. and take your mind for a moment or two off of what you are doing.
http://www.dube.com/ball/5.html
i’ve yet to find any real coffee, no matter how cheap, that tastes worse than instant.
Mmmmmm Illy.
Goat - great idea.. I love juggling to begin with, and hadn’t even thought of the therapudic value.
Rick - absolutely agreed on Illy (probably in my top 3 behind Lavazza and Segafredo) but instant’s so.. convenient.
It has definitely been an acquired taste though. I think of it more as a utilitarian thing (caffeine injection!) than a ’savor the flavor thing’.
Point taken though. It’s noooo Illy!
Talk about a million dollar idea: truly tasty instant coffee.
I’ve been thinking of getting an Aeropress for work to solve the coffee problem. Costs $40, and replacement filter packs run $5. It apparently makes good, moka-like coffee.
If your workplace has some sort of hot-enough-to-brew-coffee-water-dispenser or a faucet+microwave (and your own heating container), you can make yourself a nice cup (or thermos-full) of coffee with a french press. Sure, it’ll take a few minutes more of prep, but it’s a better tasting solution than your instant-sewage solution.
A non-simple solution to the corporate firewall would be to tunnel all your web traffic through an unsecured site, such as your box at home. Not only would this allow you to bypass your local proxy, but your browsing would also be encrypted, far from the prying eyes of people like me (who probably monitor your network (Yes, I see the porn you’re looking at, and yes, I’m bookmarking it for “further research” later).
Jess, great suggestion with the French Press, especially considering I already have one at home. A bit of a pain to clean, but the quality is infinitely superior.
The re-routing of traffic is good too. Can you do this in a fashion that won’t raise alarms with the network security folks? I’m guessing you’d need a static IP at home and then somehow just go through that?
dyndns.org can help with the dynamic addressing
and just use ssh to tunnel your traffic, simple lookup putty on google
also note on juggling balls. they’re heavy enough that make sure you’re not near people or things you could break
Windows key + D allows you to minimize all windows which is very useful when watching videos on you tube etc, if people approach your desk
Fred!!! That Windows key + D is brilliant!!! Definitely adding it to my bag of tricks. Thanks.
no worries ;), also, when people start running vista in office places, looking at websites will be all the easier due to tabbed browsing, which allows u to just switch pages as and when neccesary without things being too obvious
damnit every comment i wanted to make is already on here
http://www.sofotex.com/4t-Tray-Minimizer-download_L5573.html
4 Tray Minimizer is an excellent program. I always feel paranoid when my boss walks up ’cause I’ve got my browser minimized, but with 4 Tray the window minimizes to the system tray when you right click on the minimize button. Also, you can right click on the taskbar icon and there’s a “minimize to tray” option.
[...] If you succumb to the Winterbell timesink, be sure to read Cubicle Hacks first — no one wants the boss-man catching you engrossed in a fruity bunny game. [...]
Another suggestion that I just thought of (after clicking this link from a more-recent post!).
Remove all your icons from your desktop. Open up a few “legit” applications and no bad stuff, position them around your screen. Take a screenshot. Set your taskbar to “auto-hide” and set the background as that screenshot you took. Use windows key + D to minimize everything and make it look like you’re actually working. Prepare an alt-tab to actually bring up actual work.
As for the tunneling stuff, someone already said it. You’d set it up at home, and either using a static IP or a dynamic dns server, you’d essentially use your home box as an encrypted proxy. It would look like normal outbound SSH traffic.. assuming that’s allowed.