Can Cubicles Be Prostitutes?

I took a nap in the middle of the day and now I’m being punished for it. Someone just sent me a link to loosecubes.com. I don’t know what it is. I went to the front page and it looked like a map of NYC with a bunch of boxes on it. But my brain is still in nap-mode so I click around, random things are happening on the screen (little boxes are getting bigger, happy faces appear), and I just clicked away. Note, if you are the company, “loosecubes.com” it’s totally not your fault. My brain is still in nap-mode and I couldn’t focus.

(an example of a place with a “loose cube”. Would I have to huddle in the center with everyone?)

But my assumption is the company is about finding random places to work in the middle of the day that happen to be available. Like if some company has a “loose cube” with maybe a workstation(?) on it or a place I can plug in my laptop then I could go there, maybe pay a fee (?), and then start working.

And the idea of this really appealed to me. But then I have to ask: why would I want to work at some random part of the city, in a room full of strangers, in a cubicle where presumably I’d either be too loud (when I talk on the phone I wake up the neighborhood), or they’d be too loud (I need quiet to write, or to nap). So what could possibly be so appealing about loosecubes. And yet, my heart strings tugged.

(Jackie D is apparently a “professional like me” and is “fashion friendly” which is important because I dress like shit)

Maybe I crave friendship. I just want to show up some place and there’d be a crowd of nice looking people surrounding me saying, “hey, we’re so glad you’re here!” And they would show me to my desk. Everyone would smile at me (apparently when we are kids we smile 400 times a day and now we only smile about 28 times a day. Also apparently, baseball players who smile on baseball cards live 7 years longer than the players who don’t. Interesting!) and so that would encourage me to smile back. So, as per my parenthetical, with loosecubes I might live longer.

(another loose cube place. Does this mean I can also play in a band?)

I had a best friend from 1989-1994. We ate breakfast, lunch, dinner together almost every day. Sometimes we’d skip work and go to museums. We joined the museum. I didn’t go to his wedding in 2002 even though he went to all of my similar events. I stopped calling him even though he left 20 messages. I hate it when I do that. I move on and I can’t help it. Maybe I’ve grown out of it. I last spoke to him about 12 years ago.

I had a best friend from 1st grade through 12th grade. But we haven’t spoken since. I don’t even know where he is to facebook friend him. He has a common name. “Robert Frankel”. Anyone know him? Nobody does. He’s probably dead. Maybe murdered.

So the idea of a random group of friends for the day wherever my “loose cube” is  sounds a bit appealing. No attachments at all. Like, I would pay maybe $20 to go someplace, plug my laptop in, and pretend to be working with all my friends/colleagues for the day. We’d laugh, tell some stories, some intimacies by the water cooler. And then I’d leave and be done with them. Tomorrow, a new loose cube for me. Its like friend/cube prostitution. Is that the idea? Because now I’m fully awake but the sun is out and I want to go outside for a bit. Maybe I’ll find some friends some other time.

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Follow me on twitter so I can at least conflate followers with friends. (Oh, and I like to use the word “conflate” a lot).

 

(can I ride the Zebra?)

 

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