{"id":21,"date":"2004-07-28T11:06:19","date_gmt":"2004-07-28T16:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stein.everybody.org\/journal\/cubicle-non-walls\/"},"modified":"2004-07-28T11:06:19","modified_gmt":"2004-07-28T16:06:19","slug":"cubicle-non-walls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/cubicle-non-walls\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubicle Non-walls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Attention everyone who works in a cubicle:<\/strong><br \/>\nWe can hear everything you say on the phone.  Really.  If you&#8217;re talking loudly enough for the other person on the phone to hear you, then we can hear you too.  Cubicle walls are specially designed to transmit and amplify sound.<\/p>\n<p>I once overheard someone discussing a medical procedure.  I <strong>tried<\/strong> not to listen.  Oh how I wish I&#8217;d been able to tune it out.  Way too much information!  A couple months earlier, I overheard someone quote his salary.  That probably wasn&#8217;t something he wanted to make public.<\/p>\n<p>Why is it that a few people don&#8217;t seem to understand this concept?  I&#8217;ve wondered about that for some time, and I have a theory:  I think that 95% of the cubicle population understands this concept, and it only makes it worse for the 5% who don&#8217;t.  You see, the 5% never overhear anything personal from other people&#8217;s conversations, because everyone else is careful.  Since (1) they don&#8217;t hear other people making that mistake and (2) nobody points out their mistake, they continue under the delusion of privacy.<\/p>\n<p>I had a coworker a few years ago (in another cubicle world) who was disgruntled with his job.  He made many phone calls from his cubicle to old contacts looking for possible openings.  [Note to self:  don&#8217;t do that.]  The rest of the office couldn&#8217;t help but hear him discussing, in what he thought was a lowered voice, how he wasn&#8217;t happy at his current position.  Eventually even his boss (who was in an office with real walls and a door) heard what he was doing and asked him about it.  The poor guy later stopped by my cubicle and asked if I had been able to overhear him making phone calls.  Apparently he had no idea that cubicle walls aren&#8217;t sound-proof.  I felt badly for him.<\/p>\n<p>Conference rooms tend to be open a little before the hour, after one meeting has ended a bit early and before the next meeting has begun.  Great place for personal phone calls.  Your cubicle:  bad place.  Are we clear?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Attention everyone who works in a cubicle: We can hear everything you say on the phone. Really. If you&#8217;re talking loudly enough for the other person on the phone to hear you, then we can hear you too. Cubicle walls are specially designed to transmit and amplify sound. I once overheard someone discussing a medical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}