Cubeworld

I have had many types of offices in my life. In fact, I used to have my own office with a door I could shut. That was bliss. I could interview people on speakerphone and type at the same time. Before that, I was at a desk in a row of desks, facing another row of desks in one of those start-up attempts at "community buildling" which just meant that everyone heard all of your phone calls. And sometimes commented on them, which seemed to me like a severe breach of ettiquite. Before that, I was in a newspaper newsroom, which are not known for privacy. In fact, most of the fun in a newsroom comes from listening to your colleagues try and get information out of the reulctant. It's okay to comment there.

Now, however, I work in a gray cubicle in a gray office in Manhattan. Don't get me wrong. I love that I'm in the city. The trade-off, unfortunately, was my office.

There is a woman whose cubicle is diagonally situated from my own, but who seems to think that she is alone, in some sound-proof room, where no one can tell that she's making yet *another* personal call from her work phone in the middle of the afternoon. We all use the phone for personal calls, but some people are out of hand.

This particular specimin, who we shall lovingly refer to as "Miss X", is recently engaged to be married. I forsee about a year of vicarious wedding planning in my future, and I can hardly wait to hear about the trials and tribulations this Miss X experiences in her long road from bleach-blonde singleton to "married to a guy from Long Island," My ascerbic wit is chomping at the bit.

Let the games begin.