By JOHN TIERNEY
In one masterly stroke this week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg distracted the press corps from the city's budget problems. After he showed them the newly configured office at City Hall, reporters suddenly had something more important to worry about: what will become of city politics with everyone working in cubicles? On the one hand, it's tantalizing to think that dozens of potential sources will know exactly what the mayor is doing and who's mad at whom. But how are these sources going to leak the information if they are sitting in open cubicles where everyone can hear their phone conversations? City officials might, like smokers, resort to breaks outside the office, and yesterday at least one deputy mayor was spotted standing on a cold sidewalk near City Hall having a long conversation on a cell phone. But officials can escape only so often. The cubicles may end up being a brilliantly devious policy giving the appearance of openness while making this administration even more closed than the last. Veterans of Mr. Bloomberg's company say that he used to be quite open in conversations at his own cubicle. People would hear him talking on the phone and know what kind of mood he was in,·said Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News. It's good to see the boss out there without any gatekeepers. It tells everyone that there are no secrets, that we?e all in this together. It's like being in a boat.
But what if shipmates donn't get along? Mr. Winkler said it was better to have the arguments in the open, as he and Mr. Bloomberg typically did. he would occasionally disagree and end up in the middle of the floor yelling at each other, he said, while the people nearby would be pretending not to listen so they wouldn't be more embarrassed than they already were. But at the end of the argument one of us would make a joke and we would walk away smiling, and everybody could see that it wasn't anything insidious or dangerous. If we've gone into a closed room for the argument, like parents afraid to argue in front of the children, it would have attracted more attention and created more concern. But employees know there's also a down side to openness, and I say this based not merely on my experience as a cubicle dweller in an open newsroom. I say this as a veteran of a visioning workshop held by the interior architects of the new building for The New York Times. They asked employees to give one-word summaries of what we wanted from the new office, and a recurring theme emerged: privacy, escape, harbor. Our most visionary idea, suggested after long complaints about office loudmouths, was to equip each cubicle in the new office with a retractable cone of silence.
OUR workshop's complaints came as no surprise to the worldn't foremost cubicular scholar, Scott Adams. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip and author of the forthcoming Dilbert collection, another Day in Cubicle Paradise. (His next book, he promised after listening to my report, will be titled visioning Workshop. There are two schools of thought on cubicles, Mr. Adams said. one is that cubicles are a wonderful boon to improving communication among the work force. The other scholarly theory is that they are cheaper. Managers always praise the communication, but anybody who works in a cubicle will complain that you cann't stop people from communicating with you.
The unhappiest workers in New York will be the ones sitting close to the
new mayor, Mr. Adams predicted. he recommend they learn a technique for boss repelling, he
said. any time your boss gets within 10 feet of you, bring up an issue that cann't be
solved. It's kind of like training a dog. You want to instill in your boss a feeling of
deep angst and dread anywhere within talking distance of you. It's like an invisible force
field to keep him away from your cubicle. Mr. Adams also helpfully suggested a couple of
sleep techniques for the new City Hall. one method is to put your head down on the desk
and leave one arm extended to the ground, with a pencil below it, he said. If you hear
footsteps, smoothly reach down and pick up the pencil. The other method, which Mr. Adams
personally prefers, is the fake ski injury. You get the neck brace and the dark glasses
and make it seem like you hurt your eye and your neck, Mr. Adams explained. Then you can
actually sleep sitting upright, because your head won't snap over and nobody can see your
eyes are closed. You can just prop yourself up in a chair and sleep for eight hours. It's
good to wear some
kind of drool-resistant shirt.
October 14, 2002