Modesty Panels, please.

It seems to be my lot in life to always work for "alternative" businesses. Start ups, dotcoms in their formative years (before they learn to conform to labor laws), non profits also in their early years, women owned cooperatives and vegetable companies run by a gaggle of people who have all been each other's lovers at various times in their histories... yet I've also worked for a monolithic school district, in which I was just a number (and hell, my number got transposed, resulting in my not having any reported income for a year), and for a huge cable company, but those were long ago. I say it's my lot in life, but of course, I've chosen to work where I have.

My latest gripe is that in my office (in its 6th year, and has only 12 full time staff), we work at weird, huge desks from a bygone era. Now I'm all for mid century modern antiques. These are not mid century modern antiques. They're ugly, huge, clunky veneer-covered desks like teachers or barristers or office people may have sat at in the early 80's. There are no height adjustments. There are no rounded corners. I don't have any drawers, for god's sake (no, I have a little Rubbermaid bin under my desk with all my office supplies in it). You can see our legs from the frontside, and if we were to let our legs fall slightly open, you could quite possibly see the crotches of our panties, in some cases, or just a fabric-covered crotch, in others. Either way-- CROTCH. There are no cozy little walls around us, no "modesty panels" as they are called in the office furniture industry, no surfaces to which you can tack or stick any of the papers you need to look at daily. One cannot slump, have any sort of a messy desk at all ("OH, WE NEED TO ZEN YOUR DESK!" bellowed by boss one day, pointing at my papers as if she were pointing at a pile of dog poop. As if "zen" is a verb for casual use in the Judeo Christian world... as if I am not the person in charge of reconciling our credit card bills and our petty cash, a task that involves the spreading out and deciphering and proper budgetary coding of many many receipts! As if I WANT to have a messy desk covered by everyone's receipts!)

To people who complain about working in cubicles, just know that there are office workers out here who are envious of your little cubicle, your modicum of privacy. There are workers who are envious of Dilbert, who long to be surrounded by some dull gray fabric, who long for a drawer in which to put their stuff, who long to chew their lunch without everyone else watching.

Supposedly, we are having some sort of office reorganization soon. I hope that involves a more ergonomic and productive set up, but I fear it simply means something like someone deciding to place all the printers and fax machines on my desk.