Cubicleland: A Novel

By Rook Winters

When changes at work threaten to upend their lives, a ragtag group of coworkers has to decide how far they're willing to stick their necks out for each other in this funny, heartfelt, and occasionally satirical story of camaraderie in the modern workplace.

Luke Belmont is a nice guy at the bottom of the corporate ladder and updating documentation for old software isn't exactly a straight shot to senior management. Connie, the grizzled programmer in the next cubicle, has been working on the same software for decades. He just wants to stay off the executive radar.

Unfortunately, the corporate agenda is about to steamroll over everyone's hopes and plans.

A thoughtful and entertaining novel about the people who spend their days navigating the land of cubicles. Run the numbers, leverage some synergies, and pay a visit to Cubicleland today.

(Previously published as The Branch Office.)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rook Winters
• Release date: May 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386146186

Rook Winters

Rook Winters is a tea-fueled writer with a weakness for dad jokes. After many years building software and writing emails, he now writes fiction intentionally. He lives in New Brunswick, Canada with his family and is definitely a dog person. Keep up with Rook at rookwinters.com and follow @rookwinters on Twitter and Medium.

Book preview

CHAPTER 0

Monday

9:37am

He can’t see her thanks to the fabric partition of his cubicle but Connie can hear Sirine coming his way. And this is your desk right down here, she says. She’s quiet for a moment and Connie knows what’s coming next. Connie…

He rolls his chair back from his desk and gives her his best what-did-I-do? face.

Connie, you said you’d clean out this cubicle for the new guy.

I forgot.

She folds her arms in front of her like a cross kindergarten teacher reprimanding a child, which he finds ironic since she was probably in kindergarten when he started this job. This is Luke, she says. Who’s moving into the cubicle.

Luke, who looks older than Sirine but a couple decades younger than Connie, is wearing a blazer with a t-shirt and jeans. The blazer is a step up from the typical attire found in the office, which is mostly populated with software developers and customer support agents. The new guy extends his hand. Luke Belmont, he says. Nice to meet you.

Connie.

Looks like we’re going to be cubicle neighbors.

So it would seem. Your desk’s been empty for a while. I may have let some stuff accumulate over there.

It’s an impressive wall of cans.

Everyone should have a hobby at work, Connie says with a small grin. There are currently 307 diet soda cans stacked along the desk of Luke’s new cubicle. Two rows are complete with sixteen across and eight high for a total of 128 cans per row. The third row is almost half done. Connie had been hoping to get to four rows for a total of 512 cans. Powers of two hold a special place in the heart of computer programmers and Connie just can’t help himself. 128 is 10,000,000 in binary. 512 is 1,000,000,000. A wall of a billion cans. That would have been an accomplishment.

The two men are transfixed by the wall until Sirine says, Well, now your hobby can go in the recycling so Luke can have a desk.

Connie grabs the blue bin from under his desk. His back cracks softly as he stands up. He’s been tall and skinny since he was young. A quarter century working at a desk has taken its toll on his body in ways other than the typical weight gain. The aches, pains, pops, and snaps seem to increase in lockstep with the percentage of grey in his once black beard.

That’ll take a lot of trips. Let me help, Luke says as he grabs a matching blue bin from under his new desk.

I’ll leave you boys to your cleanup. Luke, since your manager is out in the California offices and they’re three hours behind us, it will be a couple hours before you hear from her. You have an appointment with the IT department at ten-thirty this morning to get set up on your computer. Until then, just get settled in. There’s coffee and snacks in the kitchen.

Thanks, Siren.

It’s Sirine.

Right. Sorry. Sirine. Thank you. Luke’s face turns a bright shade of red as Sirine heads back to her post at the reception desk.

That was embarrassing, Luke says to Connie. I can’t believe I got her name wrong.

At least you managed to speak in coherent sentences. That’s more than some of the guys here can manage around Sirine.

After numerous trips moving soda cans to a large bin near the kitchen, the two men settle in their respective cubicles. Connie can hear Luke arranging things. He looks at his own collection of toys, trinkets, and memorabilia from the 1980s. In a few minutes, the state of Luke’s cubicle would give Connie some insight into the type of person he was going to be working with.

The IT guy comes and goes then Luke asks for directions to the men’s room. Once he is out of sight, Connie peeks over the partition wall to check the state of the new guy’s cubicle. Bottle of hand sanitizer. Bottle of hand lotion. Small framed photo of what Connie guesses to be parents and siblings on a beach vacation. And two sticky notes posted along the bottom edge of the computer monitor:

I am the best me there is.

You can, end of story.

Oh, boy, Connie mutters quietly. "One of those guys."

CHAPTER 1

Monday (eleven months later)

8:56am

Luke leans into the lunchroom door and pushes it with his shoulder. He squeezes through the opening carefully, his arms full with a stack of boxes.

Doughnuts, he announces to the handful of people caffeinating themselves before the Monday morning staff meeting.

He sets the four dozen doughnuts on the counter and straightens his blazer so the Vita Innovation logo on his t-shirt is centered. He runs his hand down the front to make sure it’s smooth. He’s managed to hit 30 without a paunch that would make an untucked shirt look sloppy around the office. Like most of the modern software industry, the Middlesworth branch of Vita Innovation leans toward the casual end of the fashion spectrum. T-shirts and hoodies outnumber jackets and ties by a wide margin, but Luke wears his blazer because he feels more professional in it. Dress for the job you want and all that.

Finnian Fitzpatrick, known as Fish to his coworkers, is trying in vain to pump coffee from an obviously empty carafe. He’s exceptionally worked up this morning, even for him.

Morning, Fish. Doughnut?

Fish takes a powdered jelly doughnut from the proffered box, hurls it across the room, and makes a barely human growling sound. A ring of powdered sugar and a smear of vibrant red filling are left on the wall as the deflated confection drops to the floor. Luke stares in disbelief. Fish’s face is flushed and his nostrils flare as he breathes.

Chad is leaning against the wall, a steaming coffee cup in his left hand. He reaches over with his right and swipes a sample of filling.

Cherry, I think. You know, that’s a pretty good arm you have there. How come you don’t play on the softball team with us?

Oh, shut up. You’re all a bunch of savages. Is it too much to ask that somebody, ANYBODY, would make more coffee every now and then!

Polly and Alexis stare in silence from the table. Polly holds a tea bag dangling in the air, forgetting to continue dunking it. Fish slams his Kittens Don’t Judge mug on the counter and storms out of the lunchroom.

I guess someone’s in a mood today, Chad says.

Polly spins in her chair to glare at Chad. What the Sam Hill is wrong with you? It’s only Monday morning.

Chad shrugs. Oh, come on, lighten up. He’s always wound a bit tight. He’s gonna snap sometimes.

Just watch out for the flying pastries, Alexis says.

Polly spins back to glare at her now. And you. It’s your fault the pot was empty. You’re supposed to make more when you finish the pot, everyone knows that. You get to put your headphones on while I have to hear about every other injustice that comes his way today.

Let’s talk about the bigger question here, Chad says as he sits down at the table. Did you really just say, ‘What the Sam Hill’ to me?

Polly replies with her own frustrated growl, though hers is quieter and less threatening. She leaves in a huff, spilling a bit of tea as she goes. Luke grabs a handful of paper towel which he uses to wipe up the tea then gives the mutilated doughnut a proper disposal.

I know, right? Alexis says. It’s like she’s physically incapable of swearing properly.

If I ever say, ‘What the Sam Hill’ in front of you, I want you to throw something at me. There’s no need for that kind of language. Chad pounds his fist on the table in mock disgust and Alexis smirks.

They sip their coffees while Luke puts on a fresh pot. Each second, the quiet ticking of the yellowed wall clock reminds them of the imminent staff meeting and the week full of status reports, spreadsheets, and emails waiting just outside the lunchroom door. Their sullen contemplation is cut off at 8:59am by the call of a cowbell being rung with the tenacity of a hockey mom hopped up on caffeine and maternal instinct.

One of these days, I’m going to throw that stupid cowbell out a window, Alexis says.

The cowbell is a relic from the days when the office had a sales team. They would ring it after closing a big deal. When Ridge Matthews was sent from HQ to be the director for the Vita Innovation office in Middlesworth, he found a box of bric-a-brac abandoned by Sales (they were all laid off or transferred to HQ out in Silicon Valley years ago). Ridge incorporated the cowbell into his routine and now the Monday morning meeting is called to order with a zeal that perfectly contrasts the apathy with which the Middlesworth staff respond.

Except for Luke. Luke jumps into action at the sound of the cowbell. He shoves a pair of boxes into the hands of Alexis and Chad. Here, help me pass out doughnuts.

An article he’d read somewhere recommended bringing the doughnuts as a type of leadership activity, or something like that, so he became the unofficial supplier of Monday morning doughnuts.

Outside the lunchroom, heads are popping up over the tops of cubicles like prairie dogs. Luke offers doughnuts with a genuine smile as dozens of people plod into the open area. In its heyday during the dotcom boom, this office was packed to the walls across multiple floors and growing weekly. In more recent years, they’ve been holding steady around 50 employees. Or so Luke’s been told—he’s still a month away from his one-year anniversary at the company.

As has become custom, Ridge steps onto the veneered coffee table in the reception area, his preferred stage from which to address the Middlesworth staff.

Good morning and happy Monday, team. Ridge gives a solitary clap of his hands. With his wide-shouldered, six-foot frame filling out his precision-tailored suit and his rich baritone voice reaching every corner of the open space, Ridge is the poster child for poised upper middle management. Luke knows the hint of grey in Ridge’s otherwise full head of black hair implies more experience and wisdom than is actually demonstrated, and yet Luke still finds himself drawn in by Ridge’s aura of confidence.

Ridge raises his hands outstretched like a circus announcer ushering in the acrobats and elephants. I have some news, he declares. First, we closed out the quarter strong last week. Our teammates at HQ and in the field signed some great new customers and killed it on renewals, which is great.

Ridge applauds enthusiastically until a few staffers finally join in halfheartedly. Luke looks down at the doughnut box in his hands and feels guilty for not clapping along.

"Second, we are going to have a couple new faces in Middlesworth. Two people are transferring here from HQ, so that’s great news. I’m sure you’ll all give them a warm Middlesworth welcome when they arrive.

Finally, I am sad to report that our funding for recreational activities has been reduced again. For those of you on the office softball team, things will be a little tight, but I’m sure everyone will be happy to chip in a bit to make up the difference. That’s it for today. It’s going to be a great week. Let’s clap it in.

Ridge leads the group in a brief round of applause before hopping down from the coffee table. As the crowd starts to disperse, Luke spots the wiry frame of Connie, his cubicle neighbor, slinking in through the front entrance, his ball cap pulled low over his bearded face and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Luke angles in front of Ridge to offer a doughnut, keeping the director’s gaze away from the door.

Doughnut?

Oh, no thank you, Lou. It’s been a while but I’m still holding on to my rowing physique. No room for doughnuts.

It’s Luke.

What’s that now?

My name is Luke. You said Lou.

Ridge gives Luke a friendly slap on the upper arm. Right, of course, he says, then hurries off to his corner office.

I get it, I don’t write for the company blog like Alexis, or manage the customer service team like Polly, or lead a development team like Chad or Fish. I just write documentation and sometimes buy doughnuts. But he can’t even try to remember my name after eleven months? Luke… it’s not that hard.

Luke shoves the empty doughnut boxes into the trash, the thin cardboard absorbing the brunt of his frustration. He retrieves a wax paper bag he stashed in the kitchen earlier and weaves through the maze of cubicles to the corner opposite from Ridge’s office, as far removed as one can get from power on the floor.

Delivery, Luke announces as he drops the wax paper bag. It lands amidst vintage 80s toys and empty soda cans. A tattered Expos ball cap hangs from a makeshift hook fashioned from a G.I. Joe action figure. "Chocolate glazed with peanuts and toasted coconut."

Right on, Connie says. Thanks.

Connie is the closest thing Luke has to a best friend. He’s been the documentation writer for Connie’s software project for the last eleven months. Despite the eighteen-year gap between them and Connie’s general ambivalence toward most human beings, the older man had inexplicably decided that Luke was all right and the two became friends. Or at least work friends. Luke doesn’t have any delusions that they would be actual real-life friends if they didn’t work together, but he’s at peace with that.

Connie slides the doughnut out of its waxy sheath and his face lights up. He delicately bites into the oversized confection. Flakes of coconut would normally be accumulating in a wild nest of facial hair but today Connie’s beard is neatly trimmed.

Mmmm, doughnut perfection.

Date night? Luke asks, gesturing at the well-groomed beard. Even in the short time Luke has been at Vita Innovation, he knows there are woefully few reasons for which Connie would trim his beard. The last time was a grilling incident not long after Luke started and he prefers not to dwell on his memory of the lingering smell of burnt facial hair.

The parents arrive tomorrow. Figured I might as well clean myself up for their visit. One less thing for them to nag about.

Right, your parents are coming to visit.

Would be a convenient week for some overtime work.

Overtime? First, you’d need to find enough to do to fill the first 40 hours. I’m not even sure what you’re going to do this week. I’m doing edits to the docs for version 49 then the software goes out next week. You won’t have new bug reports for a while.

"First of all, my parents don’t know any of that. And second of all, my parents do not know that."

Well, you could always let Fish know you want more work to do.

Phhht, is the only reply.

Luke drops into his Aeron chair with its one broken armrest. It squeaks even under his modest weight. He shakes the mouse to wake up his computer and slips into his work day.

4:26pm

"Luke. Luke. Luke!" Chad is careful to avoid the faux pas of stepping into someone’s cubicle space uninvited. His frustration builds as he tries knocking on the cubicle wall to get Luke’s attention to no avail. Connie, trying his best to ignore Chad one cube over, finally opens VitaIM, the company’s chat software, and sends an instant message (commonly called a vim, much to Connie’s chagrin since that is also the name of the well-known software he’s been using to write code for twenty years).

connie: behind you

Luke turns his head enough to spot Chad then slips off his headphones. The upbeat chorus of an indie pop song leaks out.

Hey, Chad.

Man, you must have been awfully deep in the zone there.

What? No, I have noise-cancelling headphones. These things are great. They block out everything. I probably wouldn’t hear you talking if you were standing right behind me.

Chad closes his eyes and tilts his head back for a moment, like he’s doing a mental reset. More likely he’s just hiding his eyes rolling.

Listen, he says, the Vortex group is a person short because of Karen’s maternity leave. We really need to borrow some of your time to close out a bunch of bug reports about mistakes in our public docs. Vortex is the latest product so there’s lots of attention on it. Doesn’t look good that the documentation is sloppy. Really need you to prioritize it. We have our daily standup meeting at eight each morning, the team’s an early rising bunch. I usually call in from the car but you should be here in person for it since you’re new to the team.

Opportunity knocks! Your contribution is meaningful. You are not small, you are one part of a bigger whole!

OK, sure. Only thing is that I’m still doing edits for the Doxtronix 49 release so I don’t have much bandwidth this week.

Fortunately, this will only take a little bit of bandwidth. Thanks for your help on this. Will talk to you again tomorrow sometime after standup. For now, you should read through the docs on the web site before the morning. Chad does a non-ironic, two-handed finger gun gesture and takes off down the hall without waiting for a reply.

Connie sends Luke a message moments later.

connie: dude, screw that

connie: vortex team are douches

connie: monolith is putting out ms pac-man today

connie: remember?

connie: you can be chad’s crony 2mw

connie: let’s get out of here

luke: right

luke: ok, let’s go

CHAPTER 2

Monday

7:02pm

So how come you own two Ms. Pac-Man machines exactly? Luke asks.

I haven’t told you that story already?

No, actually. You started to last week but Fish interrupted us.

Right. First of all, let’s just acknowledge that the 80s are the pinnacle of modern entertainment. Games, cartoons, comics, toys—it doesn’t get better, so, of course, it kind of goes without saying that I have two because I was able to get two.

Luke rolls his eyes a little. Of course…

It was eleven or twelve years ago now. I had a big chunk of company stock vest and I’m not sure what to do with it. I’d been dumping everything into retirement savings for years and felt like doing something for myself.

Aren’t your retirement savings for you?

Well, yes, but you know what I mean. I get the idea to build a home arcade with my favorite games. I sold my little townhouse and bought a place with a big basement.

Right, you’ve shown me photos of it.

And I started searching Usenet for anything authentic from the 80s. Posters, collectibles, arcade machines—mostly arcade machines.

What’s Usenet?

"What’s Usenet? What’s Usenet? Are you serious? It’s like the original social network."

You mean like Friendster and MySpace?

No, not like Friendster. All text-based. It’s been around since the 80s. How do you not know this?

I don’t exactly have firm memories from the 80s.

Connie shakes his head. I need to stop discussing anything before Y2K with you, don’t I?

Hey, I remember Y2K. We talked about it in school. So you were searching this Usenet thing, and…

I was searching Usenet and I hit the mother lode. I found a group of people obsessed with all the stuff I was looking for. Within two months of moving into the house, I had Galaga and Pole Position. The Galaga cabinet needed a bit of work, but even still, I was completely excited.

So no Ms. Pac-Man yet?

Not yet. Be patient, I’m getting to it. I get the arcade started, get those two cabinets set up, and then a few months later I get a phone call from a man in Houston.

Texas?

No, Saskatchewan. Of course, Texas.

How did this guy get your number?

I posted it on Usenet.

Really?

Sure, at the time it was mostly harmless. The Internet was a cesspool even then but not as cesspool-y as it is now.

And who was this guy calling from Texas?

It was a fellow who was retiring to a Caribbean island. Apparently, he’d made money in oil.

In Texas? That’s kind of cliché, isn’t it?

I’m not writing a story here, I’m just telling you what I heard. He made his money in oil and now was retiring to the Caribbean. And he owned a couple arcades in Houston. I mean, technically, he’d loaned money to his son to start an arcade, but the arcade business was dying and the father wanted to cash out before he left town, and before things got worse. Since they couldn’t find anyone to buy the business itself without losing a bunch of money, the son gets on Usenet in desperation searching for potential buyers and sees my posts looking for 80s stuff. He gives my number to his father and the father calls me up.

So, the father calls you up and…?

And he says, ‘I have these arcade machines that I’m looking to sell.’ Says he’ll give me a good price if I want to take a bunch of them. Well, that’s a golden opportunity for me. He faxes me a list of everything he has and—

"He faxed you?"

"For crying out loud, would you shut up for two minutes? Yes, he faxed me a list of everything he has to sell. It was a good list, too, lots of older machines in the mix, so I make him an offer for several pinball machines plus Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, and Ms. Pac-Man. And I know what you’re going to say, Space Invaders is technically 70s, not 80s."

I wasn’t going to say that.

But Space Invaders started the golden age of video arcade games. I couldn’t pass that up.

OK, so that’s one Ms. Pac-Man. How did you get the other one?

"You’re a painfully high maintenance audience, you know that, right? When the truck arrives with all these machines, they unload two Ms. Pac-Man cabinets. And I’m like, ‘Uh, something is wrong here. I only bought one Ms. Pac-Man machine.’ The delivery guy says that his shipping list says two, so he’s leaving two. Naturally, I’m freaking out because I’d given a deposit but had to wire the rest of the money after inspecting the machines, and I had already stretched myself thin as it was with what I had actually ordered.

I call the guy in Texas and I can hear him pulling out his paperwork. Since we had agreed on a price per cabinet and since nothing from me said I wanted two of the same machine, he’s in a bind. We had never explicitly stated the total price—

Just the price per machine.

Exactly, and I wasn’t going to pay for something I didn’t agree to purchase and he obviously doesn’t want to pay to ship the thing from the northeast all the way back to Houston. After some back-and-forth, and more than a few choice words from him, we settled on me paying for all the shipping plus one-tenth of the per-machine price for the extra box. And so I ended up with two Ms. Pac-Man machines, one of which was in nearly perfect shape. That one’s at home.

Why didn’t you just sell the extra one?

You have two thumbs. Why don’t you just sell one of those? You hardly need two, do you?

I’m not sure that’s an accurate comparison.

Connie scoffs and waves his hand dismissively.

And now you have one on loan here because you ran out of space in your basement.

Yeah, I had to make room for Burgertime. A pre-divorce fire sale from an Internet friend. I’m paying him a little bit now then giving him a nice generous gift after his divorce is done.

That sounds a little unethical.

Connie shrugs. Those were his terms and I’m getting a top condition Burgertime out of it. The rest is none of my business.

Except the bit where you’re part of a conspiracy to commit fraud in a divorce settlement.

Meh.

Well, I’ll try to visit when you’re in jail. Right now, I need to visit the facilities.

While Luke is gone, Connie embraces the momentary