Cubicle Courtesy

According to CareerBuilder, a company that does something (not sure what) and has an excellent Superbowl commercial, there are certain rules that us cubicle rats should follow. They call them Ten Commandments for cubicle dwellers, and they are:

1. Focus and refocus
2. Make it comfortable
3. Stay off speakerphone
4. Go elsewhere for meetings
5. Be careful of what you say
6. Avoid informal gatherings
7. Be mindful of volume
8. Use your indoor voice
9. Befriend your neighbors
10. Use your manners

Well, with all deference to CareerBuilder, I think they left a few out.

11. Do not bring egg salad, or any variant of hard-boiled eggs to work. There is no circumstance under which I want to smell boiled eggs all day. Furthermore, egg salad is gross. Get some freaking fiber in your diet.
12. Do not clip your fingernails at work. I don’t shave my legs at my desk, so I’m asking for a little from you in return. No one wants to hear the snip, snip, ship of your little fingernails biting the dust.
13. Do not bring your weird collections to work. Beanie babies, glass figurines, vintage beer signs….let it go. I understand you want to make your desk feel homey, but it appears that your home is full of crap. Take this opportunity to make work the one place where your hoarding tendencies can take a rest.
14. Your desk is not a food kitchen. I totally understand that you get occasional snack cravings. Totally understandable. But there is no need for you to keep an entire pantry in your desk drawers. I have a name for your desk: the roach motel. Now just take your Lipton cup-o-soup and assorted flavors of Pop Tarts back home.
15. If you leave your desk, take your cell phone with you. While I like “My Prerogative” just as much as the next person, making it your ringtone means that I have to hear it for an hour straight while your creepy, unemployed boyfriend checks in on you for the hundredth time today. That’s starting to wear on my nerves. There are only so many times that I can do the cabbage patch while sitting in my desk chair.
16. Likewise, just turn the sound on your computer off. I think it’s nice that so many people are emailing and instant messaging you. I am thrilled for your popularity. But the “ping! Ping! Ping!” every time someone tells you something is giving me the twitches.
17. No scripture, please. Please feel free to needlepoint John 3:16 onto every pillow in your home, but it is just inappropriate to post that stuff at work. Keep a bible in your purse. Send private emails to your friends about how great the psalms are. But respect the fact that the atheist next to you is not moved by your faith, and thinks you’re pushy as hell. And don’t give me this, “It’s a private saying for my own benefit.” No, it’s not. It’s a display of your particular religious ideology, which is as inappropriate for the workplace as a demonstration of our sexual ideology, political ideology or social ideology (my social ideology: Skittles for everyone!)
18. If you happen to be kind of slutty, a casual drug user, in a rotten marriage or if your children are all delinquents, please do not work through these issues from your cubicle. I cannot take overhearing your discussion with the clinic about your STDs, I don’t want to hear your calls to the divorce lawyer, or to your children’s school about how you do not know why the class iguana went missing and turned up, dead, in Billy’s backpack. Neither I, nor anyone else, want to hear about how wasted you got over the weekend. That shit is gross.
19. Do not be weird. Trekkie? Part-time dominatrix? Got some bizarre skin disease? Do you LARP? Have very vivid fantasies about killing your boss? Are you heavily medicated? Obsessed with steam engines? Stalking (part-time) Cameron Diaz? Do not share this information! Don’t do it! Work is ever so much better when we all just pretend that we’re normal.