I had suffered the great misfortune of missing an office birthday celebration due to an offsite meeting. Sometimes a little sugar and fat can turn your whole day around. Reaching my cube, I peered over the West wall and asked Patty if there was any cake left. “Yes there is,” she said. “Go check the kitchen.”

I dropped my laptop backpack and headed straight for the lunch area. The tables were lacking the messy aftermath of a sugar binge, but I clearly saw a cake box. Moving closer I found an untouched shortcake. Next to that was a bowl of strawberry topping and then some whipped cream. I started to help myself then thought I should double-check with Patty.

I told Patty no one had eaten the cake, but she said they had a whole extra cake and no one wanted any more.

Invigorated once again, I headed back to the kitchen and cut a generous wedge from the shortcake. The strawberries in the sauce were fresh and the whipped cream also appeared untouched. I limited myself to one piece and was not disappointed.

As I returned to my cube, Patty was standing up. “You had cake!” she said.

“Of course I did - it was great.”

“We haven’t done birthdays yet - they had to delay it to the end of the day.”

Not only did I deeply regret what I had just done, but I couldn’t face the thought of sitting through the actual birthday celebration with that big wedge out of the shortcake. It wasn’t even my birthday! I also knew this story would be repeated for the rest of my tenure with the company and beyond. It was time for a new and very cynical Leonard.

I had my head down in my cube checking how many hits I had gotten on a new tropical fish blog I started. Of the 38 visitors to the site I had determined 35 were either family or myself, and I was trying to track the other 3. Suddenly a subtle but deep roar filled the whole building followed by a whishing sound. It reminded me of what people claim they hear before an earthquake. I looked around at my cubicle neighbors and they either did not notice or did not care.

Standing up I surveyed the ceiling of the large warehouse that sheltered all our cubes. The sound had grown louder and I could almost feel a vibration in the floor. Alex across the aisle caught my eye and he must have seen not-so-subtle concern on my face. “The CEO is landing on the roof,” he said. “His helicopter.”

Well I was new at the time and did not know how often this happened, but it certainly deserved more attention than the near total apathy of my colleagues. I hurried outside to catch some of the action and maybe even meet the man - why not? My mind played through one of those instant fantasies of getting into a deep conversation on corporate strategy then heading off to Starbucks together.

As I exited into the parking lot things were abnormally quiet, in fact quieter than inside the building. I scanned the roof and the sky but there was no activity other than a few crows passing by.

If you must know, the joke was on me. The strange sound was the building manager flushing the pipes of the fire sprinkler system. It happened all the time and for most people had become part of the indiscernible gray fog that surrounds the great cubicle world. I returned to my new blog with a little less enthusiasm.

Do you ever feel like you are doing a whole lotta work that is not actually your responsibility? Wait…you work in a cube. Of course you do. It’s a frequent occurrence in the office world. Or at least it has been at every cubicle I have inhabited. How does this happen? I can only handle it for so long and today I reached my breaking point.

I’m consulting on a graphic design project at the moment and over the past few months my tasks have grown to include coding, editing, and other miscellaneous left-overs that have to be corrected or completed before my design work can be added. I realize I should have pushed back early on, but as we all know, it is far too easy to fall into the mode of doing favors for others when your work is dependent on theirs. So I’ll take part of the blame and refrain from halting the whole project by refusing to clean up other departments’ messes. Instead I have chosen to leave a little parting gift of my own… sorry, I can’t reveal the details as I am still working on this account. But let’s just say the developers of said product will be putting in some extra hours at the office cleaning up the glitch.

As the competitive food drive donations are measured by weight, I was curious to see how this would be done. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. Our Executive Admin (God bless her - seriously) showed up with a bathroom scale that was well-broken in. She used her own weight as the tare, then would stand on the scale with as much groceries as she could hold. Subtracting her weight, she would then jot down the measurement. I would consider this approach reasonable with small groups of bags, but the company now has cumulatively several thousand pounds in cardboard barrels that are about 3 feet tall. As I said, God bless her. Oy vey.