Think outside the cubicle…Obviously that’s what my workplace was thinking when they recently reconfigured our office floor space… not that I’m complaining. I mean, in this case I’ve moved from office to jungle…
And before I forget, a big shout out to Seeker, long time blogging friend. It was a post she made a few weeks back that planted the cubicle seed.
My cubicle is below…special, huh?
Image credit: Wikicommons
Thinking outside the box, made me wonder what other ‘outside the box’ inventions were out there. Google patents didn’t let me down and thought this box invention hit the mark.
I initially thought this delightful 1879 Fire escape patent US221885 involved a box, but alas I was wrong – it was parachute. In the words of designer, Benjamin Oppenheimer,
‘The accompanying drawing represents a side view of a person with my improved fireescape, shown as applied for-use. This invention relates to an improved fireescape or safety device, by which a person may safely jump out of the window of a burning building from any height, and land, withont injury and without the least damage, on the ground; audit consists of a parachute attached, in suitable manner, to the upper part of the body, in combination with overshoes having elastic bottom pads of suitable thickness to take up the concussion with the ground.’
So, maybe the corporate box isn’t such a bad invention after all.
Makes you wonder about the etymology of the corporate ladder, when you can take a lift, as I imagine it is a 20th century expression when lifts were already invented. Yes, I do get the metaphorical aspect of climbing rungs and career ‘rungs’, but still… I tired doing a search on the origin of the corporate ladder but Google let me down. I got as far as page 3 of 3,840,000 and then decided life was too short.
Office in tray management is a big thing these days and many graduates are subjected to assessment centre exercises as part of the job interview process. One of the activities tends to include the in-tray exercise where you are given a hypothetical in tray which you then have to work your way through. With no definitive right or wrong answer, the objective is to assess the candidate’s ability to prioritse, work to a time frame and effectively determine actions to handle the information.
Thank goodness they hadn’t invented this when I went for my initial job interviews, as my uni degree certainly didn’t arm me with these skill sets for when I entered the work force.
