If you’ve ever worked in a cubicle, you know how it feels. Not good. Luckily, we got out of that prison during Covid and many of us thought the cubicle was dying. Not quite, as many workers return to the office. But we got a taste of what was to come: the death of an antiquated power structure. 

Early in my writing career, I worked day jobs, invariably in a cubicle, or worse, in its precursor, a bullpen, that is, an area where junior employees were grouped together. Granted, the cubicle was an improvement, but it didn’t change how I felt: watched and judged.

Little did I know then that the cubicle evolved to do just that. 

The Cubicle as Symbol of Power

The height of your (former) cubicle’s wall—they come in short, medium and tall—may be an indication of your company’s need to watch you and make sure you’re doing your job. 

That’s because, “…space in an office often reflects the way power operates in a workplace,” Nikel Salvo, author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace, said in a 2014 Atlantic interview. “Design expresses…relationships of hierarchy, control, and authority.” So it goes with the cubicle.

But that wasn’t its original intention. 

The Cubicle as Peaceful Oasis

The first cubicle design appeared in 1964. It was envisioned as a “…mind-oriented living space,” with style, quality materials, color, openness and lots of space, writes Rodd Wagner in Forbes a May 3, 2020 article.

The cubicle went downhill almost immediately, driven by, of course, the bottom line. “Things got progressively claustrophobic from there,” writes Wagner. 

This devolution of the cubicle design was not meant to be comfortable. It was meant to control. 

The Cubicle as Prison Cell

In 1791, Jeremy Bentham published an architectural design that enabled a boss to observe those in his care, reported Thomas McMullan in The Guardian on July 23, 2015. That (cubicle) design was first used in the National Penitentiary in England.

Nearly 200 years later, French philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault nailed what’s really going on. The design and all its fractal echoes—in a society, in a prison, in an office cubicle—is used to subjugate its citizens. 

It creates a vigilance in the prisoner or the citizen to “be good” because you never know when the guard—or boss—is watching. You become, in effect, your own internal watchdog. (This is, in fact, the most sophisticated form of oppression.)

In a cubicle, the walls are short. You never know who will walk by. You never know when the boss or a snoopy co-worker is watching you, so you don’t have long personal phone calls. You don’t pick your nose. You don’t play solitaire. You certainly don’t fart.

All that is changing, thanks to the pandemic. The cubicle walls are falling down and with it the hierarchical design of society itself.

M. Carolyn Miller, MA, designs narrative- and game-based learning. She also writes and speaks about the power of story in our lives and world. www.cultureshape.com