Creative Ways to Decorate Your Office Cubicle

The cube farm. Creation of the efficiency mentality, bane of corporate existence. How can you make your cube more personal, more distinctive, a real home-from-home? Here's a few suggestions!

Corporate Memos

"Did you get that memo?" becomes a thing of the past. Every time you receive a memo from upper management, simply print it off and pin it to the partition. You could even print them in different colours and text styles, to highlight the ones full of management-speak that really ruined your day! Soon your cube will become a testament to the inadequacy of your bosses, the ridiculous notions being instituted by the board of Directors and all those intriguing little things you must remember to do with cover-sheets!

Licorice Laces

A dual-purpose idea, as it not only decorates your cube, but provides that essential mid-morning snack to go with your coffee. Stick some longer pins in the partitions and hang licorice laces on them. Give your cube that "licorice jungle" look and go on an eating safari. For the really adventurous, try mixing in some marshmallows or doughnuts.

Corporate Photos

If your company has an employee directory, print off as many photos as you can of your colleagues. Pin them up in little groups, with obscure annotations like "Secure 3" and "Biohazard" jotted on them in marker pen. To keep your fellow workers as paranoid as possible, you can even move people between groups occasionally... or make them 'disappear' suddenly one day!

Polystyrene Chips

For the touchy-feely cube, a pot of glue and a bag of polystyrene packaging chips can work wonders. Add a few pots of paper paint and you can work in a veritable art gallery! Unlimited design potential and the possibility of making those horrible squeaking noises by rubbing them together when your neighbour is on the phone give this option that extra fun value.

Coffee Cups

For the more serious worker, an alternative to polystyrene chips is to use old coffee cups from the vending machine. If you want to worry your colleagues, write the date on each one with a score out of 10 for the coffee it contained. Don't forget that they should be pinned on without washing them first! An additional bonus is that you can play cube basketball with scraps of rolled-up paper, staples, stress balls or important documents.

Design Diagrams

Spread paranoia and put your job in true jeopardy by pinning up design diagrams. Choose carefully: bombs, WMD manufacturing plants, poison gas delivery systems, hand weapons and torture devices are the way to go here. Alternatively, how about switching for diagrams of the ventilation system of your company's building, with the bosses' offices outlined in red, or the finance department carefully marked?

Rejection Letters

Been having trouble finding or keeping a job? How about taking copies of all those rejection letters you received and using those as wallpaper? Add a few dismissal or disciplinary documents, court summons and parking tickets for that James Dean "Rebel Without A Cause" effect.

Barbed Wire

For the true lone wolf worker. Never be hassled by requests for meetings. Stop your boss breathing down your neck and looking over your shoulder. Your colleagues will surely leave you to get on with your job if they can't get past the cube entrance without inflicting serious injury on themselves! Go for the Berlin Wall look!

The Boss

When it's all become too much and you finally go postal, how about declaring to all and sundry that they have to stop pushing you? Yes! Nail the boss to the partition! In true medieval style, this one will surely stop anyone from upper management giving you hassle. Just be sure to check the cube partitions can take the weight, or the janitor might get upset.

[Note: This is humour. Don't do any of these things. And don't blame me if you do, and then get fired, arrested, committed to an asylum, promoted or anything else.]