The Rewards of Getting Out of Your Cubicle

Leaving your comfort zone can be a very rewarding exercise. For the last two weeks, I've participated in an experiment at work that culminated in one of life's biggest rewards.

My job is to consult, design, and create software solutions. Normally, I work in what some would call a cube-farm, hundreds of people in dozens of groups all trying to work towards a goal from different directions. It's not always the most effective way of tackling a problem. We thought we'd try something different.

We broke our problem down into small tasks and put members from each group into one room. The productivity went through the roof! We are getting ahead of our goals on a regular basis, but you can't put that many stressed people in one room without some shenanigans. After two weeks and several successes, things got a little weird.

The best time for weirdness is Friday afternoon. Several of us were pecking away at our keyboards while others were planning the next few tasks and running a few tests on the software. There had been several jokes told that day and one programmer decided to have a rim-shot sound file handy for the next round.

I was absorbed in my code when I became vaguely aware of a conversation floating around the room. The topic was sermons, specifically the length of sermons at Sunday services. Several Christian denominations were represented and each shared their experiences. I pushed my chair back, caught the evil-eye of the programmer with the sound file and broke into the conversation with a gravely serious delivery of a very old joke that I re-heard recently.

"I saw a preacher die giving a sermon." The conversation came to a screeching halt. Faces contorted and all eyes turned. "Yea. This preacher used to use a mint to time his sermons. He'd put a mint in his mouth and when it dissolved, the sermon was over. One Sunday he accidentally reached in his pocket and without looking popped a button in his mouth. [dramatic pause] He talked himself to death."

With perfect timing came, "Ba-dump-bump, ching," from my compatriot's computer. Laughter ensued and suddenly coffee was flying as one lady did a real-life spit-take.

Somehow nothing is funnier or more satisfying than actually causing an unrehearsed, genuine spit-take. I was fortunate enough this week to experience that perfect moment in time. The planets aligned, the magnetic field of the earth moved 1/2 of 1 degree backwards, and my coworker spewed a mouthful of coffee all over her computer monitor. Life was perfect for 5 minutes.

Leaving what we know and trying something different can be daunting, but the rewards can be great. Whether you're doing your job better, having more fun, or causing milk to shoot out of someone's nose, breaking old habits can be its own reward. Of course there's something to be said for the classics. "Talked himself to death;" that's a good one.