CUBE LIFE

Say what you will about the ubiquitous fabric-lined cube, it's got staying power. Don't believe it? Look around. Many of you are probably reading this from the confines of one right now.

Born in the research labs of Michigan office furniture maker Herman Miller Inc., the office cubicle -- aka Action Office II -- was supposed to, with its moving parts, free workers from the militaristic grip of rows of desks. It was supposed to unleash creativity and collaboration, and take productivity to new heights.

Instead, it morphed into what some see as a claustrophobic, inflexible cell. Like Albert Einstein and the atom bomb, the cubicle's creator, Robert Propst, came to rue its very existence before he died in 2000.

Set loose on the world, the cubicle became some white-collar workers' personal Frankenstein. (And, at the same time, a friend of corporate bean counters.) "I spent 16 years in a cubicle," said Scott Adams, creator of the "Dilbert" cartoon strip, which regularly lampoons the cube life. "And I still remember walking into the office and having the life drained out of me as I approached my fabric-covered box.

"There's nothing that tells you how unimportant you are than when you see that your cubicle is like everybody else's," he added. "Management tried to sell it as a way to have more communication. I don't know anyone that wants more communication. Most people just want the guy in the next cubicle to shut up."

Attempts to overthrow the cubicle have proved futile. Fortune magazine once dubbed it the Fidel Castro of office furniture. Even after four decades, the cubicle is still king. It accounts for more than half of the $10 billion-plus in annual office furniture sales in North America.

"It certainly has become the predominant way people in corporate America are housed," said Stephen Swicegood, managing director of Gensler Atlanta, an architecture and design firm that has created its share of cubicles. Swicegood estimates about three-fourths of the nation's office dwellers reside in cubicles.

A circular bank building in Atlanta was among the early users, Swicegood said. "It was difficult to put square offices in a round building," he explained. "This idea of putting modular furniture in the building was one of the first installations" in America.

Herman Miller spokesman Mark Schurman was unaware of the Atlanta connection but noted that "Hallmark and Texas Instruments were among the earliest companies to use office cubicles."

From there, the cubicle took up permanent residence in the office alongside other icons like the copier, fax machine and coffee klatch.

The dot-com boom of the 1990s furthered the cubicle's dominance.

"Cube farms" -- offices filled with cubicles where workers were crammed together like college kids in a phone booth -- flourished.

So what's the secret to its longevity? "It reduces space to its leanest and meanest economic essential," said cultural anthropologist Karen Stephenson, a professor of management at Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands. A consultant, Stephenson spent five years at the Harvard School of Design.

"People can make a lot of money when they reduce an office space down to what's absolutely necessary for a human being to function," said Stephenson, who has spent her career studying what makes workplaces and workers tick.

Gina Tenore of Canton, Ga., did time in a cubicle as a telemarketer before launching a career as a singer/songwriter.

"It's a terrible way to work," Tenore said recently in a downtown Atlanta Starbucks. "I'd never do it again. You're like animals caged up."

Retired Navy man Don Stafford disagrees.

"I've never worked in one, but I think it's cool," he said. "There's a little independence there."

The cubicle can take credit for such movies as "Office Space," a film about software programmers and their cubicle angst, as well as TV sitcoms. And even a few careers.

"It became a hideous thing," cartoonist Adams said. "Not that I mind. It allowed me to have a career."