For the first time in my work experience, I’m working in an open office with a cubicle. For me, that’s a different type of work experience. Although I’ve worked in an office before, it was private. I had the office all to myself, and I could close the door. That experience was wonderful for the joy of my introverted, quirky self, and I basked in the glory of the times I could retreat into that office from the static of all the noise that pulsated around me.
This time around, however, I found myself in a less than similar circumstance. I am a part of an open office, and I have my own cubicle. It’s private enough, but not private. During my first week on the job orientation, I was in another location with the same type of layout. The cubicles were nice, but the walls of the cubicles were low with translucent glass around the top of the sides. I could clear see all of my neighbors.
I spent a week within that cubicle space and found myself highly distracted, and in my years in my previous jobs, I’d never been so easily distracted as I was in this particular position. I couldn’t focus much at all, and I reasoned that this was so unlike me. I’d sat in churches and meetings and was able to hold my attention even if the topics discussed didn’t interest me. I’d just spend the time making words out of words or adding and/or subtracting numbers. Even worse, I often looked like I was paying attention only to actually be daydreaming as if to be in some type of trance. I zoned out a lot.
During this work time within the cubicle space during orientation, I spent a lot of time attempting to tune people out. The excessive talking was necessary for the job since there were a lot of phone conversations with clients. Yet, outside of this, the open floor plan within the office gave coworkers the opportunity to get up and wander around to other cubicles and carry on short conversations about any and everything. Although I can be hyper-focused into my own world at times, this environment was a bit much for me, and I found it incredibly difficult to focus on my work tasks.
I figured that once I got past the orientation piece, I might be okay once I began the actual job assignment. Yet, nothing prepared me for how intense a change I would experience from such an open environment. Even though I came from the education world where I spent time teaching students, the environment was a bit more structured because I made it so. There were times of organized peace and times of organized chaos. The environment totally fit my personality and my quirks. I was free to be my most authentic self – free of judgment and free to stim.
Within this office environment, however, I wasn’t really free to do anything. I couldn’t even focus … let alone complete my tasks. There were just far too many distractions, and I found myself overstimulated by the bright lights within the office, the bright computer screens, the excessive talking that seemed to become louder, the constant office movement and noise, and the inability I had to sit still. I absolutely couldn’t find any peace within this environment, and it had nothing to do with any negative energy from others at all. In fact, negative energy was secondary.
I actually found that sitting still for very long was intolerable. I got up several times to go to the restroom as if to deal with some type of nervous energy. I walked around and realized that I lacked the ability to move as I once did before on the previous job I had left. I had gone from a job walking 20,000 to 25,000 steps a day down to mainly sitting on the job, and it felt tortuous to me. I couldn’t move, and I felt extremely restless. Soon, my greatest concern about the job was less about any discernable toxicity within the workplace and more about how I was going to manage neurodivergent traits within the workplace.
The only time I’d noticed this before about myself was when I was overstimulated within an environment. I’d always been in jobs where I had enough autonomy to move around and express my autistic and hyperactive traits. In my educational career, I was in a setting where I didn’t have to mask my authentic self as much and could be as animated as I needed to be. I was free and not confined as I was sitting at a desk in a cubicle, and this felt like such a stark contrast to me even compared to sitting at my desk at home when I was deeply hyper-focused on a research topic.
The difference is that at home, I could be myself while focusing on what I liked, but on this new job, I had tasks to complete, and the less I liked a task or the more I felt compelled to complete a task for the sake of completing it, the less attention I was able to give to it. On the previous job I quit, I didn’t remain still enough to take a break. I always had to be moving or I’d become anxiously bored beyond my ability to tolerate, and so it was with this cubicle environment.
When I was finally at my assigned job location, I was a little more at ease. The cubicle walls are taller, and I have a little more privacy even though at any moment someone can walk around and be in my work space. The difference within this work setting is that people are more respectful and pretty much stay within their own spaces. There’s not a lot of walking around unless there are walking breaks for stretching and moving around. The people within this space are quiet enough, and that limits the amount of distractions I must deal with.
However, I’m still finding it difficult to navigate sitting still and remaining focused within this environment. I hadn’t paid much attention to my hyperactivity and autism before, and although I’d been researching on the topics to understand myself, I hadn’t truly thought about how I was affected by them. The constant need to blink, the constant fidgeting, the constant need to stim at work has become so overwhelming that I’ve had to do some grounding techniques to “feel” myself into peace again.
Yet, none of this has anything to do with the actual peace of being within this workspace. That’s a different caveat. It’s more about me and my own internal needs for focus. For the first time, I thought I might need to take some medication to calm me, and without wanting to reveal my quirks to anyone, I questioned one coworker about how they deal with sitting all day because I didn’t know if I could sit for eight hours straight even if I got up to go to the restroom.
Fortunately, everyone chimed in with some great tips about how I could get through the day. It turns out, I’m not the only one in the office who’s neurodivergent! So it was great hearing how I’m not the only one who finds it hard to focus. For the bulk of my time, I was told that my restlessness is also because of all the assessments I’ve had to complete and the lack of training I’ve had for my actual position. I was told that once I received my job assignment tasks, I won’t be as restless (maybe) because I’d have a lot of work to do. That was indeed a relief to hear.
Aside from all that though, I’ve had to take to getting some reading glasses with blue light filtering, gel eye drops, and exercises to increase my blinking while I take breaks to decrease eye strain. Because of staring at a computer screen all day, my eyes are drying out a lot faster, and by the end of a work day, I sometimes have eyes that feel engorged with sand. It’s so painful that I’ve sometimes had to wear shades even at night just to drive to keep from sunlight or car headlights from blinding my eyes.
Needless to say, I’ve come up with strategies to make it through this different type of work environment. Of course, when my actual duties begin, I’ll have to make some changes, but until then, I work in 25 minute segments (when I can), take a five minute break to stare at something other than a computer screen, and then repeat until I take a 15 minute break to walk around. Also, because I find that being around even the smallest group of people drains my energy, I eat lunch mainly alone and in a room with only natural sunlight. Then I go to my car for a 20 minute nap. That way, I am refreshed to begin another four hour work segment.
I also eat light snacks throughout the day, drink water, and stim! No one can see my stimming in my cubicle – rocking back and forth and/or twirling within my chair, blinking profusely, making words from other words when I need a brain break, or biting my nails. Fortunately, I’m positioned away from too much traffic, and I am far enough away from coworkers to distract me. No other coworkers are even around me, and I cannot see over the walls of the cubicle because they are so high. So this makes me feel somewhat safe enough, and I feel less distracted by what’s going on around me even if I can hear constant talking. Eventually, I dissociate and/or focus enough to tune the noise out.
I’m learning to navigate a different type of work experience, and this puts me into a place where I’m learning a lot more about myself in terms of how I fit in (but often don’t fit in).
More to come …
My Voice Unchained 