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I don’t know that I’d really call this a celebration. For most of my professional career I have managed to avoid sitting in one, but there has been a time or two in which I have been stuck. I am not a fan.

“The cubicle celebrates its 40th birthday this month. A party is unlikely.

What’s to celebrate? The cubicle office system is one of the most derided realities of modern work life.

Somehow, the spaces that white-collar worker bees unlovingly refer to as “cubes” have become an icon for all that is confining, uninspiring, soulless and humdrum in our workaday lives.

Warrens. Honeycombs. Cube farms. Even “veal-fattening pens.”

The sarcasm — cynicism — wrapped around those fabric-covered panels is remarkable for a system marketed back in 1968 as the Action Office.

Bad rap?

“This was a wonderful concept,” Joe Schwartz said. He was the marketing director at Herman Miller in Michigan when the furniture company shopped a new office system concept around the country.

Schwartz, now 82, retired and living in Scottsdale, Ariz., spent a fair amount of time in Kansas City back then because Hallmark Cards was one of the first adopters of the Action Office.

The late Robert Propst at Herman Miller gets credit for the design, although some of his ideas were lost in translation, Schwartz said.

The basic idea of movable walls was a beautiful thing for employers and employees. For management, reconfiguring space could be accomplished without costly and messy drywall work. Employees gained storage, some privacy, even shelves.

In the initial design, Schwartz said, workers could have desks at two levels, one for sitting and one for standing.

“Propst had the idea that sitting wasn’t good for you and that people could both sit and stand at work and that would improve their health,” Schwartz said.

The Action Office met with some resistance. Managers wondered if privacy was such a good idea. Cost, as always, was an issue. Desks on two levels?

But the biggest alteration was that the cubicles shrunk in response to demands on office space, Schwartz said.”

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In our continuing effort to provide information you might not get elsewhere we are pleased to offer information on how velcro was invented.

“You surely know the famous story about George de Mestral’s 1941 hunting trip in Switzerland – while walking his dog in the mountains, he accidentally brushed up against some cocklebur plants, and by the time he got back home, dozens of the round, spiky seeds were clinging to his wool trousers (and his poor dog’s fur).

What you don’t know is how hard it was for de Mestral to translate that natural stroke of genius into man-made one. He quickly figured out why the seed were so sticky by examining them under a microscope – the spikes each ended in tiny hooks that grabbed onto fabric and fur and wouldn’t let go. (Photo: Francoise and Charles de Mestral, aps.org)

But it wasn’t until 1952 that de Mestral made a serious effort to mimic the cockleburs’ hooks using different types of fabric. He quit his day job and raised $150,000 in venture capital, an enormous sum at the time. He also joined up with a textile weaver from Lyon, France – the only weaver who thought the idea would actually work. The pair’s first attempt, using cotton, was a failure. But nylon, sewn into tiny hooks under bright infrared light, worked much better. He dubbed it “Velcro” after velvet and “crochet,” the French word for “hook.”

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