Andy's corner cubicle was miserable, but he was not alone. Rob and Steve were two temps that had been his neighbors for almost a month.

"Dude, I downloaded Commando last night," said Rob, "Arnold rocks!"

"Man, can you burn me a copy?" asked Steve.

"I have one right here..."

"Play it then!"

"Good day, my neighbors," interrupted Andy.

"Yo, Andy, what's the headline this morning? Check mine out: Telecommando gunning down a quarter of its employees!"

"Outsourcing, baby!" cried Steve in his best impression of a heavy German accent.

Andy put down the Wall Street Journal on his desk. "You guys are a bit off."

"Dude, don't be so straight to video."

"Hey, Andy, some guy from sales came into your cubicle," said Steve. "He started asking us questions about where your laptop was, what kind of Telecommando cellphone you had and all that."

"Yeah, he wanted to take your stuff. The dude had his eye on your flat screen monitor. He marked his territory and left his notepad."
Andy picked up the notepad.

"Josh Johnson, the salesman that can't sell water in the desert, is my cubicle vulture." He bit his lip and connected the laptop to the flat screen monitor. This time, there were two new emails. The first was a company-wide email, informing all Telecommando employees of the meeting in the auditorium. Andy glanced at his watch and saw that he did not have much time of employment left.

The second email was from one of Andy's marketing colleagues, Timothy Biggs, better known as Big Tim. Andy opened the email, read it, and deleted it. Instantly, Big Tim, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, showed up at Andy's desk. The heavy man was unshaven, wore a polo shirt, jeans, and a pair of white sneakers. He leaned on the cubicle wall as if he wanted to break it.

Big Tim smiled and said, "Howdy, Andy. I see you got my email. I've set up my inbox to alert me when somebody opens my emails. Tricky, huh?"

"That's some silly stuff you sent me, Timmy," answered Andy.

"I mean, did you really get my email? Get it, getit?"

"Yes, I did get it and deleted it right away."

"It's a classic," shouted Big Tim. He recited his email from memory,
"Dear fellow colleague, I apologize for I must have hit the send button by mistake. Oopsey!" Big Tim began to get excited. "How could I have hit the send button by mistake if I already wrote the message in the text? Ha! Get it? Otherwise you would have received a blank email! Get it, getit? Ha-ha! Stupid Chris Fernandez didn't! How did they hire him into our group?" Big Tim's eruption threatened to collapse Andy's cubicle, but then the laughter stopped. He pointed to Andy's suit. "Laundry day today?"

Rob and Steve raised their heads across the divider.

"Yo, Andy, why you wear a suit today?" asked Steve.

"Dude, whatever happened to casual Fridays?" wondered Rob.

"Well, well, well, look at the two Prairie Doggers," said Big Tim.
"Something interesting happens in cubicle land and the heads immediately pop up."

"Hey, remember that Simpsons episode?" asked Rob. "The one where Homer shows up at work wearing a pink shirt and everyone else wears white? They fired him!"

Big Tim turned to Andy.

"Now, allow me to give you a couple of layoff tips," he said. "Your place is too organized and empty." Big Tim began shuffling papers on Andy's desk. "You need to look busy and have all sorts of things and litter splashed around. It's a volume thing - you need a messy cubicle!"

"Timmy! Please…"

"You wear this suit, yet you look like you have nothing going on. Look important. You also ought to adjust your voicemail limit and have a full mailbox. So, when people call and get the voicemail-is-full message, they'll figure you're a very busy person. Do the same with your email. Also, play dead and don't answer any calls today. I can't believe I need to teach you these things, Andy. Can you sleep with your eyes open?"

"Timmy . . . "

"You ought to play the race card then. What? Don't give me that screen-saver look. Ask some of the executives to show you their diversity manuals or equal opportunity initiatives and, who knows, you might be saved from the layoffs."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that, Big Tim. Besides, all of the senior managers' offices are at the very top of the building. Their heads are in the clouds."

"Tell me about it; closer to the five-star dining room, the sauna and the helipad. The higher up the management ladder we go, the smaller the balls. The less you do out here, the bigger your paycheck."

Big Tim turned to the temps' adjacent cubicle wall and asked, "You two, the contract employees, what the hell are you guys working on?"

"We surf the web, play games, and if we have time left, we do some silly database work," replied Steve. "But right now we're watching Commando."

"Wow, fellas, I haven't seen that movie in a long time," nodded Big Tim.

"Your solid eighties action flick," added Rob. "Arnold rules as Colonel John Matrix." The temp threw a CD across the cubicle separator.
"Here's a copy," he said.

"Are you guys for real?" asked Big Tim. He put his beefy finger in the center of the disc.

"Is this what you two do around here?"

"Well, our project is this database for the finance group," Rob said.

"It's called Project TKO - Telecommando's Knowledge Optimizer," Steve explained. "It's the next big thing over here - we're supposed to track all the numbers for the CFO."

Big Tim scratched his head. "No wonder our numbers are bad. We're all going down, but you two don't seem to really care."
"It's all good," replied Rob. He winked at Steve. "If they do come after us, we'll go up to the helipad and fight it out, just like in the movies."

"Take that, dude!" cried Steve. "A temp will survive the layoffs."

Big Tim's eyes lit up. He walked inside adjacent cubicle of the two temps and the three of them began rating their all-time favorite eighties action movies. Meanwhile, Andy held his aching head in his arms and tried not to listen. He checked his watch again. It was time to get ready for the company-wide meeting.

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