I sit in a fishbowl. My building is very egalitarian. There are cubes, and there are offices. The cubes are for the temps, the offices are for the employees.

The offices aren't much to brag about. They're quite small. I would guess under 3 meters on a side. The door is a sliding glass door. The wall it is on is all glass, most of it not frosted.

That's why we call our offices fishbowls. Some have put sealife stickers on the glass. Others hang posters - I'm surprised only one office sports 'Finding Nemo.'

Mine, I went crazy. Oriental Trading Company is full of cheap party supplies. They had a special on tiki hut vinyl wall covering for a luau themed party. On it went, over the wall, over the door.

My L-shaped desk I turned 90 degrees, so it ran along the front glass wall and jutted a peninsula into the middle of the office. From the corner onto the peninsula I hung a wall of monitors, effectively saying, "Go away."

As one last measure, I rigged a deadweight to the door so it gently pulled it shut.

Please don't misconstrue this as me wanting to be a hermit or people-phobe. Just the opposite was the case - I enjoy helping people, and my expertise was in a particularly troublesome area in our product. As such, I was very popular. (Even with these countermeasures, the new hire across the hall from me commented on how many people visited.)

Before we moved to this new building with the fishbowl offices, I constantly had people entering and asking me for assistance, which I cheerfully rendered. Never mind the time it took, just the interruption scattered my thoughts.

I also scattered toys on the surfaces I wasn't using. They weren't for me to play with. Sometimes, parents bring their children to work out of necessity - a sick babysitter, an inopportune school holiday, whatever. That my coworkers found them entertaining was a bonus.

I invested heavily in my office. When asked, I replied that it was where I would spend a majority of my waking hours here, so why not make it fun and happy?

As part of changing jobs, I reverted my office back to normal. Drab, cloned, predictable normal. Some of it was a way to work off stress.

On the surface, I was all smiles. That's professionalism, or at least my idea of it. Inside, I was hurt. To get that poor performance review stung. It felt like I was rejected, that my attempts to contribute failed.

I was also angry at myself. I tried to learn our team's programming-language-of-choice and didn't get far enough. I couldn't read other programmers' code (it's plural in this case.) I knew next year I will to get another poor performance review, at which point I would face poor prospects of future employment.

Taking down my office helped. I took a silent, passive-aggressive joy when coworkers walked by, were surprised and asked why. I liked the surprise in their eyes, the slight panic. It was a small affirmation that my presence was appreciated, that my assistance was remembered.

My new office is three floors down. I didn't change that far. I still report to the same third-level manager, though the inbetween two other managers have changed. I made sure to tell my team that I would still go to lunch with them, that I would still be happy to help.

But, let's be honest here. My new manager will not let me. It's a zero-lie half-truth, a professional pleasantry. I will be happy to help, but most likely I will have to decline because of my new manager, new responsibilities.

The same holds true for lunches. I was the only person from our floor (the programmers, my current team for one more day) to go to lunch with the service delivery operations folks, my new team. The only reason for that was because I viewed the operations team as my customer.

Hey, if you're using the software that I test, then you're my customer. I don't care if you have customers on your side, you are still my customer. They are also my customers, but I don't have a chance to talk to them.

My new office is another fishbowl, but I don't have a year-plus seniority with that team like I did here, so slapping up the wallpaper would not work. My new office is also personalized, but not as much.

After all, I will be spending most of my waking hours there...