The place where I work is just an average cubicle farm. There's little else to see but eggshell white dividers, each one containing a stopped figure in some drab shade of grey. The sound is unremarkable: just the usual grinding of teeth, the soft sounds of tinny, flavorless music, and people sounding out impactful words to add to intra-office memos.
The main aisle dividing the right side of the office from the left is just wide enough for two people to walk uncomfortably side by side, rubbing clammy shoulders and bumping bony hips. In some sort of weird trick of perspective, it appears to descend downwards endlessly, leaving anyone traveling that path with the feeling that they are standing at the top of an endless valley of slowly writhing grey.
After an indeterminately long time spent walking, a worker will find a fork in the aisle. One often makes the mistake of traveling down the right hand path, but there is little worth noting over that way.
Along the left hand path, though, things truly start to get interesting. The tone and nature of activity change. Twenty paces down, you start to notice it: hunched, gnarled office veterans scamper, scurry, and lurch across the aisle. They all make a high-pitched hum in a jarringly discordant unintentional mockery of harmony. Trails of ink-stained papers are left in their wake. They never pick them up as they hurl themselves from cube to cube. They never look back.
As one descends further down the path, closer to the executive cubes, the hum crescendos and intensifies. There's a smell down there, too: a potpourri of cheap colognes that gently lick your nose and whip themselves into your clothes, like flames made of wet cardboard.
Towards the end of the path, the smells and sounds come to a fever pitch. Some glitch in the air conditioning has the saccharine scented air swirling around you, and the hums become a cacophony of howls.
Neckties hang from the ceiling, like a sea of black daggers threatening to lacerate the top of your head if you dare to stand up straight.
I've never been further down the path than that, but somehow, I KNOW what is beyond. The vision of it burns itself into your mind as you turn and flee to your desk: clapping, capering office workers, yelping wordless cries and swirling about a jagged throne of scintillating diamonds and rubies. Bright flashes of red light paint executive faces as they fawn sycophantically for the attention of the CEO.
As I said, the journey along that path is far more entertaining than heading to the right. That trail only ends in rainbows, unicorns, and jolly elves.