It's sucking the life force out of me

Well, it finally happened: After 16 years of having my own private office (with full-height walls and a closable door) at various workplaces, last Friday I became a denizen of Dilbert-land. I'd known for a month that this was coming sometime after the first of the year, ever since my supervisor snuck the information into my performance review. Which didn't make the actual move any more pleasant.

The rationale for my relegation to the cubicle farm is a bit fuzzy. Depending on who you talk to, it's because:

• The area where my former office is located is supposed to be for "administrative staff", which I am not. (But neither is the clinical analyst who's also housed in that area.) And it's not like they need that office for some administrative staff member; the office next to mine is still vacant since we moved in back in July.
  
• I should be in the cubicle area with the software developers because I "test the software they develop and write the documentation for it". (But I have practically zero interaction with them. I could be working in Timbuktu and none of them would even notice, much less care.)
• "Company policy" is for the offices to be reserved for managers. (Again, the clinical analyst isn't a manager, nor are most of the admin staff.)

Oh, and the CEO did hasten to say that I'm not "being punished" or anything like that. Strange, somehow being assigned to a space that's 40% smaller, with no door (hence no privacy) and walls barely taller than I am, doesn't exactly feel like a reward. I can't even listen to my CD player without headphones. And to rub salt in the wound, I can't take my little office fridge and microwave because "the electrical circuits aren't adequate for anything beyond the computers." Now granted, there are two full-size refrigerators and three microwaves in the break room, and I don't really care all that much about the microwave -- but I hate communal refrigerators; they're invariably overcrowded and rarely cleaned, and things are subject to being filched.

So, just as Dilbert found, my cubicle is indeed sucking the life force out of me.

Or to put it more succinctly, my cubicle sucks.