Office walls do not make a prison. Or do they?

There are times when being at work is wonderfully liberating. And other moments feel similar to serving an unlimited sentence in solitary confinement.

It's that captivity feeling that you get most of all, right? Everyone else is out there — gaining contacts, earning money and making progress across the global spectrum. Instead, you are trapped like a rat in a cubical — the size of a face cloth — with barely enough enthusiasm to press your cold, wet nose against your mouse button.

Is it any wonder that you have decided to take action? I completely support your efforts to break free — your ideas of stealing a spoon from the break room and digging a tunnel from under your desk to the back of the parking lot are bold and daring. I wish you the best of luck in your escape!

All of which reminds me of a March 17, 2008 article in The Wall Street Journal. "Executives Teach Inmates How to Be Employees" was the title of the piece by reporter Carol Hymowitz.

Unless you consider me cold-hearted, let me say right from the jump that this charitable effort by retired executives is a good deed. By sharing basic business success tips with the prison population, they are turning common criminals into uncommonly productive employees. Best of all, by instructing the inmates on how to obtain and keep jobs when their sentences are over, these executives have managed to reduce the recidivism rate from the national average of approximately 66 percent to a measly 10 percent.

But is being locked behind a desk better than being locked behind bars? I'm not sure there is much difference. One successful graduate of the program, Mark, described prison life this way: "The food was nasty, I missed my family so much, and you're dependent on the guards for everything. No one thinks about kindness in prison."

Now consider your job: The food in the company cafeteria is so toxic that "nasty" could be a blue plate special. With all the hours demanded by management, you also miss your family, and, yes, you're dependent on your supervisors for everything. As for thinking of kindness, forget about it. The only time you're likely to find compassion is when the security guards offer to carry your boxes to the street after they kick you to the curb.

The charitable work that is desired here is obvious. Instead of business executives going to prison to teach convicts how to succeed on the outside, we need convicts coming to businesses to teach employees how to survive on the inside. (No, I've never been in prison, but I've watched "The Shawshank Redemption" a dozen times — I'm no stranger to doing hard time.)

— Serve your sentence one day at a time.

Everyone in the work force is a lifer; therefore, it makes no sense to take the long view. When you come in on a Monday, try to ignore the weekly delousing and don't obsess on whether you can make it all the way to Friday. If you can grit your teeth and tough it out, maybe you will make it to lunch. After that, it's an easy jump to your early-afternoon nap break. After your nap, you can pretend to have a stomach ache and get taken to the IT department for an emergency appendectomy. For some people, this is major surgery. For you, it's parole.

— Never turn your back on a con.

Remember that your co-workers are just as unhappy and dangerous as you. They'll turn you into the guard (aka the office manager) just for the fun of it. Be smart and strike first. If one of your office friends is cheating on his or her expense account or spouse, drop a dime on the jailbird. You'll rid yourself of a rival, and you may receive extra privileges — a second helping of gruel at bonus time.

— Keep a positive mental outlook.

A workplace, like a prison, is a depressing place. Your body has to be there, but your mind can run free. Maybe you won't have Morgan Freeman as your work buddy for the decades ahead, but that doesn't mean you can't walk through your days in a happily-demented daze. Let the bulls think you're a nitwit. And no matter what else you have to complete, just keep digging that tunnel.

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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