Tales of Cubeland part 1
Any bad sitcom (or good sitcom for that matter) has a moment like this. It's a moment when the cast finds itself staring across a room at a group of people that are identical to them. The moment is typically awkward and comical in the same way that getting kicked in the groin is. That, in a nutshell or disproportionate size, is what happened to me the other day.
I went out to lunch with two of my coworkers (a pale gaunt guy and a bulky Italian guy) to a gourmet Armenian restuarant named, simply, The Armenian Gourmet. The food is good, the service lousy, and the wait staff similar to your culinarily talented but socially retarded Aunt Gertie. We arrived 10 minutes before the lunch rush, but the place was already mostly full. The only table left was a six-person table. The hostess asked if we wanted to wait for a smaller table or to take the large table with the caveat that we might have to share. We opted to be seated immediately and had almost finished eating when we were joined at the table by three guys sporting Spansion badges (Spansion is one our direct competitors). There was a pale gaunt guy, a bulky Mediterranean guy and the "ethnic" guy. They looked at us, we looked at them, and the whole thing was uncanny. They got the same food that we had ordered, and as we rose I wondered if this sort of thing was just a coincidence or whether life in Silicon Valley had created legions of identical drones pumped out of the same four or five molds.