Ah. The office cubicle. Those precious 96 square feet of semi-autonomous privacy! The cartoons, the art class pottery, and the cat pictures.

And the germs. Billions of them, as WSJ’s Cubicle Culture tells us today:

… the desktop surrounding you has 400 times as much bacteria per skuzzy square inch as the toilet seat; the keyboard and mouse have 67 times and 34 times as much bacteria, respectively. So says Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona. The difference, he says, is that someone cleans the toilet. “Basically what you have in an office is an unregulated restaurant,” says Prof. Gerba. “We’ve turned our desks into bacteria cafeterias.” …

… To stifle whatever wafts from nearby plates, or the hot breath of garbage cans, [securities trader Leslee] Byron paints her aromatherapy oils onto Post-it Notes and sticks them under people’s desks above the trash cans.

Bacteria Cafeteria! That would make a nice SchoolHouse Rock special! A short animated industrial film, to be shown at team meetings and OSH conventions:

I know a little place,
Just around the bend,
Where you’re never on the mend!
Someone’s always sneezing, someone’s always wheezing!

Bacteria Cafeteria
Don’t let them germs get near ya!