The Cash Cube Chronicles

Speaking of circuses, I’ve spent some time with my fair share of carnies.

When I was in the advertising world, it wasn’t all Amanda on Melrose Place. In fact, instead of being known as the “hot blonde/short skirt/tough-talkin’ girl” I had another, not-so-flattering nickname.

This is the story of how I became known as “cash cube girl.”

A client at Dell asked if I had any ideas for how he could motivate his sales people. I had just finished organizing an event for another group with a “Fear Factor” theme that involved me ordering 500 gummy tarantulas from a place in California, calling all over the country to find the perfect airplane barf bags and running around various grocery stores demanding all their tubs of chocolate pudding. Since I wasn’t about to suggest anything as complicated as that (the gummy tarantulas sat in my cubicle for about a week), I told him that at the end of that particular soiree, we had a cash cube. Would he like one of those?

Now you know what I’m talking about. Someone gets inside, money swirls around, everybody cheers. It’s minutes of fun. He liked the idea. I called the cash cube place. Had the carnie deliver it; pick it up. It was all very “turn key” as we used to say in advertising.


Well, the client loved the cash cube—a little too much. He called again and this is how it went:

Cash Cube Lover (CCL):“The cash cube went over really well. I think I’d like to have it come out here every Friday for three months.”

WG: “Um…okay. I’ll call the carnie guy and see if we can get a good rate for that.”

CCL: “But the thing is…I think it would be better if, instead of just putting it in one place, we moved it from sales group to sales group…there are six…and they’re on different floors.”

WG: “Okay…I think the carnie could do that.”

CCL: “But here’s the other thing: I don’t have time to facilitate the whole thing. Could you come out with the carnie and kinda be like the MC?”

WG: “But the carnie could do that.”

CCL: “No he couldn’t. Only you can. You’re the best, Writinggal!”

Okay, he didn’t say that exactly. And even though I told him the ad agency would charge him hundreds of dollars for me to go out there and play Vanna White every Friday, he insisted.

So for the next three months on Friday mornings my co-workers would see me running around frantically and say, “Oh, it must be cash cube day!”

Here were my duties as “cash cube girl:”

I had to go around to teacher supply stores and buy a bunch of fake money (whatever amount the sales people would “capture” was transferred into some account they had that was real money). Fun fact: Once I bought so much fake money that my credit card stopped working.

I’d meet up with the carnie and we’d wheel the cash cube around from floor to floor. I had to walk down the aisles yelling, “Cash cube!” so people would know to come out of their cubicles. They’d tell each other, “The cash cube girl is here!”

Once they were all gathered around I went over the rules:
“No crouching, no jumping and no biting! You grab the money and put it in the slot. Whatever makes it through the slot is yours.” Then the questions would come and I would answer:

“There are about five $100 bills in there, a few $50s, lots of $20s, tons of $10’s and even more $1s.”

“Someone won $500 at the last one!”

Then I would call them up, one by one, according to who sold the most servers, laptops, desktops, whatever. Sometimes the crowd wasn’t that enthused so I had to initiate the cheering and clapping. Sometimes they followed. Sometimes they didn’t. Then it was just me, jumping up and down and cheering while the crowd and the carnie watched me with pity.

I also had to play cash cube cop. Sometimes people would try to slip in more money after their time was up. Or sometimes they’d want me to count money that was halfway through the slot but not completely. When I wouldn’t allow it, they would sometimes boo me. I mean like forty people, loudly booing. Who boos the cash cube girl?

In between cash cube events I had to get in the cash cube and straighten out the fake money. Once, when I was sitting on the floor of the cash cube, chest deep in fake money, this girl walked by and said, “Elsa?”

It was a girl from my sorority. Nice.

I can’t remember what I said but I tried to make sure that the message she got was, “Yes, I did graduate from college and get a degree and I DO have a real job and this is just like a fun part of my real job but not my real job.”

I don’t think she got it. She just thought, “She’s the cash cube girl.”

In fact, after those twelve weeks nobody over there could see me as anything but “cash cube girl.”

Later I went to a meeting about a big interactive project and I felt everyone looking at me suspiciously. One of my clients whispered to me, “They’re all thinking, ‘What’s the cash cube girl doing here?’”

I announced, “Yes, I AM the cash cube girl. I’m here to say that during this meeting I don’t want to see any crouching, jumping…and definitely no biting!”