Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Work Week - Welcome Wall

As promised, here's another photo from my workplace. It's the cubicle wall that I walk past every time I enter our suite. It's been adorned like this for the past 2 or years or so.



It's pictures of babies! And some toddlers! Officemate offspring! On the wall!

I always found this mass of photos (there used to be more posted, by the way, but some were taken down as coworkers found other jobs) annoying. I guess I thought it looked really unprofessional, and was a bad first impression to visitors. Lately, I've softened my stance a bit, and focused on what was bothering me.

First, these are not great photos. Many of these are the first pictures we were emailed after someone had their kid -- they were immediately printed on cheap office-grade paper via our uncalibrated color laserjet, stretched and zoomed beyond their original resolution.



Second, this was the wall that our (former) secretary faced all day. That's her monitor in the foreground. There's something offputting about an adult woman staring at pictures of other people's children all day, obsessively adding to the collection whenever the chance arose.

Last week I asked one of the babies' mothers if she'd mind removing her offspring's photos. She agreed that they'd been up there a long time, and took them down. Eventually, at the risk of being the Grinch, I'll approach the other mothers, and our office entrance will look more soul-crushing, as a cubicle wall should.

4 comments:

Nicolas Frisby said...

Please do share the phrasing you used for that request.

Floyd said...

That's EXACTLY what I was going to ask.

dn said...

Well, I get along well with the mother, and took a, "Am I just the office grump, or are all these baby pictures kind of weird?" approach.

Anonymous said...

So, this is the office that stands between us and the swine flu? Great.
--Serpentine