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Workplace Decoration Advice
1ddqd
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok, not really a post on what's appropriate/not appropriate to use as a decoration at work, but something much more immature.
See, I work at a call center on the "dialer team" - this means I come in and maintain the dialer, set up stuff to call, and do reports based on the work of the reps.
The reps are all college graduates, but very fresh. To entertain themselves, many have started decorating their team's section on the floor. Things like large fake 100 bills hang from the ceiling over one, mardi gras streamers are strewn about another, one has a Bond theme, etc.
At a floor meeting the other day, someone asked (I heard about this, I wasn't there) why the dialer team doesn't decorate.
Now, this will simply not do. One, we don't have time to decorate. The sheer volume of work I used to do necessitated the hire of 3 other people. That's $90,000 of labor to pick up the slack of what I simply had no time to address.
Needless to say, competition is born. I need some help brainstorming a "theme" to destroy all themes. Some background on the group: mostly nerds, as in, we debate about Star Trek/Star Wars, Top 5 movies of this and that, etc. There's one girl on our team that doesn't really get it, and there's a guy from Brazil that doesn't really understand it either, but for the most part, we're all pretty nerdy. List of ideas I just had:
Military decorations
lolcats EVERYWHERE (with one giant ceiling cat above us)
Star Trek paraphernalia (or posters)
Retro gaming decorations (giant pac man/mario level using rasterizer)
See, I work at a call center on the "dialer team" - this means I come in and maintain the dialer, set up stuff to call, and do reports based on the work of the reps.
The reps are all college graduates, but very fresh. To entertain themselves, many have started decorating their team's section on the floor. Things like large fake 100 bills hang from the ceiling over one, mardi gras streamers are strewn about another, one has a Bond theme, etc.
At a floor meeting the other day, someone asked (I heard about this, I wasn't there) why the dialer team doesn't decorate.
Now, this will simply not do. One, we don't have time to decorate. The sheer volume of work I used to do necessitated the hire of 3 other people. That's $90,000 of labor to pick up the slack of what I simply had no time to address.
Needless to say, competition is born. I need some help brainstorming a "theme" to destroy all themes. Some background on the group: mostly nerds, as in, we debate about Star Trek/Star Wars, Top 5 movies of this and that, etc. There's one girl on our team that doesn't really get it, and there's a guy from Brazil that doesn't really understand it either, but for the most part, we're all pretty nerdy. List of ideas I just had:
Military decorations
lolcats EVERYWHERE (with one giant ceiling cat above us)
Star Trek paraphernalia (or posters)
Retro gaming decorations (giant pac man/mario level using rasterizer)
1ddqd on
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Porn everywhere.
Straight, Gay, bestiality, bondage, s&m etc.
Huge vagina hanging from the ceiling.
Or, I don't know, motorsports or something.
It's just an HR and Safety nightmare. Not to mention the wasted cost of materials and time, as you said you've been too busy. Do you think it's a good time (hur-durr, slumping economy) to show you have time to decorate?
I'll be the grouchy old man again and say I'd recommend against it as a manager and as an employee who wouldn't want the sprinkler heads to be covered by streamers.
It will be entertaining and educational. EDUTAINTMENT!
I was working in a call center during '01-03 during the last nice little economic downturn and all that downsizing. People were stressed, fighting all the time, performance was down, etc etc etc. We had lost about 1/3 of our staff but our volume had almost doubled, so yeah, we were busy and most of us were pulling a ton of OT to fill the gaps.
Our managers were trying to implement the FISH program and cube decorating, team competitions, trivia contests, were all things we did to try and keep morale up. Was it a silver bullet? Hell no, but sometimes it was a nice diversion to get an extra break to help work on your team banner and not be getting hammered on the phones.
/shrug
If it's something your team can benefit from, I say why not give it a go? Yeah, if it provides nothing but more stress and complete loss of focus and direction, then reevaluate what you can do to boost morale in your section and have a little fun while still keeping up your productivity at a level you're satisfied with.
because decorations are pretty cool, but coming into work to find someone has decided to have a mobster v. dinosaur war on top of the filing cabinets is even more awesome
Haha those are pretty cool.
As for the "Why decorate?" I know, I agree, but we aren't hanging stuff all over the place - it's mainly pinned to cubes. I think we'll be doing a giant Rasterbated image on our cube walls of different things - I may even use a Kinko's hookup so I can get color.
Then tell people you decorated your desk with invisible objects. Then like pretend to pick up and show people the objects.
No one will ever bother you again.
I suggest gruesome midevil theme.
Perhaps a Rack in there too, and other torture devices.
This.
Szechuanosaurus is a smart guy. You would do best to heed his advice.
EDIT: My desk is entirely decorated by things that other people find funny. Don't let this happen to you. It's hard to concentrate when you've got pictures of a zebra riding a giraffe, family pictures of a laid off employee, a Shamwow and business cards with lipstick kisses on them all stuck to your corkboard.