Working From Home

in my first cubicle job i used the printer to print out black and white photos of people like sylvester and michel foucault and pinned them up everywhere. now i just don't care - i have no energy for anything that is not directly related to my work duties. i feel like a vagrant and tbh it feels good.

i'm not good at decorating, it hurts my brain and overwhelms me. just love it every time i'm on a webex and one of my managers who loves to dad joke is like "i love your blank wall."

i've thought about writing a backwards joke on my whiteboard to entertain people on calls

possibly stealing one from the Homemade Jokes thread

I could care less about decorating, I just want the ability to shut a door and focus on my work without absolutely pointless interruptions.

the worst was when my last job moved from cubicles to a new, improved building with an open office plan *shudders*

Open office plan is all I've ever experienced, in all three jobs.

that was my last last job. i actually had an office with a door at my last job! and i threw it all away for love, which turned out to be false (true story)

xp blech, my condolences

I don’t really want to go back at this point

I don't have any decoration in my cubicle other than at Christmas where I have a really terrible display of dollar store tat (there's a dollar store in my office building) which is sort of ironic but I'm not sure if my colleagues get it

now on my zoom calls my colleagues get to see my kitchen. as the dining table in my living room/kitchen is the only place I can work

i don't either. i can't imagine it. it doesn't help that i've never actually been to my office since i started in june. i don't want to have to buy any more office clothes or sit in a car for an hour either. xp

It’d be different if I had a kid or less space in my bedroom or a private office to look forward to back at the office but now it’s like how bout I just go in for occasional boss facetime, when we finally even are allowed back in

Oh yeah, to be clear, I have no desire to go back. But it would help slightly if I knew I could go back to somewhere theoretically quiet from time to time and not just trying to drown out people shouting at each other across the room or three competing conference calls with headphones.

i'm basically scared of showing my "real self" by decorating my cubicle at all because i will have to contemplate how off-putting it will be for my co-workers (who are mostly very straight-laced & some are mormon), and think about what is considered "appropriate" vs what i want to look at every day. so i've just given up and tbh i'm fine with it. the only problem now is that "empty cubicle" signifies as weird too. but i just don't have the heart to do a generic decorating job. i mean, in an ideal world i'd have a bunch of rocks and pine tar samples on my shelves & "gay eagle bar" posters on the walls. nb i'm splitting wfh with working at the office about 50 / 50 these days.

Yeah I mean we’d already gone all open office and shared workspaces with a very, very small number of dedicated offices before March, at this point when we return I’ll probably go in about once, maybe twice a week for meetings only and then gtfo.

I have two personal pictures, a drawing my kid did, a Lego astronaut figure and a poster of Thom Yorke's Suspiria soundtrack. The latter is only there because they handed it to me at the record store one day when I bought the CD and I didn't feel like trying to get it home without crushing it. Plus it added some color to the blah.

_the hanging pile of conference badges and lanyards_

this is the worst, why do ppl do this

i've always wanted more promo posters and such like, wouldn't mind my office or cubicle to look like the inside of a record store tbr

i had a coworker i hated who decorated way too much and loved pink everything, and she made the office hell by taking all calls on speakerphone with her door open and burning awful candles. she also was in a promotional video for her undergraduate institution as an accomplished alumna and had them film it in the office without asking or warning anyone. i looked up the video and they do some b-roll of her typing on her pink keyboard. i don't know where this is going i just started to become enraged thinking about offices.

o
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i can picture her exactly and i'm so sorry you had to deal with that

open office sounds hellish, I’d have to get back into drinking to deal with that

don’t mind wfh but i like having a cube.

harbl’s stories are like street photography. incredible.

idk I think about the art on the walls of my home office (sometimes I do zoom calls in bed because I can) ... and is it the best art? It isn't the best art I could have purchased and installed, but like, some of the pieces have personal meaning, like the Jack Rose portrait (because I had booked Jack several times and he was always a rad dude and he died too young), and drawing of a container ship at port and on fire that my friend Jsun did (also dead), and some posters from shows I helped organize that were important to me ... so, I kinda feel like I shouldn't be judgmental about other people's decor ... but I do still get annoyed and feel snobby.

Will be going back 2 max 3 days a week after all this, and the difference to quality of life is going to be significant

Especially when the reduced commute opens up a cheaper part of the country we might be able to buy in, making an actual home office a likelihood as opposed to sharing the kitchen table (our kitchen is also our utility and living room)

i've always wanted more promo posters and such like, wouldn't mind my office or cubicle to look like the inside of a record store tbr

― cosmic vision | bleak epiphany | erotic email (map),

do you want some? because I have a bunch in my closet ... like ... seriously

haha, maybe!!!

we’ve talked about room rater, right?
https://twitter.com/ratemyskyperoom?s=21

i say judge away. who cares?

yes, if i had to go in once a week i would consider living even 50-60 miles away, which would really help with the property taxes and i could get a pet goat

in my first cubicle job i used the printer to print out black and white photos of people like sylvester and michel foucault and pinned them up everywhere.

hahah awesome! ... my first job where I had an office with my own work area, I pinned up printer test pages and the handwritten notes that would sometimes come in with client checks that just said, "thanks!"

loooooool

Man, the pandemic and working from home is stressful enough, I can't imagine trying to spend hours of thought and energy trying to get the "perfect Zoom background" to please some judgy asshole on Twitter. But that's just me.

Obviously not a shot at those of you itt silently judging, none of you have a wildly popular Twitter platform that has legit made some people feel really bad!

if i had lost the Order of Canada i wouldn't dare show my face on zoom!

aw i think it’s pretty good-natured. at least the ones i’ve read. the whole idea of rating anyone’s zoom background is absurd on its face.

room rater reminds me of that website that critiqued the decor of gay friendfinder ads or something like that ... i think John Waters did a guest post once? ... I forget the name, but the image of the middle aged guy holding his dick and a vacuum cleaner with heavily upholstered floral furniture will stick with me for quite a while

xpost - I can't remember who it was, but there was some reporter that had his background called a "hostage video" (iirc) and he genuinely felt upset by it. I think it started out good-natured, but it seems like it got a little too into shaming people for not being rich enough to have nice art of tons of cool things in the background.

I started out with bookcases behind me, but I've since switched my office around so I just have plain white curtains, and honestly I prefer that. It may not impress anyone, but it doesn't distract anyone either.

We don't have to use a camera on WebEx meetings thankfuckinggod. Yet some people choose to. A fascinating psychology to me.

I take most calls by phone from wherever I can find quiet. If my son finds out I'm on the phone, he tends to get jealous and follow me around, shrieking. If I'm in a room with a locked door, he will stand outside the door and pound on it. Sometimes I go to sit in the car. Fun!

For those times when I have to do a video call, I have an office that is also the music room (and game room and art room and storage room), with guitars on the wall. Lolburbdad.

Just found out my employer is closing its physical office in DC, which I have never been to. Tomorrow I am interviewing for a job based in Minneapolis. I'll probably never go there. Surreal shit all around.

My home office is the same room that my very good boy doctor ben* passed away in last January. Some of his stuff is still in there in boxes on the bookshelves - HE is still in there, in an urn. I think I hadn’t really realized before why this makes the office into a place I prefer to only spend a couple of hours in at a time. Not usually a problem in an office building office!

* Life Of Doctor Ben In Pictures

xp - my co-worker's daughter does this to him as well -- he will sometimes go for a walk around the block in order to have a quiet phone call.

having one's face up close for examination during meetings like this is a little different when you're trying to hide impatience, exasperation, etc. i've had to really commit to poker face.

that's really hard actually!

I have a hard time finding a neutral face

btw this commercial makes me die laughing every time, only because I inadvertently speak like this to learners in class when they make a mistake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0yT5XWjldo

I needed a new USB headset as my old one had a frayed cord and would keep losing connection. so I ordered one through procurement, and of course, despite being in a pandemic, our policy doesn't allow shipping the products to our houses, which would make too much sense. No, we have to have them shipped to our office.

To visit our office, we have to go onto a special app and certify that we have no symptoms and haven't been around someone with them for 14 days...which I did, and it tells me I'm cleared to go into the office. I arranged in advance to pick up my product today with the IT team.

I haven't been in the office for 11-12 months, but I get to the door, and my badge works just fine. Yay!

I get to the third floor, which also belongs to my company - badge does not work. After 15 minutes trying everything possible, I had to go home empty fucking handed because I only had a half hour free to pick it up today. Now I have to try again Monday.

stupidest fucking thing. I thought maybe they deactivated my badge due to non-use for 6 months or more, but I was told that practice ended last year, and usually when they deactivate your badge, it doesn't work at the front door either.

why didn’t they just.... activate it?

apparently we have new security now so I don't even know where to go to do that!