the creepy dolls, the massage chair, and other stories of amazing office decor

by Alison Green on May 13, 2024

Last week we talked about the best, worst, and weirdest office decor you’ve seen. Here are 15 great stories you shared.

1. The dolls

One of the managers in my former job had a massive full-wall bookshelf of baby dolls in her office. They were all dressed sharply in frilly dresses and so forth. I think they were a mix of antiques or from specialty shops so you better bet they had that special “definitely haunted by a sick Victorian child” look to them. Everything else was covered in lacy doilies and homemade quilts, so it felt more like being in a particular kind of grandma’s house and not a manager.

The worst part was if you needed to have a sit-down conversation with my coworker, you’d be the one facing the Doll Wall. Dozens of glassy vacant eyes staring right at you the entire time. Staff was split between finding it either cozy or creepy.

2. The self-love

We showed up one morning to discover a new director had completely redecorated his office overnight. He brought in new furniture and hung at least a dozen pictures on the wall … all of himself. There were at least a dozen more pictures of himself on his credenza. Everyone else’s office is very light on decorations otherwise, so it definitely stands out.

I was interviewing a candidate (who we later hired) and unforeseen circumstances led me to interview him in the other director’s office. The candidate (now my coworker) later told me he didn’t realize it wasn’t my office. He said he thought all of the pictures on the wall were of my husband and I was just “weirdly obsessed” with him.

3. The professional redesign

Years and years ago, the office I worked in had a professional company redo our cube farm and come up with layouts for each cube. Mine, it turned out, was to be arranged with my desk blocking the opening into it. I would have had to climb over the desk to access my cube. I got our handyman help me arrange it so that I would have had enough space between the desk and the edge of the cube so I could squeeze in. Then I rearranged things (file drawers and printer stand) so I could actually function in it.

No one ever said anything about either my rearrangement or the company’s initial layout.

4. The massage chair

Several years ago, my large, public organization absorbed another organization in the state that was doing similar work. The new folks were not thrilled with the move, as our organization had an (earned) reputation as being more conservative in its perspective and how it handled employees and employee autonomy. For them, coming under our umbrella was a real downgrade.

One of the new folks was particularly salty about the move, but he was very talented with a pretty niche skillset so I guess he thought nobody was going to have any issues with how he went about things. Shortly after they officially came over to our offices, all of us came in to our open-plan cubical farm to see that New Guy’s office was…..decked out. Normal decorations, leaning on the nerdy, but what really stood out was….the giant massage chair. Over the weekend, this guy hauled a massage chair into the office and sat it right in the middle of one of the cubical clusters, complete with foot rest, side table for his beverages, and a little eye mask.

New Guy rolls into work at around 10am (normal for his schedule), does a little bit of work, then settles into his massage chair, gas station big gulp by his side, noise cancelling headphones on, eye mask ready to go, and takes a nap. This was admittedly made easier by the fact that we all were forced to work in the dark without overhead lights (that’s another letter for another day).

I wish I could tell you it started a movement and we all ended up with massage chairs, but tragically he wasn’t there much longer. I ran into him at a birthday party a year later and asked what happened. He sighs heavily and says, “I don’t think our boss liked the massage chair.”

5. The cube farm

Old Job was a cube farm. A client needed pictures of a generic office setting, so our in-house photographer took pictures of our own offices to use. The client rejected them as “too Soviet.”

Nobody in management had seemed to notice before then how shabby and depressing that office was.

6. The boudoir photo

A head manager at my former company had his wife’s sexy boudoir photo framed in his office. They were also rumored to be a swinging couple, so maybe it was an advertisement?

7. The morgue

I was a manager at a hospital. Unimportant backstory skipped, they finally gave me an office.

In a past life, it was the hospital morgue. After morgue-type activities were moved to a different site, they gutted the room and threw down new flooring after which it sat empty for two years. No one wanted to work in such a “spooky” space.

I didn’t care whatsoever – it was a HUGE room, all mine!

It took several weekends of me dragging in furnishings and decor from home and thrift stores before I was satisfied. It was like an oasis of calm — one side of the room was my workspace, the other was a homey “conference room” setup complete with a thick pile rug, soft floor lighting, realistic-looking plants, beautiful art prints. I had even hidden small speakers to play soft music. Heaven!

Until.

The Director of Nursing was taking visitors on a tour and walked past my open door. Her jaw dropped, and she demanded to know – in front of the others – how I got all of this [waved her arm around] approved by Finance. I told her I owned nearly everything. She harumphed and left.

Two days later, a group of nursing staff knocked on my door and said they needed to use my office for a meeting. I thought they made a mistake until they showed me the conference rooms schedule master and sure enough, they had properly booked “Stella70’s Office.” My oasis was listed and bookable for “groups of up to six people.”

I protested, pouted, whined to everyone I knew, but nothing changed. And my cozy space was so popular that I wound up hot-desking in a cubicle farm, because I couldn’t be in my office during most of the meetings held there.

Lesson learned: The most I will furnish these days are fancy paperclips, and I repo them if I don’t get them back.

8. The Demotivator

A former job had one of those motivational posters behind the receptionist’s desk. Someone — no idea who, but they’re my hero — swapped it with a same-size, similarly cheaply framed Demotivators poster. If anyone else is a Demotivators fan, it’s the one with a salmon leaping out of the whitewater and a huge bear standing above the fish, perfectly positioned for a tasty sushi snack. The text is something like “A journey of a thousand miles…sometimes ends very badly.”

The best part? Management never noticed. I worked there for at least two years after the swap and the Demotivator stayed.

9. The dorm room

At an old job, a recent college grad put brightly colored tissue paper all over every open space in her cube. Then she pinned pictures from college literally from the floor to the top of her cube walls. It was weird trying to ask her about a TPS report while looking at pictures of her being drunk, holding various beverages, splayed across multiple people on a couch in her clubbing clothes, her and her friends at the beach wearing what I suspect were Wicked Weasel (NSFW) bikinis, her and her boyfriend in a passionate, open mouthed kiss, etc. I’m surprised no one said anything to her because that’s how her office was decorated the whole time she was there.

10. The salesperson

I used to work with a senior salesperson who had a couch in his office with a bunch of cozy blankets on it and would always encourage you to sit on the couch with a blanket if you wanted to, and there were many times I would go into his office for a meeting and another salesperson or someone from his account team would be sitting there with a big fuzzy blanket on their lap.

He also had a graphic of an Amy Poehler quote printed out and hung on his wall that said, “I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind leading.”

Needless to say, he was my favorite salesperson!

11. The stripe

A dishonest, bigoted, quarrelsome, and universally-loathed colleague weaseled his way into being Interim Dean of the Honors College. One of his must-haves for the college offices was a stripe in one of the school’s colors all along the tops of the walls, three inches below the ceiling.

Facilities declined to paint the stripe for him.

He came in on a weekend and painted the stripe himself.

The following Wednesday, Facilities painted over his stripe.

12. The books

I worked at a NY company that was headed by a male version of the boss from Devil Wears Prada (but less classy). I had to be in his office A LOT for meetings etc, and there were two things there that I will never forget: an absolutely gorgeous embroidered antique haori (a jacket worn over a kimono) that was like mounted in a frame with no glass or any kind of protection from the elements – and a collection of books on Japanese kink binding that was just sitting on the conference table.

13. The misunderstanding

I worked with a guy that had a poster in his office that read “It’s 4:20… got a minute?”

He got it for free somewhere… he hung it up because it reminded him of our boss, who was famous for grabbing someone right before it was time to leave and asking “got a minute?” and then talking to them for like an hour about something that definitely could have waited until the next day.

He seriously had no idea. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that his poster was an invitation to smoke weed.

14. The sex couch

I worked for a nonprofit and we were at the mercy of our board president’s wife. She was an aggressive thrifter who fancied herself an interior designer. We had an entire storage unit for extra furniture, carpets, tapestries, holiday decor that we didn’t need. She had very free-form tastes, often donating things that were bright neon orange, visibly sexual nude paintings, creepy clown statues.

My boss, who would have chugged a gallon of mud if the board told him to without question, was adamant we swap out the perfectly normal new sofa in our waiting area for one the board president’s wife donated. He stressed how important it was to accept this furniture and thank the president’s wife, as it was very important to the board president that we accept her donation.

The day it got delivered he took one look at this sofa and it went right back onto the delivery truck, my boss red up to his hairline. It was a sex couch. It was a very discreet sex couch, but one quick google told us it was a very expensive bespoke sex couch from a high-end BDSM company. You could see where it had uh … spaces for attachments, hidden compartments, and platforms that pulled out from under it. We didn’t get anymore donations from her after that.

15. The Windows 95 room

Oh, the Windows 95 room!

There was an unloved conference room with a white board and a couch or something, and Facilities decided to liven it up. They took away the couch (alas), painted it sky blue with clouds, put in an artificial grass rug, put in Adirondack chairs, the whole bit. I think it was supposed to look like Wine Country, California or similar bits of Palo Alto — but since that’s what the Windows 95 desktop was inspired by, and this was an operating system adjacent company…

For April Fool’s I added a large error message box and some mouse cursors.

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{ 334 comments }

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    3. AngryOctopus*

      I took a pic in St Petersburg once, at the port, that I liked to call “Moon Over Soviet Bloc Housing”. I can only picture the cube farm having that same sense of grey blocks and existential dread that the housing has.

      1. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        I know exactly what you are talking about. The first thing you see from your ship in port, and it’s ancient Soviet era apartments.

    8. Generic Name*

      It’s amazing how some people don’t notice something when it would cost money/take effort to fix it.

    9. Knittercubed*

      It’s my favorite! I had a boss who constantly told us all how lucky we were, how fabulous the company was etc etc. Our work environment was early “pile of sadness”. You only got a door if you were a manager.

    10. KTinDC*

      I worked for a PR firm that was in a truly terrible office. On the one hand, the owner said she would never do anything to make it nicer besides putting up artwork, because she didn’t own it. On the other hand, we could absolutely never have a client in the office, because among other things our conference table was clearly a 1980s-era dining room table. We had to jump through all kinds of hoops to find alternate places to meet anytime an out-of-town client came into town. I get not wanting to spend a ton of money on an office that you’re renting, but PR is an industry where appearances matter!

      1. Generic Name*

        OMG, that reminds me of my last office. It was so embarrassing to bring clients to.

    12. Charlotte Lucas*

      I remember at OldJob, someone told me about a job candidate who looked around, said, “I don’t really want to work here,” and walked out.

      I had not been given a tour of the building when I interviewed. Probably wise on the part of the hiring manager.

      1. Quill*

        Props to that candidate, I should have done the same when introduced to my worst job (where the creepy basement setting was only the tip of the iceberg.)

      2. Wolf*

        Good for that candidate! An office space that is both poorly maintaned by management, and nobody working there could be bothered to make their own desk a little bit nicer… that’s not a place where people are happy.

        I’ve worked in some places with a shoestring budget, but we brought a few plants and a poster, and the office wasn’t that bad anymore.

    13. Excel-sior*

      it has always amused me no end that despite a decades long cold war and supposed ideological differences, the idealised pinnacle of corporate America would be very soviet in style.

      1. SarahKay*

        About five years ago the US-owned multi-national company I work for rolled out a new corporate style for use in all presentations; we got given a specific powerpoint template.
        It has a very solid blocky corporate font and the palette consists of just black, varying shades of grey, and red. The first time I saw it I described it to my colleagues as ‘Soviet bruatlist’ and I stand by that description.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          There’s a building at UMass Amherst which is *very* concrete brutalism (no, not the library, that one just attacks people bricks but otherwise looks nice).

    15. Nanashi*

      I was born in the USSR, and let me tell you that cube farms would be a paradise setup there — if they existed.

  2. Dek*

    #7 has me baffled. So, they liked your decor so much that they just…took over your office? With all the decor that YOU bought?

    That’s wild.

      1. LaurCha*

        Came here to say this. I would have taken every. single. thing. in that conference area home immediately. That was just so rude!

        1. Grandma*

          Not only take my nice stuff out, but find a bunch of storage boxes to put smack in the middle of the space.

        2. Ellie*

          Yes, absolutely. Leave them with nothing OP! Maybe move a morgue tray back in there to underline your point.

      3. Miette*

        I would have booked a meeting in there all day every day so it wouldn’t be available.

        1. 3-foot inflatable rainbow-colored unicorn*

          Yes! Every day from 7am-7pm, ‘Stella70’s Office’ has been booked for the recurring meeting ‘Stella70 doing her actual job in her assigned office’

          1. The cubes are scary*

            And I’d be sure to let the DON know they were welcome to invite Facilities to remove any hospital-owned furniture (other than the desk and chair of course) at any time.

            1. I'm a Pepper*

              Hahaha it took me at least two comments to realize DON was Director of Nursing and not a Godfather reference.

              1. Chocoholic Librarian*

                Thank you for solving this mystery for me! I was very confused why the mafia had decision-making power over the furniture in this hospital.

                1. Evan Þ*

                  That would’ve explained why the decision-makers were so comfortable with appropriating people’s personal furniture!

        3. Your Mate in Oz*

          Nah, just sit outside and put on your timesheet “waiting for my office to be available after the meeting”

      5. FricketyFrack*

        Yep. They want to use it as a conference room? Then they can furnish it as one. I would’ve taken every single thing home and if anyone objected, I would’ve told them I wasn’t risking my stuff being damaged by letting everyone and their mother use it.

        1. Ultimate Facepalm*

          Absolutely! And they can use my office when I wasn’t using which would be never. Sounds like someone was just jealous.

        2. Dog momma*

          I agree with you Frick..and I’m A nurse! That would be the day ID give up my office. Plenty of conference rooms in a hospital.. what did they use before hand?

      6. Ms. Murchison*

        Came here to say the same. I hope the OP took everything from the conference room side back home ASAP.

      7. Perfectly Cromulent Name*

        100000%. The space is theirs to do with as they please, but anything that was mine is going home with me the second I am hot desking in a cube farm because they decided they suddenly liked the undesirable space now that I made it cozy.

          1. Charlotte Lucas*

            I would take all my stuff home and loudly work anytime someone booked the room.

            I would also aggressively start a rumor that the space was haunted.

      8. e271828*

        Yeah, I think the Director of Nursing would have been even unhappier at having to suddenly… re-furnish the whole space.

      9. It's Me*

        +1 if you wanna use my space, you get to use exactly what was given to me, which was nothing

      11. Old Admin*

        Not only would I have taken out allm y stuff, I would have put in a gurney (because former morgue).
        And when the nurses pile in for the meeting, roll out my office chair towards the cubicle farm, leaving them standing.

    2. Myrin*

      Yeah, I’m honestly really annoyed by this one.
      (Not in any way by OP, of course, but by literally everyone else in this story.)

      1. Kim*

        That Director of Nursing is a right [redacted]. Imagine, someone having something you might not have! Better make their life worse!

    3. Wolf*

      I would have taken the entire stuff home the next day. Let them sit on the floor or use an actual meeting room.

    4. Still*

      This one makes me so mad, I can’t believe the OP left their stuff there for others to use!

    5. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      I am livid. Came to the comments. Please tell me Stella70 took her stuff home, cuz eff that!

    6. Beth*

      I don’t understand that one either. How does someone’s office get classified as a schedulable meeting room? Someone clearly did that on purpose–it should be undoable.

      And once it was clear that no one wanted to fix it, why would you not remove all of YOUR decor and furniture? (I know it sounds like you thrifted items specifically for this space, OP, and might not have had another obvious space to put them. I would still have removed them out of sheer spite, even if it meant them taking over my entire living room until I could sell them.) If the director of nursing wanted your space as a conference room so badly, the least she could do is furnish it.

      1. Perfectly Cromulent Name*

        “I know it sounds like you thrifted items specifically for this space, OP, and might not have had another obvious space to put them. I would still have removed them out of sheer spite, even if it meant them taking over my entire living room until I could sell them.”

        YES. I would have been happy to point the DON to the Facebook Marketplace posts where she could buy the pieces at 10xw what I paid if she was so excited to have those specific items.

        I AM SO ENRAGED BY THIS. I hope we get an update!

      2. Piscera*

        I’m thinking something fell through the cracks, and #7’s space wasn’t removed from the conference room reservation system when it was designated as an assigned office.

        Then when people saw what #7 had done with the space, they commandeered it. And either didn’t believe, or didn’t care that the furnishings didn’t belong to the hospital.

        1. Antigone Funn*

          It was a morgue before it was an office, so someone definitely went out of their way to designate it as a conference room.

        2. Nina*

          LW said it was a morgue! I don’t work in a hospital but I feel like a morgue probably wouldn’t be bookable as a meeting room either.

                1. Amphigorey*

                  They’re the best!!
                  I believe this so hard that I went and made a whole podcast about it: the Oingo Boingo Secret Appreciation Society.

        3. Beth*

          It was a morgue before LW, not a conference room. OP got it as their office because everyone else refused to use the space. And it ‘just happened’ to start getting booked as a conference room after the Director of Nursing saw how nice it was and questioned OP about how they got all the nice stuff. And somehow no one could fix someone’s office being bookable as a conference room, no matter who OP talked to.

          None of that adds up to this being a mistake. The director of nursing saw the nice space and wanted to be able to use it, so she set it up as bookable. OP’s only options here were 1) give up the space and all their decor and furniture without a fight or 2) push back (refuse to leave during meetings because this is her office, take their stuff home since the others wouldn’t let them use their office in peace, etc). I really hope OP ended up doing some amount of #2, because otherwise this is a sad story.

          1. Spiritbrand*

            I have a feeling someone didn’t like OP before this happened and they gave them the haunted morgue office because they thought they wouldn’t like it. And then were upset that they had made the best of the “punishment” they were trying to give.

    7. Tiger Snake*

      In the defence of most staff; they probably didn’t know Stella70 is the one who brought everything in. Just that the room is shared with her office and she’s flexible.

      It’s listed as an available conference room, the nursing director told them to book it – so you just do what you’re told.
      Then they get there and realise oh hey, this is the NICE conference space, no wonder the director told us to book this one to meet with her. So of course, it becomes their preference and word of mouth starts.

      1. Office Drone*

        Stella70 said she told the Director of Nursing that the stuff was all hers (as distinguished from approved by Finance, as the DN thought).

        So, DN knew, got p!$$y that someone who was probably lower on the pecking order than she got all this space, and decided to turn it into conference space by fiat. My mother was an RN for thirty years and could fill volumes with tales of hospital politics that makes this a playground squabble by comparison. (Not that I’m not outraged on Stella’s behalf. I am. My point is that hospital politics can be cutthroat—so to speak.)

        And, to everyone saying Stella should’ve just packed up her stuff and taken it home…. She might not have been able to. At least not without risking her job. Once it was a designated conference room, I have no doubt the hospital would’ve become punitive at the “destruction” of a “staff conference room.” Repossessing her stuff might have required permission and taken more capital than it was worth.

        1. Database Developer Dude*

          Seriously? They could just confiscate your stuff like that? I’d take it home without permission anyway and then quit.

          1. Ariaflame*

            Take it home an item at a time…. gradually it becomes less and less welcoming. Actual her working stuff stays.

            1. Chocoholic Librarian*

              This is the way.

              And maybe setting up a mini “office” space in the corner, on the non-conference-space side of the room, and just working there quietly during all conference room bookings. After all, it’s her office – where else is she supposed to go? Maximum awkwardness for the people who book the room. (I know this is likely impossible in a hospital setting where meetings may involve private patient information that can’t be overheard willy-nilly – but my petty heart dreams on nonetheless.)

        2. Tiger Snake*

          Yes I’m not discounting any of that. I am however saying that unless the Director of Nursing has developed a psychic hivemind, her motivations remain her own; all everyone else just knows they got told to use the “nice” meeting room, and since its available that there’s no reason they shouldn’t use it when they can.

        3. michele*

          RN since 1991 and can confirm hospitals are run by sociopaths. Nurses especially are treated like garbage. Working at a warehouse now because I will no longer tolerate the conditions to which I was routinely subjected. It’s a sad commentary on my former occupation that I’m treated better as a warehouse worker than when I was a “professional” nurse.

  3. SirHumphreyAppleby*

    LW 7 – I am angry on your behalf! How dare they take over the space and items YOU paid for. Ooof. I would’ve spent a weekend hauling everything out

      1. pally*

        Yeah, but what a shame the LW has to go to all that work dismantling things.

        I’d get some imaginations going by asking folks if they’ve seen or heard anything odd in the room – in the hopes of starting the rumor that the room is haunted.

        Maybe put those small hidden speakers to use broadcasting eerie sound effects while folks are occupying it.

        That might deter some from taking it over.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          I once managed to get a room to myself because of a wasp infestation. I don’t mind wasps.

          1. Chrysoprase*

            Wait hold up, WHAT? What do you mean you don’t mind wasps?! I thought everyone minded wasps! Or at least, I thought wasps minded everyone! Were there wasps just chilling in your space all the time? Did they not bother you? How did this arrangement work???

            (Don’t get me wrong, I’m very impressed, I’m just amazed and I want to know everything about this situation. This is wilder than any of the decor stories!)

            1. Hrodvitnir*

              Nah, wasps are actually pretty chill if they don’t feel threatened. We used to have heaps of German wasps feeding on our overgrown ivy when it flowered and they sometimes land on you but never stung.

              They’re remarkably intelligent animals – they remember people who have threatened them (we’re talking social wasp species that are not bees here – because all bees are wasps, not all wasps are social, and there are soooooo many wasp species. I’ve written wasp too often now, haha).

              Inside wasps are not ideal, of course!

              1. Chrysoprase*

                This is very interesting! I can see there’s a lot I don’t know about wasps. I only know them as the scary buggers who chase me when I’m holding an icecream. (To be fair, I’ve only been stung once – on the butt, when I sat on one, which is a pretty clear case of self-defense on the wasp’s part.)

            3. Catfish Mke*

              Not an issue. As she says only a couple of varieties of wasp are even a little bit aggressive. There are some attracted to food particularly sweets but the main instigator of conflicts are the humans panicking and flailing. That and messing with their nests. Otherwise they’re just flying around stay calm and enjoy how pretty they are.

        2. Dek*

          If ever there was a time to employee one of the old ThinkGeek Annoyatrons, this would be it.

        3. Beth*

          Ooo, that’s a lovely idea!

          I think I’d swap out the comfy stuff with uncomfy stuff — hard chairs, no table, faint buzzing sounds, harsh lights, and definitely not enough seating for the alleged meeting capacity. Maybe a few creepy clown dolls and a strange icy breeze coming from nowhere. And a ouija board, of course.

          1. Chocoholic Librarian*

            Add some clown portraits! And some flickering lights. And a random, occasional knocking sound. Maybe a faint groan or two.

    2. Saberise*

      Yeah I came to the comments just to see what people said about that one. Why in the world would one just leave everything there after that happened. It would have been gone the first day. Chances are good they would have moved them to another space to allow the room to be outfitted as a conference room but I wouldn’t have just let them use my stuff.

      1. Ashley*

        I would have done it piece by piece slowly over time so it just became unappealing but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          The genius of subtlety. If only there was a reversible way to make every chair and table ever so slightly wobbly.

          1. Miette*

            LMAO

            Just start sawing an inch off each chair’s height for a few weeks until theyre basically stools

            1. Elspeth McGillicuddy*

              You know those pads that go on the bottoms of chairs so they don’t scratch the floor? Put them on three of the legs. The thickest ones you can find.

              2. Azure Jane Lunatic*

                Three thick ones and one thin one, so nobody spots that one’s missing.

        3. Bunny Girl*

          I did that when I was planning on quitting a job. I just slowly took a couple things at a time at the end of the day over a number of weeks. Whatever would fit in my purse. You know what else fit in my purse? Several slices of pizza that I stole on my last day.

    3. How’s it going?*

      It’s also wild to me that a hospital manager doesn’t have a say over their own space (that no one even wanted before!). But maybe there’s something here I’m missing.

      1. Quality Girl*

        Hospital admin is extremely hierarchical. A manager typically doesn’t have much power.

      2. ampersand*

        I feel like the backstory on OP finally get their own office would probably answer that question!

          1. Hlao-roo*

            Yes! She contributed story #5. The last name on this post:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2023/10/the-overheard-self-talk-the-shoplifting-and-other-times-you-mortified-yourself-in-job-interviews.html

            Story #12. The spill on this post:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2023/08/mortification-week-the-terrible-misunderstanding-the-cat-serenade-and-other-stories-to-cringe-over.html

            And this hilarious holiday part story:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2022/12/a-truly-hilarious-company-holiday-party-story-told-in-bullet-points.html

            With follow-up details about the party here:
            https://www.askamanager.org/2022/12/open-thread-december-9-10-2022.html#comment-4107345

            2. Yay! I’m a llama again!*

              Thank you, I had a feeling Stella70 was the provider of many, many similar examples and all very written!

            3. ampersand*

              Oh, THAT’S Stella! I knew all these stories but didn’t realize it was the same person. Stella is a legend.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        It reminds me of this film from a few years ago where a woman in a small British town buys a property to open a bookshop. Said property had been on the market for years, no bites, right? Well the SECOND she closes, the snooty bee-yatch contingent in town throws a fit, saying they wanted that space for a community center or something. Not a bid while it was on the market, not a word during the woman’s entire purchasing process, just afterwards.

        1. Gentle Reader*

          It’s “The Bookshop.” It’s based on a novel by Penelope Fitzgerald.

    4. Heidi*

      I be tempted to redecorate it again as a morgue to pay tribute to its roots. With a wall of creepy Victorian dolls thrown in there.

  4. Lucia Pacciola*

    11. The stripe

    That’s a bummer. I really like the racing stripe/running stripe aesthetic. It’s too bad the guy couldn’t work something out with Facilities. On the other hand, “interim” manager of anything is probably not supposed to be making any real decisions other than just keeping things afloat til they find their permanent hire.

    1. Antilles*

      Not the OP, but I’m pretty sure it’s not actually about the racing stripe, but about the guy being “dishonest, bigoted, quarrelsome, and universally-loathed”. Facilities doesn’t like him so they took the opportunity to annoy him.

    2. Aldabra*

      I have a racing stripe in my home office that I painted … but yeah, given that this guy was interim and also universally disliked, I’m not surprised it was painted over posthaste!

    3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      100% this was more about University politics and wanting to make sure that an Interim Dean wasn’t allowed to make decor changes that weren’t approved for other Deans, appear that they were favored to receive the position permanently, or to jump the hierarchy of projects in the queue. We had been using a photo of a well-liked long-tenured faculty member on the website for a while, and had to remove it so that it didn’t look like we were favoring them when they became one of the final candidates for the Dean position.

  5. Didi*

    Love the Demotivator!

    At my old job a bunch of those motivational posters were all over the place. One had a caption “LEADERSHIP” and then there was a picture of a wolf. A lone wolf. Leadership, indeed!

    I never knew if this was a joke or what.

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      Those Demotivator posters are truly excellent. They completely capture the genre. I find it entirely plausible that management would walk right by one every day and not notice.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        I liked the one of a cow stuck in a fence, perfectly positioned on its front and hind legs, just wedged in there. The caption simply read “Well, Crap.”

      2. Keeley Jones, The Independent Woman*

        Back when I worked in an office I had the calendar. It was deep into September before anyone realized it wasn’t your traditional motivational saying.

      3. allathian*

        One of my favorites features a picture of a high jumper on the mat with the bar after a failed jump and the text “Stupidity: Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”

    2. AnonyNurse*

      My favorite Demotivator … POTENTIAL. Photo of French fries.

      “not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up.”

      1. Dek*

        My favorite was always IRRESPONSIBILITY: No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood

        1. Constance Lloyd*

          My engineer father has one featuring artistically bent forks captioned UNIQUE: just because you’re unique doesn’t mean you’re useful.

          1. a good mouse*

            I was always partial to UNDERACHIEVEMENT: The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the lawnmower. With a photo of a dew drop on a pretty piece of grass.

            1. Honoria Lucasta*

              A picture of a central American step pyramid in front of a twilight sky
              SACRIFICE
              all we ask here is that you give us your heart

              1. JustaTech*

                A close-up picture of a people putting their hands in a circle (think “go team!”)
                MEETINGS
                because none of us are as dumb as all of us

      2. ECHM*

        That’s one of mine – along with DYSFUNCTION: The only consistent feature of all your dissatisfying relationships is you. (photo: one link broken in a chain)

        1. I already forgot my name*

          I made one with that saying so that it was an image of the Batfamily (Robin, Barbara, Talia some of the Rogues gallery as well).

      3. Baldrick*

        Not Demotivational, but I have an image of Darth Vader holding someone up as punishment with the line “Strong people don’t put others down. They lift them up.”

      4. doriette*

        Aaaahhhh! SAME. I randomly picture that one every few months, and giggle myself silly.

    3. Lizzay*

      I have a block of post-it style notes that’s about half used (b/c who uses those anymore) that says ‘Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us’. Love Demotivators!

      1. Margaret Cavendish*

        This was always my favourite! Along with “Planning: Much remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make any progress.”

      2. SheLooksFamiliar*

        I had the Meetings Demotivator on a mug, and it kept disappearing from my office. Struck a chord, I guess.

    4. Free Meerkats*

      My office had a series of motivational posters down the hall. I bought Demotivators in similar color schemes/layouts, came in in the night and put them over the existing one inside the frames. Took me a couple of hours and it was months before they mysteriously disappeared.

      1. Testing*

        I took a picture of a sign at the zoo saying something like “the last staff member to leave locks the animal cages”, printed it out, and stuck it on the inside of the glass door of the IT department, so that you could see it from the outside. They should have never left the door unlocked and unattended! It stayed there for years.

        1. Cyborg Llama Horde*

          Having worked in IT offices, they probably thought it was hilarious. (And quite possibly assumed that someone in the IT department put it there.)

      2. La Triviata*

        Someone online has a photo of their family’s photo gallery (family photos closely together on the wall). They’d put in a photo of Kim Jong Un with the caption, “it’s been a month and no one’s noticed”

        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Not work related, but my mother collected Hummel year bells. We had a display case with a mirror behind it so you could see the years on the bells from the front (the years were on the back). It took her several years to figure out I had moved them out of date order.

      3. AnonORama*

        As the submitter of #8 — still not knowing who changed up the one in my old office in 2010 — good work! You’re my other hero.

    5. Djs*

      Not a demotivator, but a regular motivational one out there about Teamwork, and some random statement about achieving goals. The picture is of a giant sailboat with a bunch of people on it.

      But if you look closely at the picture, only one person is actually doing the work on the sailboat, and the rest is the people are just sitting there

        1. Djs*

          Similar, but not quite. I can’t find the picture, but basically all the people are sitting in a row on the side.

          Either way, I learned something today!

    6. The OG Sleepless*

      I can’t remember if I posted this the other day, but we have a friend who was a highish ranking Army officer who worked with a lot of bigwigs. He replaced the real motivational poster in his office with the one with a snowball that said (I think) “TEAMWORK: A few flakes working together can unleash a whole avalanche of destruction.” Once in a long while a four-star general would do a double take, but most people didn’t notice, and nobody ever made him take it down.

    7. HailRobonia*

      I had a coworker who had a photo of her two young kids covered in melting ice cream cake (important milestone in an child’s life: reaching the counter). Lots of us commented on it and I said she should blow it up and make it in the style of one of those demotivator posters.

      We were originally going to have a caption contest, but instead she had the brilliant idea of laminating it and having a section to write captions as-needed. The one caption that stayed up pretty long was “nothing is impossible with chocolate as the reward.” Another was “If at first you can’t succeed, just enjoy dessert.”

    9. Joanne’s Daughter*

      I had one in my office that read “Procrastination: Hard work often pays off after time but laziness always pays off now”.
      Thats how I love to live my life!

      1. allathian*

        Another fave of mine reads “Sloth: Is my spirit animal.” (No disrespect intended for people who believe in spirit animals.)

  6. CubeFarmer*

    “I protested, pouted, whined to everyone I knew, but nothing changed. And my cozy space was so popular that I wound up hot-desking in a cubicle farm, because I couldn’t be in my office during most of the meetings held there.”

    I’m perplexed as to why LW #7 didn’t just take her stuff back. Problem solved!

  7. Salty Caramel*

    Back in the days of yore, I worked in an office where someone had most thoroughly decorated their cube with Far Side cartoons. The manager made them take them all down because it looked “unprofessional.”

    The same manager did allow another person’s cube to be so thoroughly decorated with Mary Engelbreit that it made my eyes hurt. I find a lot of Engelbreit to be cute and clever, but this so far over the top it went off the charts.

    Neither cubicle was in a public area, so that didn’t contribute to the decision either way.

    1. Richard Hershberger*

      If the manager was offended by Far Side cartoons, we can only imagine the reaction to Dilbert (c. 2000, when Dilbert was both funny and relevant).

      1. soontoberetired*

        ah, I had an old Matt Groenig cartoon up in my office (pre Simpsons) that was a dig on what happens when you go on vacation – all the work piles up for you on the way back. Someone was offended by it, and I had to take it down. Other people heard about that, got their own copies, and soon it was in about 50 cubicles.

        hahahaha.

          1. soontoberetired*

            Yes, it really was.

            Groenig’s Life in Hell cartoon strip was incredibly popular with a lot of my co-workers at the time. I need to go look up his books and find the vacation one again.

      2. Salty Caramel*

        I was out of there by then, but this manager would have been a good candidate for pointy-haired boss of the year.

      3. NCA*

        My dad had Dilbert comics covering his cube farm office back in the 90s/early aughts. He was a meek quiet nerdy budget legal analyst, so apparently no one expected it. It probably helped that his office was so small that it couldn’t fit a normal adult plus a 10 year old child (but he /did/ have privacy at least!)

      4. Phony Genius*

        I had two of them hanging up, have removed them after the author self-destructed. One was a poignant quote about engineers. The other was from a strip where they bought the cheapest motivational posters available: “Remember: if all else fails, your coworkers are edible.” (This almost belongs in the discussion upthread.) I replaced it with some Douglas Adams stuff.

    2. Antigone Funn*

      Back in early Covid times, when everybody was washing their hands for 20 seconds 20 times a day, I brought in a poster demonstrating handwashing using Lady Macbeth’s “Out, out, damned spot” speech and stuck it in the ladies’ room. Yes, “unprofessional,” but this was a casual and bookish type of workplace, so I knew people would get it. And I know they were amused, because I heard them talking about it!

      Eventually some guy got wind of it, claimed that “anything in one bathroom needs to go in the other,” made a copy, and put it in the men’s room. Guess the guys didn’t find it funny, because both copies were gone within a week. :(

      1. Space Needlepoint*

        I think that’s hysterical. Maybe someone didn’t like the “damned” part?

      2. MigraineMonth*

        “Anything in one bathroom needs to go in the other” is a great rule of thumb for stuff like menstrual supplies and DV resources, but it seems a bit over-the-top to worry about every poster being in both. Or, say, urinals.

        1. Nobby Nobbs*

          Outside of the workplace: baby changing tables. Not a responsibility that should be restricted based on who can or can’t pee standing up.

    3. RLC*

      Years ago our state museum had a temporary exhibit recognizing various professions employed by the state. My favorite was the “typical natural resources professional’s office” (my husband and I both spent our entire careers in natural resources). The “office” had various field-collected specimens (think dried leaves and feathers), well-used government issue office supplies, and one wall covered in Far Side comics. So, so accurate for those professions. I stood there and howled with laughter.
      PS: now that we’re retired the Far Side gallery is on our refrigerator.

        1. Glen*

          I just finished my undergrad at a regional campus here in au (the uni is quite big, but our campus is small…) that offered far more science courses in the past but that, now, only offers conservation biology/environmental management, so we (and, in fairness, sometimes the nursing students) were the only ones using the science building.

          There is indeed a Calvin and Hobbes strip on the notice board.

          1. whingedrinking*

            My professor who taught applied ethics had a Calvin and Hobbes strip on his door – one where John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes are crossing a stream on a log. Philosophers are indeed a special bunch.

        2. ScruffyInternHerder*

          Possibly generational or no?

          My field has less than the square root of jack all to do with biology, and C&H is a standard decor theme here as well. And the bulk of my department was in the age range to be reading it in newspapers as children. Its not found in two other departments, where the average age skews a little older than mine (so not as likely to have gone searching for C&H as a child).

  9. AnonyNurse*

    I missed the original post, so I’ll share here. Worked at a county health department. We had some old dolls used to demonstrate breastfeeding. One of them was so very creepy. We did not use him for home visits. We just placed him around the office to startle people. His name was Chuck. That office also had a thing for inflatable animals — started with a Bozo the Clown punching bag. Then a moose head (like a wall mounted trophy, only inflatable). A T-rex. We’d move them around our (badge-access area) offices. Some people across the office park, who weren’t also county employees, got into the game and started their own inflatables at the windows. My favorite was when we gave the t-rex candy cigarettes.

    Those were the days. Fun office. Pay was abysmal. Shameful. A couple years later, when I’d moved a very long distance for a job, they sent me the moose head. It hung proudly in my new office. Now that I work from home though, it is deflated and under the bed. Poor thing.

  10. Audogs*

    These are all wonderful! I didn’t contribute my story, so here goes. My company was getting ready for a massive interior overhaul and I was visiting local companies with new spaces with our architectural design firm. A well known insurance company from the other side of the state was expanding in our area and had just completed their relocation into a new, much larger space and were VERY proud of it. This was about 8 years ago when the then new fad of all open spaces, phone booth type structures for private calls, etc. was THE THING. However, right smack dab in the middle of the open floor, a space that everyone would walk by was an open cube decorated with hundreds and hundreds of various tacky tchotchkes. The company tour guide visibly winced and started stuttering as we stopped in our tracks with open mouths. Being a practical person I marveled that the tchotchke person had to have packed and redisplayed all that s*it.

    1. Siege*

      I wish I’d had the balls to do that. I worked for a terrible organization that went to an open office plan because the out of control head of HR of our parent organization wanted everyone to have “natural light” and the previous layout (very 70s) was a ring of offices around the cube farm sections and the various internal structures like the kitchen and the elevators. She also worked it out so that the subsidiary organizations were placed by the very heavy, very loud maglock door but that’s neither here nor there. She claimed that if we wanted to keep our cubes we could and I just didn’t have the courage to demand that I retain mine, so I spent ~18 months working in the most miserable circumstances possible for me.

      Now, I think I would stand up for myself and demand that full-height cube.

      And the best part was that the people closest to the windows were all overwhelmed by the light and heat (they literally couldn’t see computer screens depending on the time of day), and for the rest of us it was exactly the same as if it had been that ring of exterior-wall offices because people rarely ever worked with their door closed.

    2. Wolf*

      One of my colleagues does that on purpose. We aren’t supposed to have personal desks, but he just has so much stuff that nobody else can use his desk when he’s not around.

  11. J Freezy*

    For the dolls one… I had a boss at a prior job who would sew a doll of every new employee hired… and they sat atop a cupboard by the printer. I don’t think he got rid of the dolls when people left either so there were dozens of these creepy things staring at you

    1. AngryOctopus*

      My friend spent part of a summer singing in the chorus for a musical based on Mr. Holland’s Opus. She sent me a pic of the creepy baby doll they used for one scene. I’m pretty convinced that thing started the fire in a nearby antiques shop a week or so later.

  12. Reality.Bites*

    I had an experience with unfortunate office decor last week. I had an appointment with a doctor – the head of a lipid clinic in a big hospital.

    He had a framed poster of an art exhibit at one of the big New York museums. And then I noticed “Sponsored by Phillip Morris” – the big tobacco company.

    He’d never noticed. No one else had pointed it out. Sadly/fortunately everything is OK and I shouldn’t have to see him again, so I’ll never know if he replaces it.

    1. Antigone Funn*

      I have a gorgeous poster print of some art from the Smithsonian. The sponsor of that exhibit was the Sacklers. I’ve thought about chopping off the poster at the sponsor line, but I do hope no one would hold it against me. Horrible rich people laundering their reputations through philanthropy is gross, but is merely owning a print of some art sponsored by someone bad an endorsement of the bad behavior?

      1. Antilles*

        I don’t think most people would hold the sponsor against you. If the artist himself was the perpetrator of the bad behavior, it would feel more dicey, but the sponsor is far enough removed that it’s not really an endorsement of them.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Owning the print: you’re totally fine. If you’re going to display it publicly (e.g. at work), yeah, I’d chop off the sponsor line. (*Particularly* if your job has anything to do with public health or addiction treatment.)

      3. Birdie*

        The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is a Smithsonian Museum. With the Freer Gallery, they are the National Asian Art Museum. Arthur Sackler donated a thousand pieces of art from his private collection and $4 million for it’s construction.

        I think what the extended Sackler family has done in recent years is awful, but for what its worth, Arthur Sackler died about 10 years before OxyContin came onto the market, and his family sold their share of PurduePharma upon his death–Sacker’s two brothers and their children are who most of us think of when we imagine “Horrible rich people laundering their reputations through philanthropy.” My understanding is the children of Arthur aren’t, and never have been, associated with the pharmaceutical business in any way. So if was that branch of the Sackler family, you can feel a bit less bas about their name being on a poster you own.

    2. Coverage Associate*

      I have seen art prints from exhibitions sponsored by tobacco companies in at least one health care provider office, maybe 2. Back in the 90s and aughts. One I am thinking of was a very boring impressionist. I wouldn’t hold it against a provider if the art had some meaning for the provider, but, yeah, healthcare offices shouldn’t pick up boring corporate art sponsored by bad guys.

      (Sorry, impressionists not my thing, probably because the prints were everywhere back then.)

      1. linger*

        Impressionist art shows happen when corporate sponsor is all, “Show me the Monet”.

      2. jojo*

        Most doctors offices are part of corporate medical. I doubt the doctors pick much artwork personally. Most is bulk ordered by corporate decorators. My doctors office is listed under the local hospital which is a big medical chain.

    3. Alright Alright Alright*

      I once went to a dermatologist who shared space with a plastic surgeon and there was a poster in the exam room encouraging patients to consider a nose job. So weird.

  13. Quality Girl*

    #7 doesn’t surprise me at all. When I was in a regional position (not a nurse), I had a secondary office in my department in a converted outpatient phlebotomy room. The pre-op outpatient surgery nurses decided they wanted it. My director held them off (surprisingly). I knew all of this was going on but didn’t think much of it.

    One day I was working in my office and two of those nurses barged in, didn’t even acknowledge my presence, and started discussing what all they could do with the space. They said, and I quote “I don’t understand why we can’t take over this office, nobody ever even works in here.” To which I finally spoke up and said “I do, multiple times a week.” They just stared at me and left and I informed my director of the shenanigans.

    1. Perfectly Cromulent Name*

      The library director at a college I used to work for found out they were moving the library when rando contractors rolled in and started taking measurements. (It was a small library- not a giant building.) She inquired about what they were doing, and they were confused. They told her they were there to take measurements, etc., for the renovations, and she was all…”I’m the DIRECTOR of this library…I’m pretty sure I’d know about this” and she called security/her dean because they were being disruptive. She was then told yes, the randos were right, and yes, she was losing the library and the space had been given to *redacted* but that the new space was great! The space they were moving the library to was NOT great; she felt extremely disrespected…it was a whole thing.

      She found another job soon after, and now a much bigger library has that talented director and her skills. It was a promotion for the DOL, so I guess that it was a win for her in the end, but still.

      1. Enai*

        Wow. What disrespect! Not just towards the library, but the contractors, too! Imagine you’re hired to renovate some building, you show up to do your job, and presto! You’ve been dragooned into delivering the news of an upcoming move to the department that presently occupies it! I’d be confused at first, then mortified, then livid.

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          It happens more frequently than you’d like to think.

          I’ve had an unfortunate day where I rapidly decided that my course of action was changing slightly to include “and not be shot at by a rural anti-govt homesteader” as we were doing pre-bid field work and the notice to bid advertisement had been in approximately 6 point font in the local newspaper on the back pages, for a project that was not locally desired but the EPA said tough. Basically, if someone was home, it was “un-verifiable in the field” because I was not hedging my bets on reasonableness.

    2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      I’ve had that happen to me! I was sharing an office with 2 other coworkers. We were…cozy…in the space but 3 desks and file cabinets all fit with room to walk around per fire code. I had heard a rumor that someone wanted our office. One day an Assistant Dean walks in with Facilities and starts to measure my desk literally around me without any hello or acknowledgement; but because budgets for furniture are all department-specific, we would be keeping our stuff. I’ve been moved 3 times that I’ve been here and had campus vultures come in and try to make a claim on my computer, monitor or chair and the look of offense I get when I tell them I’m certainly keeping my equipment when I move to a new office.

  14. And thanks for the coffee*

    My favorites-the demotivater poster and the stripe that gets painted over.

  15. English Rose*

    #1 The Dolls – that would completely creep me out, don’t think I could sit in a meeting there.

    #13 – well I had no idea about 4.20 either. This site is SO educational!

    1. Kermit's Bookkeepers*

      Maybe it’s US-specific slang. It’s so prevalent that it gets used in room-for-rent ads to indicate whether a housing space is “420-friendly” or not.

  16. Lemonfork*

    #2 brought up a weird one for me. Years ago I rented an art studio space in a small artists’ collective. In the hallway gallery, there was a shrine to a specific celebrity. The wall held large photo print outs of the specific celebrity, including both selfies and group shots of him with other Hollywood A-listers, and even fast print customizable things like a huge blanket throw with a picture of him, even a potholder with a studio portrait of him. There were even several crude pencil sketches of the star, all sort of thrown together behind glass. It was a little odd, and seemed a little immature but I figured someone in the building maybe had a teenager obsessed with this person.

    Months later I learned that the landlord was the celebrity’s sibling. I hadn’t put it together that they had the same last name. And moreover, I learned that the art “installation” was the celebrity’s own work! He had assembled and put together the photo prints, and done the bad drawings himself, of himself.

    3. Yoyoyo*

      This reminds me of my dentist’s office – it is a dental practice owned and operated by Adam Sandler’s sister and niece. He is a beloved hometown hero in my area, and they have their waiting room decorated with his movie posters (but somehow it doesn’t feel weird/shrinelike if you know their relationship to him). My wife didn’t know they were related and the first time she went she told me “they were really nice but they have this weird obsession with Adam Sandler…”

      Another note – he is a very nice person. Someone I was working with went to the same dentist and she told them about how she was having a really hard time with some medical stuff. They had him call her to cheer her up!

    4. Econobiker*

      I am saying it was probably Danny DeVito…

      Come on – a pot holder printed with the star’s picture?

  17. Madame Señora*

    #6 – My partner is a tutor who teaches his lessons in the student’s home. One home features a large nude portrait of the kid’s mom. The 12 year old student was like, “You should see what they have in their bedroom.”

    2. Indolent Libertine*

      HOW ON EARTH DOES THAT 12 YEAR OLD KNOW WHAT IS IN THEIR BEDROOM OMG DANGER WILL ROBINSON….

        1. amoeba*

          Yeah, honestly, while I agree that you shouldn’t put explicit art up in your bedroom (the kids will be *so* embarrassed!), I’d be much more worried if they somehow banned their own son from their bedroom.

          1. AnonORama*

            Wait, what? All-caps screaming about a child going into the parents’ bedroom? No one said it was when the parents were doing anything adults-only, or were even in the room. I don’t remember going into my parents’ room a lot, but “can you run in and get me a sweater” or “can you put my clean laundry in our room” are not exactly obscene requests.

          2. N C Kiddle*

            And if they tried, he’d probably sneak in just to see what the fuss was about

      2. EC*

        Because its a room in the house they live in and kids interact with their parents? Why wouldn’t a kid know what the inside of their parents’ room looks like? Do you keep your door locked 24/7 and ban kids from every going in?

    3. Econobiker*

      The tween aged
      child of a privileged family is not going to be unaware of the weird artwork his parents decorate their private bedroom with especially if his mother’s nude portrait is “publicly” hanging over the main living room fireplace…

      Perhaps a European family is all I can say…

  18. Umiel12*

    #14 – I’m fairly impressed that the boss recognized the sex couch right away. He probably gets 4:20, too.

    1. RVA Cat*

      Sex couch will no doubt get delivered to boudoir swinger boss. I just hope it’s to his *home*.

    3. Aldabra*

      I was thinking that maybe they googled the brand name or something. But it’s possible!

      1. Elspeth McGillicuddy*

        I’d probably go, “Huh, weird feature. Surely the designers put it there on purpose for a specific use?” and then google the brand out of curiosity. And been VERY surprised.

    4. MigraineMonth*

      Yeah, I noticed that too. One glance, and he recognizes a high-end, discreet sex couch?

      Lucky, though. That would have been so much more more awkward to deal with a month after delivery.

      1. Zona the Great*

        Plot twist: boss donated it after his ex wife left him and president’s wife loved the “cup holders” and rescued it from the same charity.

    5. Mango Freak*

      I’m honestly having trouble even finding an image of something that you’d identify as a “couch.” I wonder if this was a bespoke item!

      1. Coverage Associate*

        I saw one in a fashion magazine around 2011. But it was just kind of wave shaped. No moving parts like platforms.

    6. Katie Impact*

      There are only so many possible reasons for a couch to have carabiners attached to it, I guess.

  19. mcm*

    SO curious about #3 — did the professional layout company not know how people accessed cubicles? Were they under the impression that you teleported into your desk every day? Outstanding

    1. Audogs*

      Something similar almost happened to me. In an office redesign with new furniture a large credenza would have either blocked a doorway or extended out the window. * I * had a tape measure and knew how to use it, not so design firm. They couldn’t figure out why I was so frustrated.

    2. Pretty as a Princess*

      The temptation I would have had to expense TWO stepstools, one for each side of the desk.

  20. goddessoftransitory*

    Oh, Stella70, you can always be counted on to bring it!

    What a nerve on that manager; I wish you’d moved all your stuff out of there and wheeled in some autopsy tables without telling anyone. That would have been a helluva meeting!

    1. AnonORama*

      Oh, is #7 the Stella with the wild holiday party story? If so, Stella, love your style and hate that a bunch of asshats commandeered your office.

      1. Hlao-roo*

        Yes! #7 was Stella70, who hosted Stella70’s Holiday Extravaganza from “a truly hilarious company holiday party story, told in bullet points.”

        1. Hlao-roo*

          I linked to it upthread, so if you search (ctrl + f) my username you should find it. You can also search “a truly hilarious company holiday party story, told in bullet points” in the AAM searchbar. It’s the post from December 7, 2022.

          (Not putting the link in this comment so it’ll post right away.)

  21. Jan Levinson Gould*

    #1 – I suffer from pediophobia (irrational fear of dolls) which I acknowledge is weird. I compare it to the fear of clowns some people have. I don’t think I could have survived a meeting in that office.

    1. Ink*

      Yeah, I love dolls… but I wouldn’t display them at work. Too many people are freaked out by them, it seems a bit rude!

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        My grandmother used to make dolls and displayed several throughout her home. They were beautiful and discreet.

        The doll office still sounds creepy, and I remember drawers full of doll heads, arms, and legs in my grandmother’s sewing room.

    1. Seeking Second Childhood*

      In a fine example of the Mandela effect, my mind’s eye put Adirondack chairs into that image until i clicked your link.

    2. Azure Jane Lunatic*

      You’re right!

      It was amazing to behold and I wonder if I still have pictures.

  23. Anon for this*

    A former senior leader at my company used to have a job in a career field that is often viewed as very elite and exciting. He kept 8×10 prints of himself in the environment of his former job handy to give away to women in our company.

    1. Margaret Cavendish*

      This guy is giving me Vladimir Putin on Horseback vibes.

      Did he really assume that people women would want these pictures? What did he think they were doing with them? I imagine most people just threw them out. Did he think they would display them, or, I don’t know, put lipstick kisses on them and keep them under their pillows?

      1. RLC*

        Long, long ago I worked in an office that had a dartboard. That crew would have put his picture up there in a nanosecond.

      3. Anon for this*

        He would autograph them.

        A brilliant colleague framed the photo and hung it in her office *because the idea was so ridiculous* and he completely thought she was proud of it and admired it.

  24. Maz*

    #1 “The worst part was if you needed to have a sit-down conversation with my coworker, you’d be the one facing the Doll Wall. Dozens of glassy vacant eyes staring right at you the entire time. Staff was split between finding it either cozy or creepy.”
    Creepy. Definitely creepy.

  25. Katie*

    Oh the napping one reminds me of my office. A guy was caught sleeping on one of our many couches and when he was chastised he said, ‘but where am I supposed to sleep?!!’

    1. Pretty as a Princess*

      Same. Guy just sleeping on the sofa in an open space (used for informal gatherings). No one knew who he was. (I think it turned out he was an employee whose office was in another building about 3 blocks away so he apparently decided to just nape on the couch in the open space between meetings?)

    2. EC*

      I don’t get what this guy thought was going to happen. Of course they’re going to fire the guy who takes long naps in a work area.

    3. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      This is late so no one may see it… in college, I worked for a summer as a non-union inventory clerk at a VERY contentious unionized manufacturing place. It was actually written into the collective bargaining agreement that the union workers were allowed to nap at their work stations, but NOT hidden, like in aisles/shelves of the parts warehouse. Non-union people were not allowed to wake them up. If it was essential that they were needed for anything…like working… we had to get their union supervisor to decide if it was necessary and they would wake them. Most bonkers place I’ve ever worked.

    1. Gumby*

      Given your username: have you been to the Computer History Museum? Nothing says “you’re old” like overhearing a bunch of preteens exclaim over the funny looking cell phones and pulling out their own phones to capture photographic evidence of the absolute dinosaur that was… a flip phone. Exactly like the one you used to have not actually that long ago.

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        Me to the Apple Store employee: Thanks, but I can help my kid set up her laptop. I’ve had Macs since 1988.

        ASE: Hey, that’s before….

        Me: Yeah, I know. Before you were born.

      2. RedinSC*

        I like when you walk into the main exhibit area you hear the modem connecting sound. I bet those youngsters don’t even know what that noise is!

      3. AJ*

        A teen I know once opened a conversation by saying he wanted one of those “retro handsets”.

        I had no mercy. I started with 60s-era handset images and worked my way up until I found what he meant.
        Poor kid didn’t even know cell phones were as recent as his older cousins.

  27. Twill*

    I have lead sheltered life….I was not aware of the existence of a sex couch. Kind of wish I still wasn’t. I do know going forward, I will be inspecting any sofa prior to sitting.
    On the plus side – problem resolved for OP

    1. Martin Blackwood*

      oh, heres a tip: if it looks like a normal couch, its Not What #14 means. you dont have to google, but imo it looks more like a weird leather chair (with no arms, no recline) than a couch. i hope this frees you from worrying if someone bought a sex specific couch.

      1. Enai*

        Wouldn’t the OP have said “chair” then? If I read “couch” I expect a large piece of upholstered furniture that seats at least two people with ample space and at least three or four cheek-to-jowl. Also usually has arm rests at both sides.

        1. Florence Reese*

          The piece of furniture being described is large, often upholstered, and uhh…I mean it does technically have room to seat two people, maybe more! It’s oriented more as a chair but it’s couch-sized, to support your legs. I could see it being confused for an obnoxiously modern couch.

    2. Econobiker*

      More like a doctor’s exam table but less Hospital clinical and more Las Vegas plush…

  28. Yes And*

    To my fellow nonprofiteers: #14 is why your organization needs a gift acceptance policy. If your organization doesn’t have a gift acceptance policy, print out #14 and discreetly leave it on your ED’s desk.

  29. Martin Blackwood*

    I consider myself fairly worldly, but i had to google a sex couch……..i can see how it could be seen as a high end piece of furniture, but i can not imagine demanding to replace a normal couch with one. really dont know how you could sit side by side w someone on that thing

  30. Kyle S.*

    In case any young’uns missed the reference, the clouds-and-grass background was from Windows XP, not Windows 95. It’s called “Bliss” and was shot somewhere in Alameda County. It’s such an iconic piece of computing culture that it has its own Wikipedia entry.

    1. Kyle S.*

      Fact checking myself from Wikipedia: it was shot in Sonoma, not Alameda! I could have sworn I read an article about it being taken somewhere in the East Bay.

      1. Coverage Associate*

        It doesn’t look like Sonoma or Alameda IMO, but I’m on the Peninsula.

    2. allathian*

      It also looked a lot like the place where they held the funeral for Tasha Yar in TNG.

  31. CzechMate*

    Oh my god, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this when the calls went out.

    The year is 1989. My parents are doing IT at a celebrity golf tournament, when suddenly, they see a very, very famous person coming towards them. My parents both get excited, ask the man if they can take a picture, and he happily obliges. Extremely nice, friendly, even gives them an autograph. The photograph occupied a special place of honor on their mantle.

    The celebrity in question was O. J. Simpson.

    Five years later, their beloved O. J. encountered some small legal difficulties and had a minor fall from grace. My parents felt a little weird having the photo on their mantle, but he was FAMOUS, after all–they didn’t want to just throw it out. So my mom took it to her office and put it on her desk.

    For many years, Mom loved being in her office and hearing that refrain, “Oh my god, is that O. J. Simpson?!” Then, one day, after this had gone on for about a decade, she was sitting at her desk when a 19 year old intern looked at the photo and said, “Oh my god, is that YOU?!” She then realized that she’d maybe aged a bit, and so she took the photo home and put it in a drawer.

    1. mcm*

      my mom also got one of these! the office she works in has brochures for each provider, and they haven’t been updated for a while. Recently, a patient came in and said, “I saw your brochure out there! You used to be really pretty!”

      1. CzechMate*

        Well, it was still the Trial of the Century, and everyone was talking about it nonstop. I think she was mostly using it as a conversation starter. She worked in a fairly casual, non-client facing nonprofit role.

    3. Coverage Associate*

      I have the only copy of a “family” photo taken while I was away at law school. What has been fascinating is the coworkers who think I am in the photo, one of my siblings, but which sibling isn’t consistent.

      The worst part of hot desking is I can’t have it at work anymore.

    1. Rapunzel Rider*

      I feel the need to but I am at the office and do not need IT to come down and start asking questions lol

  34. Brian*

    #8: I’m a teacher. For the past ten years I’ve had the rules for Alcatraz prisoners in my classroom in lieu of classroom procedures. And it’s a big metal sign I bought at the actual prison.

  36. Msd*

    My favorite demotivator posters were “Failure: When your best just isn’t good enough” and “Just because you’re necessary doesn’t mean you’re important” and finally “Procrastination: hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now”

    1. Filosofickle*

      You and I could hang out. I said above the bear/salmon is one of my favorite, but my top three is rounded out by Failure and Procrastination.

  37. DameB*

    Oh god I know those dolls. those are probably Madame Alexander dolls. When I was a very small child, my mother collected them “for you, sweetie!” Just like OP;s coworker: full wall of little Victoriana dressed up dolls staring at you. They were creepy AF — I would lie in bed and be sure that I could see their lips moving.

    I’m pretty sure that’s why i never enjoyed dolls as a child.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      Also, my grandma handmade dolls. The Mme. Alexander dolls always struck me as very cheaply and poorly made for how expensive they were.

      And creepy!

  38. Piscera*

    #4 The massage chair.

    A past employer had a massage therapist come in twice a month, and at one point parked the chair in an office that officially was a courtesy office for a retired executive. In practice said executive never actually came in, so sometimes the space was used for visiting employees from other locations.

    Eventually they needed the space for a new employee, and removed the computer and the phone to be replaced with new equipment. However, they didn’t remove it from the conference room/visitor office reservation system. So a visiting employee reserved it, and was not thrilled to arrive to no computer and no phone, but there was a massage chair.

  39. Michelle*

    You know there were some folks really wanting to bring home that sex couch but too afraid to ask.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Just because it’s easily cleaned doesn’t mean it has been well cleaned. And some things should just be bought fresh and new.

  40. Person from the Resume*

    I laughed at the Self-Love office.

    “He said he thought all of the pictures on the wall were of my husband and I was just “weirdly obsessed” with him.”

  41. Cookies For Breakfast*

    Oh gosh, the memories “president’s wife who fancied herself an interior designer” brought back.

    I used to work in a building for which “too Soviet” was a compliment (one of its most cheerful features: bars on the small, prison-like windows of admin offices). One day, one of the bosses, aka the owner’s wife, decided to redecorate, aka paint randomly selected walls in either the company’s main brand colour or a perplexing hot pink. She hired her close friend, a decorator who was just starting out, to do the job.

    Since the decorator worked on her own, the bosses “volunteered” us, untrained and unskilled office employees, to help out. There we were, on ladders, painting walls in bright colours instead of doing the actual jobs we were paid for. I’ll say that the workplace was hazmat suit level of toxic, and painting was more fun than nearly anything else I’ve done working there.

    So here comes the wife’s personal touch. To “add fun” to the room we had lunch in, which was a dark unloved corner at the back of a grim warehouse, she instructed her friend to hang a message in big white wooden vintage letters that stood out over the newly painted wall. The letters spelled the words “Eat up!”. Encouragement to enjoy our breaks? Reminder that the bosses would rather have us skip meals and work faster? I always suspected the latter, and a large part of me believes she knew exactly what she was doing.

    1. Antigone Funn*

      Reminds me of Ed Debevic’s slogan: “Eat and get out!” Maybe that was a little too sassy.

    2. Quill*

      Oh, I fondly, and by fondly I mean “with great screaming from my joints” remember when Worst Job moved.

      We did not paint, but that was the only thing that we did not DIY about that move. On a saturday, mind you. For no extra pay. (I cannot have made enough to be actually exempt, surely…)

  42. Artemesia*

    #7 == All your furniture needed to go home. This one illustrates one of my maxims of office life — never accept an office or team space that others more powerful than you are will covet. I once was offered the cushy corner office when it became vacant — but I knew we were planning on hiring some very senior people and while I had some clout, I was not untouchable. So I managed to get a new office built out of some vacant space that was perfect for my needs but not everyone’s cup of tea. I have literally seen people laid off and programs ended because more powerful programs wanted their space.

    1. Tiger Snake*

      “never accept an office or team space that others more powerful than you are will covet”

      That’s probably a good maxim, but it does remind me of an exact opposite that happened.
      You know how it goes in open-plan bays, right? Offices are premium, then the window seats, and then everyone else gets the rest of the bay? So, you can usually tell who’s Somewhat Important by if they get a window seat or not, and the Really Somewhat Important people get the corner window seats.

      Well; I had a director who refused the window seat. They insisted on getting the seat right smack-dab in the middle of the bay, so that they were most accessible to their staff.

      Every single time someone needed our team, and so came around to look for the director, they walk walk straight past her without so much as a glance – and then start talking to the interns.

      The result was that the director got to eavesdrop on what they were saying and decide whether to jump in at their leisure. Then, instead of having to work out what people wanted and then tell them to come back later (an effort in futility), when they were successfully redirected – oh no, she was just about to jump into a call and can’t give them ‘just a minute’. She’ll let you know when she’s free for that chat.

  43. EC*

    I’ve worked in research in a few medical centers and every once in a while the donors will decide that they should redecorate. Every time, they pick things they think are nice but are actually really impractical for the space. People who actually worked in the labs were never consulted.

    There was the time they replaced all the desk chairs with expensive new ones. The expensive new chairs did not fit the desks.

    Or they had expensive new dropped lights installed. The new lights made the top shelves in the labs unusable, so we lost a third of our storage space.

    They picked out fancy looking bench surfaces. Unfortunately, those surfaces showed every single finger print, and were easily marred by chemicals, and looked like ass about two minutes after people started working.

    Once, they ordered more new chairs, just a huge quantity of chairs. The next week there was a giant stack of chairs in the disposal area because people were so sick of having to move a bunch of chairs to do their work. The same thing happened with the new shelving. The day after it was installed there was a huge pile of unwanted shelves in the disposal area because the new shelves made it impossible to have a computer at a desk, or put equipment on the bench.

    1. Artemesia*

      We had a classic old building, with a dome — very Thomas Jefferson that was remodeled for offices with an added wing with an atrium that preserved the back facade — stunning job that produced huge amounts of usable space. The bit entry reception area was done by a decorator in modern furniture (think Corbussier and the like) and was stunning in that renovated stark classical setting. Just beautiful.

      Then a key donor/board member decided it was too ‘sterile’ and had it all redone with sort of ornate upholstered Victorian furniture. SOOOO ugly.

  44. Mango Freak*

    Ok I was stymied by #14 but I think I cracked it.

    At first I couldn’t find anything that could reasonably be mistaken for a “couch.” There are chaise/lounger things, as others have observed, but they don’t really look like couch-couches, and it’d be very hard for more than one person to sit on them.

    But now I’ve found a “divan daybed” style piece of kink furniture, so I’m getting the idea better. Of course, the one I’m looking at seems designed to be pretty incognito, but at least now I know something remotely comparable to a “sex couch” exists.

    Yes, this was vexing me for some reason.

    1. Mango Freak*

      I also just found a “Scorpio” *chair* that looks like something Delia Deetz would’ve brought into her home only for Beetlejuice to horrifically animate it. If I had EU1,100 to blow and any place to put it, I’d be tempted just based on that.

  45. Art3mis*

    This one is really minor. At OldJob there was some holiday decorations that went up one year. One was this plastic I guess door or wall covering that looked like a fireplace. When I saw it I laughed and said, “You know, when we said the office was cold, this wasn’t the solution we had in mind.”

  46. Coverage Associate*

    A few jobs back, someone with some aesthetic sense was put in charge of our branch office, but not really given a budget. She got rid of the secondary sources no one was using, as evidenced by the layer of dust on them. One of the other senior people complained, but he worked from home pre pandemic, very rare for that office, and was overruled.

    But the main office insisted that if the newly empty wall space was going to be filled with art, it was going to be art by the sister of someone senior at the main office. When the two tone abstract paintings arrived, there were several calls to the main office for instructions about what was the top v bottom etc.

    For new and non lawyers: secondary sources like practice guides rarely look formal and impressive like the books you see in legal TV. Those books are court reporters, and the reason you see them on TV is the best that can happen to them is that they get sold by the yard to be used as props on TV sets and in furniture stores. Basically No one has used those in a long time.

  47. Empress Ki*

    7 : I hope you removed all your stuff and left the space as you initially found it.

  48. GovSysadmin*

    Apparently my coworker’s son thinks I’m cool, because I have no place to store all of my Lego builds at home, and have a bunch of them in my office. They’re mostly ones safe for professional settings (like their architecture sets), but I also have the TARDIS set and Voltron prominently displayed. :)

    1. Goody*

      OOooooh I just finally got my grubby paws on a second hand (but actually complete with figs!) TARDIS set. Voltron is definitely on my Holy Grail list.

  49. Fanny Price*

    I started typing this story on my phone in response to the call for submissions, then lost what I had typed in a page reload and didn’t bother to type it again. But now that I am on my computer, I’ll submit it and maybe it will make a main list in a future call for stories.

    Around the turn of the 21st century, I worked in a BigLaw firm in the Northeast. We had several floors near the top of the building – I think between the 30th and 40th floors? Anyway, at some point, the decor committee decided that the carpet in the elevator lobby needed to be replaced, and they commissioned custom carpets, with the floor number integrated into the pattern for each one. I’m sure it sounded like a good idea on paper.

    I rode the elevator up on the day they were installed, and when the doors opened, everyone in the elevator started laughing. The carpets were hideous beyond belief. I’ve done my best to block the image from my brain, but I think the numbers were probably about a foot or a bit more from top to bottom, and they were made of random-looking patches of color, maybe two to five inches across. They weren’t two-digit numbers, but just randomly oriented overlapping digits, many copies of the two for each floor. I think the colors were orange, green, purple, royal blue, and maybe some red, on a black background? Some of the color blocks may have been patterned, too. They hurt to look at for more than a few moments.

    I think they lasted for three or four days at most. Then they were replaced with plain solid blue carpets, like we had before the decor committee got ideas in their heads. I have no idea what they did with the patterned ones – they weren’t exactly suitable for donation anywhere.

    No one spoke of them again for months, until there was a brief callback at the annual retreat (which included a skit put on by that year’s new associates) – a brave young soul who sang, “Don’t Cry for Me and the Carpets” to the tune of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.” If memory serves, she was dressed like the chairman of the decor committee.

  50. Elizabeth West*

    #1 —
    And there’s the creepy doll
    That always follows you
    It’s got a ruined eye
    That’s always open

    And there’s a creepy doll
    That always follows you
    It’s got a pretty mouth
    To swallow you whole

    1. Saturday*

      Wow, thank you for this – I didn’t know this song existed. I just watched a whole horror movie play out in my mind while I listened to it.

  51. Procedure Publisher*

    For 15, someone should have a speaker playing title.wma to complete the whole look is looks like the Bliss desktop.

    1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

      I chose a very short Windows clip from that general era and recorded it into one of those little noise buttons, and pasted the Windows button icon on the top.

  52. Higher Ed*

    It’s bad enough having to share computers sometimes, so I’m going to pass on using the community blankets.

  54. LD RN*

    There were four nurses where I worked that were never allowed to work together — mostly because we only staffed three at a time, but also because of the possibility that the place wouldn’t be standing in the morning. Great nurses, could practically read each others minds in an emergency, but terrible influences on each other.
    For example — one had a bat skull Halloween decoration and hung it in the nurse’s station in full view of anyone who walked in. Every time it “went missing,” she found it and put it some place new.
    Someone (not them) put a cartoon style sperm and egg on the wall (labor and delivery unit). No one knew who or when. We do know that it was several months before someone realized that one of the four put a condom wrapper between the egg and sperm.
    One night the temperature on the unit plummeted to the fifties, they printed out a coloring page of a fire, colored it, cut it out, and assembled it. Then used cotton swabs and cotton balls to “roast marshmallows.” And left it on the desk for administration to see.
    Then there was the time that someone on dayshift brought in some rather creepy free to a good home paper mache squirrels. The squad in question managed to attach them to the hanging light fixtures and then stuck scissors in their “hands.” Yes, they thought that it was a good idea to suspend scissors over the desk.
    And this is the only one I don’t have photographic evidence of: When I started at this hospital, they had pregnancy casts up above the doors as you walked in. If you are not familiar with such a thing, some women will get a mold made of their pregnant belly and use it as decor.
    I’d rather work with Squirrel Scissorhands over my head.

  55. LD RN*

    We are on a labor and delivery unit. Someone put up a cartoon sperm (complete with smiley face) and a cartoon egg. No one admitted to it. It took several months before anyone realized that one of the night shift nurses stuck a condom wrapper between the egg and the sperm.

    When I started here, there were pregnancy casts — molds of women’s pregnant bellies decorated however they wanted — hanging above the door. I’d rather have the Doll Wall.

  56. Ask For Foregiveness*

    At my last job, I was told a story about something that happened before I got there.
    Evidently, one employee decided they wanted another employee’s cube. It may have been a window seat or just better placed. Whatever the reason… they decided to just… take it.
    When the other employee left for a week for vacation, the first employee switched out the other’s stuff for theirs. So the other person returned and all their stuff had been moved and the first employee was just using their desk. Without their permission. Without anyone’s permission. (I don’t remember if they lied and said they had permission or if they did it after hours.)
    I wish I had been there to see it. I almost wish someone had dared to try that with me, they would’ve seen a very different side of me had they touched my things.
    I just can’t imagine having the audacity…

  57. Opossum Club*

    My office decided to have a cookout one spring. To advertise, the executive assistant sent out an office-wide email. The email included a gif of someone opening a grill to find an opossum inside. The EA also put up print-outs that included an opossum with a chef’s hat and an apron.

    Not everyone was thrilled by an opossum advertising free food. A few people complained. The opossum posters were removed.

    But not everyone was thrilled by the opossum getting the boot.

    Suddenly, there were print-outs everywhere saying “Don’t Delete Love” and “FREE THE OPOSSUM” and little opossum cut-outs wearing different hats placed everywhere. One was even added to the inside of the elevator door so it was a surprise when you walked in and the door shut. It was almost Halloween so I added an opossum holding a pumpkin picture to my cube. Others grabbed some of the cut-outs before they were taken down and put them in their cube too. It silently became A Thing.

    (Then, for the holiday cookie swap, someone brought in “opossum poop” treats to give out. And opossums wearing Santa hats showed up around the same time. We’ll see what happens next year.)

  58. Jess*

    #14: was me kinda. I had acquired the Dali four season prints in my misspent youth, finally could afford to frame them, and they hung in my living room for a long time. They were not Daliesque in that they were more impressionistic and less surreal which is why I love them. They are very painterly and showcase his talents outside of surrealism. Anyway.

    A few years ago I took a role in HR at my org in benefits. It ended up being a speed run to the role i have know, but while i was there, it was some shenanigans let me tell you.

    Anyway, it was my first non public facing role and my first office…with windows! Along the windows, behind my desk, so my back to the windows, was a long strip of drywall perfect for my four seasons prints.

    I asked facilities and a nice young man hung them. Then soon after my much younger female manager came in and admired them. Suddenly the mood shifts and she goes um, Jess? there is nudity?

    Whaa? no! I peer closely with my glasses only to discover that well, yeah, you can see the vague outline of the side of a br3a5t from the back in a distant figure, and two of the other figures have impressionistic style vagueness in their very tiny 2 inch nude bodies.

    Of course i was mortified, it was art, it hadn’t even occurred to me to consider it “nudity”. Nevertheless, they young man had gone to great lengths to use drywall anchors and thus the area would be damaged and need repaired if I took them down.

    Postage stamp sized yellow sticky note paper doll clothes were deployed to address the issue in the moment, and they stayed like that until i left 7 months later and took my art with me.

    1. I take tea*

      Wow, those are beautiful. But maybe there’s something about this “being European”, I really had to check several times to notice anything special, and I usually have the mind of a twelve year old.

  59. JennyFair*

    The very old, dilapidated couch in the office/room assigned to the grad students in my program was covered in a pink fleece blanket…covered with the Playboy Bunny silhouette. No one was ever able to explain to me where it had come from. In any case, it made our naps much more comfortable, and grad students definitely need their naps!

  60. Speak*

    Re: 8. The Demotivator, I am surprised that this was aloud to stay up. I had a screen saver on my computer that used photos I had saved and one folder was all of the current Demotivators that were available, downloaded from the website that has them. After having those as my screen saver for several weeks (or maybe months?), I was told by my boss to change it due to a complaint. My desk was in the back of an open office, so only people who came in the back door and were supposed to be in the engineering area would see it, so I don’t know who would have complained about it since all of us got along well together.

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