Slashdot Mirror
Piimpin' Out Your Corporate Office?
ignoringReality asks: "I just moved into a new office at work that is considerably smaller than my previous one. The furniture is crappy, the walls are plain, and there aren't any windows. I'm trying to think of a unique way to keep myself entertained but not distracted day in and day out. It's a corporate office, so there are obviously limits. Working in a box must be a pretty standard situation for a lot of Slashdot readers, so how do you guys personalize your offices?"
I use OpenOffice.
For myself, when I had a converted closet for an office, the most important thing for me was good lighting. I kept it darker than most people liked it, but it was warm and gentle lighting.
I've seen a lot of people hang what look like drapes from thier walls, to give some solour and texture to the room.
Don't forget the music, and toys.
Pretty Pictures!
the Dilbert Ultimate Cubicle
Complete with lighting that simulates the sun moving across the sky as the day goes along.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
(Especially the cube goodies section. My co-workers love the Acrobots
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Whoa horse!
That's only for emergencies!
Pretty Pictures!
Some people have a hard time doing work if their environment sucks. Thus the fixation on ergonomics. Think of cube decorations as "mental ergonomics" if you want.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Nothing says status like space. The fact that you're in a smaller space is not a good sign.
That said, if we're talking an actual office with a door, the you're lucky. For now.
My suggestion is that you decorate your space with -- space. Keep it uncluttered, so that you appear to have more room. It also sends the subtle message that you're not making yourself too much at home, that you plan to move up or out.
I should make it clear I don't follow this advice myself. If you are a happy geek with no ambition to move up (like me), feel free to ignore this advice (as I do).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What are you talking about? We're just a bunch of soulless drones anyway. I'm going to decorate my office with the barcode my manufacturer gave me as I was being assembled in the plant.
Did you miss the part where he said "not distracted".
Here is a game you can play. Find and empty white room, with a single empty desk and an uncomfortable chair. Take your laptop, and try to get some work done there.
Your brain will look for anything to ramp up the level of stimulus. And that doesn't mean your work. It means stuff like feeling compelled to spend three hours customizing the font and colors on your laptop screen. Or checking your email every thirty seconds.
Is it a crime to, say, play music while you work? This guy is just looking for the equivalent. Happy employees are better employees.
Oh - wait a sec. Do you work for EA?
I have one word for you:
Strippers.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
The less stuff you have, the less crap you have to carry to the next job.
I think I speak for all cubicle-dwellers when I say:
Do you have a door? We'd kill for just a door. And some walls! Glorious, glorious walls...
<huddles in a corner, shivering>
Doug
Go to a yard sale and buy an old window, then hang it up in your cube. Put a poster of a nice beach or some other scene inside of it. Instant beach side property!
Just my $.02
Come up with something cool nobody else has done before. Not even people "on the internet."
I once saw a room in college where the ceiling was covered with wrinkled aluminum foil and had red and blue lights pointed at it. It was a pretty nice effect. He did a really nice job too - right up to the corners and *lots* of crinkles. It was all probably about 2-3 inches thick. Neat look, relatively simple to do. (shiny side out!)
But you can't do that. It's taken. Just kidding. Do what you want.
Another guy in the same place had a very small room so he put his bed on a system where he could raise it up to the ceiling using some steel cable, pulleys, and counterweights to get it out of the way during the day.
Collect random junk and try to make something that looks like a person standing in the corner. Dress up a coatrack with random junk. Spare CAT5 for hair (or shredded paper), some spools of some kind for eyes - be sure to add some shades. Old t-shirt from the thrift shop. Think up some other stuff for the rest.
You could put color filters in your flourescent overhead lighting.
Build a LARGE binary clock for your wall.
You can always hang models or random crap from the ceiling.
Use tape or rearrange the tiles for some kind of boardgame layout on your floor. Pac-Man
Do what you can to "0wn" your friends cubicles in a non-destructive way. Racing stripes. Get some from an auto parts store and stick it to the side of your computer or monitor cases.
Have an artist friend do a mural. Mosaic-ify it and do it on the tiles, overhead, on the wall, in the bathroom.
Put up and "I'm from here." map. Even if it's just your city or tri-county area.
Maps. Just find maps from random places.
LEDs. Can't forget LEDs. (Just be sure to over drive them with an incorrectly designed power supply so they burn out and/or try to catch things on fire... HHOK) LEDs everywhere! (Everybody else is doing it.)
Get some lasers and front-surface mirrors. Get a laser to bounce back and forth across the office a few times then smoke something in the dark to make it appear
TUX. Can't forget TUX. He could use some wall space - right?
Beastie. Can't forget Beastie. Make a blanket!
Random sports equipment usually looks sorta cool hanging from the walls. Find a surfboard.
Replace some standard office equipment with the same piece, but made out of LEGOs.
Spare/Junk/Coastered CDs can be put on the walls in interesting patterns or made into clocks.
Make the coffee machine run off a generator connected to an exercise bike. Put people on rotation and make sure they get to work on time. Maybe riding the bike is enough exercise to replace the need for coffee?
Build a still. Like on *M*A*S*H* Imbibe on Fridays.
Build a file-cabinet maze.
Get some flourescent paint. Buy some blacklights.
Mess with the bathroom somehow. Make visitors wonder.
Paper airplane airport. Practice landings. Make a launcher with rubber bands.
Print out banner ads for your wall.
Tin-can-and-string telephone/intercom???
Get some fish.
Get yourself a "Jump to Conclusions" mat for the office.
You could probably etch a number of carpets or other surfaces with bleach or acid. Just mask and pour! (Carpet would probably need something heavy to push down into the pile to prevent run-out. Masking tape won't work unless you use a spray bottle. Mask -far- back.)
Take a Friday afternoon to go shopping for old couches and coffee tables. How about a gaudy lamp from 1964 for the corner of your office??
Have a "Cubicle Pimp-Out Contest". Flashy and Gaudy wins.
Remodel. Just moving stuff around will be fun and interesting for the next few weeks.
No windows in your office? Buy yourself a sledgehammer. It won't come with directions. You don't need directions.....
Whenever we get a new employee and they bring in all their toys and music and fret about getting their space set up just how they like I think, "I am going to hate that person because their productivity is going to suck." 9 times out of 10, I am correct.
Real live plants are nice. Even without a window some plants will be fine under flourescent lighting. Look for "shade" plants.
If possible you may also want to smuggle in a "super-daylight" flourescent light. You want something that is about 5500k with a CRI higher then 80. A single 2ft or 3ft tube, or 20w to 30w compact would be fine.
Find a good pic of your favorite landscape and Rasterbate it. (http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/)
Good things come to those who wait on the early bird who gets the worm... hey, wait a sec!
At the last dot.bomb I worked at there was some kind of arms race like thing going on with regards to "geeking out" your office.
The amount of time, effort and money these happy idiots invested in this endeavor was truly astounding.
The companies high lords of chaos (management) eventually shipped about 99% of the company offshore to Hyderabad and Bucharest (the 1% left in the US was, you guessed it, management).
The message being if you have the time to waste making your office "pretty" you might not have enough real work to do. At least from the point of view of the bottom line fixated management.
So these days I keep it spartan. Books (lots of java API manuals), maps on the wall (I do a lot of GIS related work). A couple of my large monitors display virtual fishtanks or random slide shows. And if you have tiled floors a good rug is a must.
Thinkgeek.com has a lot of stuff to make your office your own. I personally have the binary clock work tends to freak people out, but I think it's cool.
/. community on what types of cool stuff they are growing at work. Based upon their suggestions, I started a few jalapeno plants which already have 2 leaves a piece.
I actually posed this question to the
Live web cams
Or you could do the f'ing work your office is intended for and stretch your creative muscles on your own time, at home.
I'm not sure if this is intended for me specifically, or the general reader. I am responsible about getting my work done - and I use my creative muscle at home and at work. Feel free to do whatever you'd like at your work - sounds pretty exciting from here. Unless you work odd hours or have your own business, I'd say you aren't much different from many readers here looking at the times you've been posting over the past few months.
Isn't superiority wonderful??
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I'll give you 8 out of 10 on your attempt at condesention. It sounded pretty good at making people feel bad. Making *me* feel like crap - Sorry that I can't give you better than a 3. Do try again. It's appreciated by us all.... I'm sure especially by your boss.