Your Space Personal Touches Add Warmth To A Work Environment
If you’ve ever watched visitors tour a workplace, you might have noticed.
People are fascinated with the little personal touches. It’s true. The guide could be droning on about advanced technologies and just-in-time production schedules and somebody will say, “Hey, look, this guy’s got a picture of his cat on his computer.”
Some visitors practically get down and sniff strangers’ work stations, especially those that are interestingly cluttered.
Why is this?
Let’s consider two theories. Take your pick.
1. People are snoopy.
2. Many of us suspect that the way someone decorates his or her work area offers genuine insights about that person. And people are always the most intriguing thing at any business.
Take Tim Scott, for example. He runs a training program for people who want to become truck drivers.
But an observant visitor to his office will note a stone wolf head and a marble bear. What has wildlife sculpture got to do with teaching people how to handle 18-wheelers? Nothing. “I just love the outdoors,” said Scott. “And they’re reminders.”
Check out clinical psychologist Laura Asbell’s desk and you learn that she’s got a sense of humor. Prominently displayed is a crystal ball.
Yes, she said, people get it.
Now nobody’s saying desk decor is a universal means of significant self-expression. For every individual who turns his or her work space into a brimming sampler of personality/ lifestyle clues, there’s another who tacks up an old “Far Side,” a spouse picture or two and declares that total feng shui has been achieved.
Of course, there are those who hold that - you’d better sit down for this - the workplace is for work.
“Personal stuff doesn’t belong there,” said Jerry Smith, owner of a body shop. “I don’t believe in it.”
But let’s face it. A lot of us spend more time on the job than we do being awake at home. So the urge to personalize one’s work area seems understandable enough.
The desire to say “I’m not a robot” cannot be underestimated.
Washington State University librarian Vicki Croft loves cats. So she has put up near her desk two big pictures, one of a tiger and one featuring a lion. (She also has a photo of her husband sitting atop a butte.)
Some adornments are thinly disguised motivational tools.
More than one harried worker has been known to use family pictures as a constant reminder of why decking an abusive boss would be a bad idea.
Then there are those who turn their work areas into shrines to their personalities, whether the statement is “cutting-edge artistic sensibility,” “cooler than you” or “arrested development/irrepressibly wacky.”
At the other end of the spectrum are starched 9-to-5 soldiers at businesses that strictly forbid personal decorations and floaters who have jobs that involve migrating from desk to desk.
In any case, it’s probably a mistake to read too much into “Think Big” signs or “Dilbert” calendars.
Sure, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, “Rush is Fat” sticker or “Impeach Hillary’s Husband” button offers a fairly narrow range of interpretations. But sometimes a Mr. Potato Head is just a Mr. Potato Head.
Still, the this-is-me stuff people keep around at work can tip you off to their daydreams.
Steven Dahlstrom heads a local credit union. That doesn’t entirely define him, however. Scope out his office and you’ll see eight pictures of sailboats - count ‘em, eight - and a miniature sailboat in a bottle.
But the sailing theme does more than remind him of one of his offhours passions. The pictures take visitors’ minds off the fact that his desk sometimes appears to be out of control. “They divert people’s attention,” he said with a smile in his voice. “So you could say they serve two purposes.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by A, Heitner