Transformation

About three years ago, my boss at the time decided that we needed our offices painted. Because I work in Human Resources, most of us have private offices and we could all choose our own colors. When she came up with the idea, I had no idea how terrible things would turn out to be.

My boss chose a creamy tan color for her office, which is really nice because it's pretty bright and neutral and her office is now my office. My office at the time was gray, so I chose a creamy light yellow that unfortunately turned out to be a rather bright yellow. One co-worker chose a weird kind of puke green color, another a seagreen color, and another pink.

My boss told the receptionist at the time that she could choose the colors for the department bathrooms, for our conference room, for the outer hallway, and for the reception area and inner hallway. Our company color is blue, so she chose a pretty dark blue for the conference room and a slightly lighter blue for the men's bathroom. For the women's bathroom, she chose a mauvey purple color, which is really unfortunate because the ceiling light/fan does not have a bright bulb. It's like going into a little cave to pee. For the outer hallway, she chose peach. For the reception area and inner hallway, she chose the same mauvey purple.

The end result should have been obvious even before any paint hit the walls, just from the description I've given. Our office looks god awful. I mean, ugly, weird, and, as one of my former co-workers used to say, a lot like an Easter egg.

We've lived with all of this color for three years, except that when we got some new filing cabinets in the front office area about a year ago, we painted one wall white. I became boss about a year ago and I've been waiting for the building maintenance people to come and paint the rest white too, which they promised to do when they had time. They've never had time.

This week, the era of weird color is partially coming to an end. We're painting the inner hallway rice paper (white), at least two more walls in the reception area the same white, my old yellow office (which now has a male occupant) a tan color, the puke-green office (which is temporarily vacant) the same tan, and the women's bathroom white. If we have time and paint left, we're going to paint at least a couple of walls in the pink office white (that office now has an occupant who says she is not a pink person).

The conference room actually looks pretty good because it's a bigger room. I don't really see the men's bathroom and they haven't complained, so that's staying blue (plus they have a nice bright light, so it's not bad). The seagreen office is vacant and probably will be for awhile, so I'm leaving that. I would love to do the peach outer hallway over in white, but I am supposed to be getting some human resources work done this week, so that probably won't happen.

Today me and my benefits guy spent several hours giving the inner hallway two coats of rice paper. I can't believe what a dramatic difference it makes. I've been working in a freaking cave! It's so bright that we seriously talked about whether we should take a bulb out of one of the fluorescent fixtures that light it. It looks so much better, I'm amazed.

I did give myself two gargantuan slivers when I was taping the molding, so that sucked. Fortunately, our company nurse is right downstairs and he put on his lighted magnifiers, dug around with a scalpel, and got them out. He earned his salary for this week just for helping me, in my opinion.

I also am already feeling aches and pains from my unnatural postures today. Unnatural, by the way, because I normally spend all day sitting on my ass typing at a computer or talking on the phone. Today I was squatting, stretching, and standing on a ladder for several hours, which is coincidentally the same types of activities that our 1100 manufacturing employees do every day.

My workers comp people and the occupational health staff talk about work hardening for newly hired employees all of the time. That's what I got today, some work hardening, and some environmental transformation. Mauvey purple, be damned!