Priorities at Work

So it turns out that I work at a place where celebrating Halloween is SUPER important. Definitely more important than getting work done. On Thursday afternoon, people were allowed to stop work at 3:00 PM and decorate for the remainder of the day. This was totally sanctioned by the organization and I believe they provided funds for the decorations and decoration shopping was counted as work time.

The floor I work on chose as our Halloween theme--Pandemic Panic/Halloween Quarantine. (Our floor won, by the way.)

This is my office window.



This is a conference room. I love having such a good excuse not to have to attend meetings.


This is a victim of the pandemic (I guess).


On Friday, a very high percentage of people came to work in fabulous costumes and walked around all day in them. There was a costume contest (with prizes that included $50 gift certificates) and a two-hour Halloween lunch provided by the organization.

I've never worked anywhere where people were so into Halloween, and certainly not where celebrating it had wholehearted approval and funding from the company. At most, the other places I've worked would put out a bowl of Halloween candy and call it good. Maybe one or two people would show up wearing cat ears, but that would be about it. I admit that it was a really fun day, and by afternoon we did actually manage to get some work done, despite the fact that many of us were dealing with major sugar slumps and/or costume-related afflictions (e.g., I had a wig-induced headache).

Almost Pretty

I took these photos during a lunchtime walk last week on a balmy blustery day. I snapped them quickly when there were breaks in the onslaught of traffic. Everything looks so much better when cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs are not present.