What's on your office walls?

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You can tell where you rank on the company feeding chain by what is hanging on your office walls. Down near the bottom of the pay scale, just above peon, is the worker bee who resides in a cubicle. His limited wall space is adorned with a piece of copied paper that shows the promises of upcoming company holidays. Next to that will hang a calendar so that our intrepid cubicle prairie dog can keep track of the days when he had to work during those company holidays as well as his missed vacation. If there is space available, you'll also find various small pictures of this employee's family tacked into the gray cloth walls of his surroundings. While our cubicle dweller runs on his hamster wheel, he will wistfully glance at his family for the necessary motivation to keep on running.

At the top of the food chain, you have an upper management's office which could easily contain 10 cubicles if this manager would allow it. (And you know that's not going to happen without a doubling in pay and a new office.) You won't find pictures of his family on the wall. No, he keeps them in beautiful frames on his desk. That makes it much easier to turn the pictures facedown when he's about to do something unethical that may cause him to feel a little guilt. On his walls, you will find large replicas of famous artworks. This is to remind him as he runs on his hamster wheel that he too can achieve a multi-million-dollar lifestyle --- as soon as he can find a reason to layoff 10 cubicle workers.

And then there are those of us in-between the two extremes. As an engineer, I get to do the work of 5 people. Thus, I have an office is about the size of two cubicles, which is convenient for my often-used sleeping bag. I have pictures of my family in very plain frames sitting on my desk -- so I can remember what they look like. On my walls, I have several technical posters gleaned over the years from free trade publications. But it would be nice to have something a little more classy hanging vertically in my workspace (besides the upside-down water bottle and a noose). Lately, as I dash about on my hamster wheel, the words of the famous Cinderella song runs through my head, "Someday my art prints will come."