I have my own office, and it is quite nice. I would guess that the office is probably 12'x10'. On the east wall is a window. My desk is quite large. It takes up the southeast corner of the office, and is probably extends 6 feet from the wall in one direction and 5 fin the other. It has a lot of overhead storage space and there are a number of drawers. I have a scale and height measure in my office, as well as a bulletin board and a pamphlet holder. To complete the ensemble, I have two adult chairs, one child's rocking chair, and a little play area for the kids.
Sounds like the typical office, right? It really is, but I am the one writing this entry so I will give it my own spin and make it sound like some freaky little place!!
The window lets in a lot of sunlight in the morning, which means that even with the blinds shut it gets toasty in here. I am kind of dreading what summer is going to be like in here. Sometimes in the afternoon I will open the blinds for some natural light, which allows me to have a terrific view of a fenced-in yard...that has three heating and cooling units which are constantly running.
Did I mention that directly across from my office are the two employee bathrooms? My supervisor and fellow co-workers call this the "initiation office." Everyone who starts here works out of this office first. You can only imagine the smells that waft in here on occasion. Mostly they are "covered up" with a lovely mango-scented spray. Now, I have a pretty bad sense of smell for a lot of things, which is very helpful in this situation. That being said, some dummy here thought that the mango-scented air freshener was a good idea. On the other end of my "smell spectrum" are the scents that give me instant headaches. Apparently, among these select scents is mango. Sooooo...either way I hate it when I hear people heading into the bathroom. Also know that the window in my office does not open, so there is no chance of me ever airing this place out.
I do like my desk. I like that it is super large and I have tons of space to spread all of my paperwork over the course of a day. The only problem is, the areas that would be inaccesible for the small children to reach is also inaccesible to me, since I am not allowed to turn my back to the client during the certification process (It's mean to not look at them!) This means that I can't hide the phone and it's tempting cord from the grasp of little fingers. My office was used as a spare until I got here, and it became THE office site for storage. This includes the 8 cans of chemicals in the overhead drawers. Until I made my supervisor relocate said chemicals, I had the ability to sanitize every flat surface, kill roaches (ewwww!) and scent the world with, you guessed it, mango. Also included in these bins were a few chocolate pretzel bars from Special-K. They were pretty darn good, they made for a nice snack on a few days that I forgot breakfast. I also have 800 packs of Splenda in that Special-K box. I don't know who put them there, but they had a serious coffee/fake sugar problem!
The scale and height measure in my room are each of the offices for the "just in case" situation that has never happened. I wouldn't have any issue with this, except every child that walks in this room heads right for the scale and tries to use it as a trampoline. They will look up at the height measure and will try to reach for the perpendicular metal bar used to get the final height. Looking up at the bar combined with the jerky motion of their hands and the bars penchant to stick and unstick within seconds makes this a great eye-poking hazard. As you can imagine, when the parents don't see this/heed my warning, I just want to look at them and ask, "Do you really want to have to explain to your child why the other kids are teasing him and calling him 'Cyclops?" But, since I am a professional, I don't. On the outside.
At some point the the past, someone took it upon themselves to determine what colors make people feel certain emotions like happiness, tranquility, hunger and disbelief it isn't time to go home yet, etc. Apparently, blue is a happy color. I call it "health care blue." It is everywhere: The walls are blue, the chairs are all blue, the carpet is mostly blue, I signed my travel logs in blue pen, the dividers on the WIC charts are blue, blue, blue, blue.
The lovely blue walls are being painted right now, one at a time on the weekends by "good behavior" inmates from the local jail. They are such a wonderful crew. They carefully paint around all of the artwork hanging on the wall. While this is stupid in and of itself, it really shows here in my office since they painted around a 5'x4' painting that was eventually deemed "offensive" because of the feet of the children in the painting. So now I have a 5'x4' spot that is a lighter shade of "health care blue" than the rest of the office and I noticed today that it was replaced with two 8x11 sheets of paper with the WIC foods on them. Yep, covers that spot right up! Needless to say, when I have the time, I do a lot of redecorating in here.
The play area is a nice feature, it keeps the kids busy while I am playing "800 Fairly Inane Questions" with the parents. The only problem is, the only toys in the office are the only ones that are allowed to be in the office. This includes the number puzzle that is missing number 5 and number 1 pieces but for some reason includes the letter G. For the slightly older children, we have a battery operated toy that has something to do with reading, but the batteries don't work and all the buttons are jammed from years of abuse. Needless to say, unless my clients have really active imaginations, they aren't going to have much fun in my office.
Well, it is now time to move on in my day. So until the next time, have a safe drive home and please- don't ever paint the walls of your house blue!
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