When is enough? Decorating at the office?

Wow. That’s just…wow. Way to make the place feel “homey” by hanging up bloody sheets. 😳 I get it, it’s Halloween, but still. I would think something like that could be a trigger for someone coming from a home with domestic violence in their past.

Honestly, pre-covid, we went all out at Halloween and Christmas.

Because we're only in 2 days a week now, not so much.

I would say as long as the bosses don't have a problem, it's fine. I think it's fun to come to work and get into the spirit.

I think the blood stained bedsheets are gross.

A professional office should not have personal decorations.
*Homey* would be 3 or less photos of family or pets.  Your objective at work is to work, not to be distracted by stuff.

I worked with a woman who decorated her cube like a 5th grade girl's locker. Sooooo many pictures of her kids. Felt sorry for the one to pack it up when she was terminated.

I've always worked in professional office setting and decorating for holidays has never been a thing. One year a woman went all out in her cube and she was made to take it down because she had lights and a Christmas tree and a bunch of other things plugged it and it was said to be a safety issue. Honestly, I think what did her in was the fact that she left everything on one night and the next morning they were making her take everything down.

stickers on brand new paint? she should be responsible for the cost of the touch ups it the stickers cause damage.  light decorating is ok but getting ladders, stickers on new paint, and 3 days of this is too much. it is not her house, it is a work environment. 

The last office I worked in had actual contests for both Halloween and Christmas decorating as a moral-building exercise. They had us decorate on our lunch hour or before or after work though. We rarely had clients come into the office, our people went to them, so it wasn’t too restricted. After the contest, we would have a small office party where coworkers had their partners or spouses bring their kids in and trick or treat the offices. Everyone really looked forward to these events.

I love decorating and won the Halloween prize several years in a row until I stopped decorating because I had been injured (at home, not at work) That year I brought in supplies that were available to everyone to use if they wanted them. Coworkers walked around the areas and voted for their favorite decorations. My last entry was a witch’s general store, carrying all the products that a good witch might need. I had a blast doing it. I made paper money and used the cash tray that I used at yard sales at home. I had a bunch of little zipper clear bags and put stuff from my kitchen and yard into the baggies. I made an orange paper label for each little bag, using my bird stamps in solid black to resemble crows. I put things like bell pepper seeds and labeled it “Ears of Newts” and a spoon of salsa with cooked tiny noodles was labeled “Entrails of Yellow Spotted Lizard” or some such nonsense. I even put some cat hair in a baggie and called it “Troll Nasal Hair” I hung these baggies on a table-top turning display that I took from my craft desk that usually held supplies.

The majority of my decorating was made from paper mache or coffee-stained paper and used my craft inks and stamps. I made flying bats from black paper wings on a black puff ball with red google eyes and red paint tipped rice glued on for teeth. When it was all over, I took the few things that I needed at home and coworkers took most of everything else home to their kids to use in their home decorating the next year. Since my son was grown, these decorating events let me play along for many more years and knowing that coworkers were going to add my stuff to their own kid’s decorations tickled me no end. No walls were ever damaged and no one ever left any lights on in their area. It was all fun and we started discussing a design weeks in advance.

The first year that I worked there, my office was in a side section with three of us. When I started to bring in my supplies, the other two coworkers wanted to join me in fixing up my office. Instead, I spread out what I had brought in and we decorated our small wing of offices together. My boss really appreciated the teamwork effort it brought. We won and instead of splitting the prize, the head boss directed the manager to triple it and give us each a $100 gift certificate!

People asked me where I got all my stuff. I told them that I already had a lot of it in my garage seasonal bins. My boy adored decorating and we would turn our living room into various scary scenes that could be seen from the big corner picture windows to the front porch. Between what I had used on our home with my son, who had moved out by then, and what I made (like the supplies in my witch store) with my crafting stuff, I never spent much money. For me, repurposing found items was the fun part.

The bigger company where I worked prior to that one had department contests for various holidays. They would supply each department with a Christmas tree and we would have a decorating contest. The prize was a tall wooden nutcracker that we used as a trophy to be displayed in the winning department.

They had a golf hole contest where each department created a miniature golf hole in the parking lot, theme of your choice. Then they brought in food trucks and one of those dunk tank things where coworkers threw a ball to dunk the bosses. It was a blast and really brought each department together.

In all of the companies, we held all design meetings and decorating tasks before or after office hours. Department heads usually brought in pizzas and had a big cooler of beer, which I found really weird, but it was a predominantly male office. I loved the meetings and the decorating, but I did not stay and drink with the guys. I was surprised they were allowed to bring in alcohol. Several years before I worked there, several guys purposely got a female drunk and she ended up in the back of a car in the parking lot having sex with a department head. He was fired and the woman, who was a recovering alcoholic, which they all knew about, sued the company and won. Apparently they had placed bets on being able to bed this poor woman. Yet, years later, bosses still provided beer!

When I was a teen, I worked in a gift store and the manager had me decorating the window displays all the time. One assignment, I was to highlight these adorable miniature animal figurines. I made a log cabin from the branches from the tree trimmings from my parent’s front yard and some fake little quilts from scrap fabric to hang off the tiny porch. I pushed several display shelves together and created a big nature scene. I had my boss buy some moss from the craft store that I put over crumpled paper mountains and I created several vignettes with the tiny China animals. I used bark found in the local mountains from a trip with my boyfriend in the landscape display.

My boss ended up having to put in an extra order of the animals because my display was making people buy these little figurines like crazy. We had had that same product in the store ever since I worked there, but just moving them to the front window and letting people see a simple scene using moss, some mirror pieces for water (there were little ducks in the China animal sets) and my free little log cabin helped us sell out of all the stock we had on hand. Sales were suddenly so high that the sales rep came to our store to deliver the second order and to see why we were suddenly selling so much product. He took a bunch of pictures and ended up asking to take my little cabin and the moss with him when we changed displays. My boss was super happy and I got the task of window care from that point until I quit to go to college.

So I have a very long history of decorating at my various workplaces and other than the poor woman who was raped when she passed out, nothing bad ever happened to anyone or any office buildings. These morale and team building exercises had gone on for years before and I’m sure long after I worked there. Everyone loved it. And it was the creativity of each office or department that was talked about for years after and the departments had photo albums of past years. Some departments pooled their own money to add to the budget the company provided. Photos of each effort appeared in company newsletters and trophies were highly prized. The Christmas tree displays were a big feature of the holiday breakfast that the company put on for employee families each year too. People took their kids through the buildings to show off what their department did.

It was all a lot of fun and I do miss it. But I totally agree that your coworker should not be decorating on company time! And no office equipment or walls should be damaged in the process.

The sheets look like a fire hazard in addition to being gross.

I would draw the line at anything "bloody" or otherwise gross. A few tasteful seasonal decor items can look good, but her stuff sounds like it’s way over the top for any professional setting. Turning out lights, hanging fabric, etc. = safety issues.

I want a follow-up on how the new paint looks when stuff comes down after Halloween.