The company I work at has two buildings (one in Burlington, one in Westford) replete with cubicles and offices.  I can't say much for the cubicles, but I like the design of the offices.  Each office has a narrow window as tall as the door mounted right next to the door.  I think this is a great idea.  Now when you are about to knock on a closed office door, you can first glance through the window and make sure you aren't disturbing someone in the middle of a meeting or a phone call or whatever.

Several years ago we had an employee (whom I will refer to as X) who was artistically gifted as well as antiestablishment.  One day X took the liberty of painting artwork on her door-window.  You could still see into her office, but the window was highly decorated and interesting looking (it was a repeating pattern of Java coffee-cup symbols).  Not long after that other people who had offices came to X and asked if she would paint their windows too.  X always agreed to do so, painting whatever subject matter the occupant wanted.

Before long nearly 50% of the door-windows were graced with beautiful handpainted artwork.  The paint was translucent so when the lights inside each office were on, it would be brilliantly illuminated.  This looked especially cool at night when the hall lights were off.  Fields of sunflowers, undersea scenes, suns and moons, vine trellisses, abstract patterns, and occasionally goofy illustrations... I loved them all.  There was definitely a sci-fi/fantasy angle to the artwork.  The door window to our gymnasium looked like a "Star Trek the Next Generation" control-panel and said HOLODECK on it!

I thought it incredibly cool and classy that we had an office like no other.  Unique, with a lot of personality, individuality, and atmosphere.  Apparently someone thought differently.  As far as I know, X had never sought approval from management for her art (which is hardly surprising), but for a long time the art was allowed to remain.

X has long since left the company under a cloud.  I won't go into the details of her departure other than to say it was pretty ugly, and in the process she severed all communications with everyone who had been her friend.  I guess sometimes you just don't know who your friends are.  That hurt a lot, and it took me a long time to get over it.  But I did get over it and moved on.

Fast forward several years.  I myself have left the home office and gone to work in Westford, but typically once or twice a week I come back to Burlington to put in a couple days.  Gives me an opportunity to see everyone and meet with my project manager, etc.  So, a couple months ago I was at headquarters, camped out in an unoccupied office and working on a thorny bit of documentation.  At some point before lunch our IT czar walked in carrying a razor blade.

"I hope that's not for me!" I joked.

He smirked, and then turned and began scraping the gorgeous dragon head off of the door-window.  It was a rich red and black and had always been one of my personal favorites.

"Hey, hey!  What are you doing?" I asked.

"Someone thinks these paintings don't look 'professional', so I have been asked to remove them whenever an office becomes unoccupied," he replied, the tone of his voice conveying that he felt this assignment was a waste of time and effort.

"That's really a shame," I said, "they give the place a lot of personality."

"It's not up to me," he said without turning around, making it clear he also didn't really want to listen to me bitch about it.

I knew better than to ask who had a beef with the artwork--the IT czar wouldn't tell me if I did, and I was 99% certain I knew who it was anyway.  But all the same, I couldn't stand there and watch the painting be destroyed, so I got up and left the office and wandered the halls for a bit.  As I strolled about, I made note of various artworks that had been quietly removed--the celtic sun, the undersea scene, the holodeck.  It was depressing.  Many of them were gone, and in time they would all be gone, our office transforming into the same sort of boring, sterile environment common to many corporations.  Soon all that would be left on our walls would be some corporate awards and a few random Ansel Adams prints.

When I returned to the office I was using, the dragon head and the IT czar were gone.  My empty, unadorned office with its barren white walls awaited.

"Fuck it," I thought, and went out to lunch.  Suddenly I didn't feel like working.