Gei Money

Sadly, our office is completely devoid of artwork. VeriSign, where I used to work, had a Ross Bleckner painting on the second floor of the lobby. They had tons and tons of original art on every wall, in every department, and I loved them for it. Sometimes I would go on "artventures", wandering around areas I didn't know anyone in and pretending to look for a backup printer or something so I could discover all the gorgeous little gems they'd acquired somehow. I envied them for that. The art wasn't just in the lobby, so visitors would know they were cultured, it was everywhere. For the employees. If it ever got to the point that I just couldn't bring myself to dial one more phone number without projectile vomiting, I could always go and stare at some art and take a few deep breaths and chill out.

Here, however, our wall decor is a lot like Office Space. There's a giant red banner about how awesome we are, and a thousand copies of the same cheesy sales posters.. where do they get these things? Is there a cheesysalesposters.com? Little speech bubbles that say "identify" in them.. clip art of someone on the phone with the words: "Obviously you have a reason for feeling that way- do you mind if I ask what it is?".. ways to combat the "send me an email" response...

Don't get me wrong, these things can be handy. I stare at them enough, I use some of them, remarkably they actually work from time to time, and I can't fault them for that. But now someone's used some colored foil party letters- like the kind you might use to say "Bon Voyage" or "It's a boy!" and stuck them up on the wall in front of me to spell out "GEI MONEY". Granted, it was intended to say "Get Money", but apparently they were fresh out of T's, and so it's an I instead of a T that kind of looks like a T with just half of the top part (connector between letters), but I can tell. And since there's nothing else to look at, like a decent piece of art, or even a "hang in there" lolcat, I find myself staring at "Gei Money" all day.

And in my brain it sounds like "gay money", which is remotely hilarious, especially considering the irony that there's nothing happy or carefree about how damn hard we have to work to get that money. And as if we need to be reminded. Here I was, thinking I cold called people all day for fun, but luckily the misspelled, festive command to continue being a corporate monkey reminded me what I'm supposed to be doing. Thanks guys.