People are best accent in office decor

Last week was moving week for me at AIB. An extremely efficient IT and facilities crew swooped in, loaded up my phone, computer, family photos and private stock of Diet Coke and deposited them all in newly remodeled digs in the Keith Fenton Administration Building.

My new office is huge, with an incredible view of the lush green AIB campus and beyond. The City View diner is one floor below me, and meeting rooms are conveniently down the hall. Sweet!

The only negative is that now I’m away from the colleagues who already know my idiosyncrasies and whose updates on backyard projects, comic book collections and new grandchildren are pleasantly familiar to me.

Of course, I’ll soon get better acquainted with coworkers in my new building, including admissions executives and financial aid experts whose jobs are crucial to providing AIB students a successful college start.

This moving experience, so to speak, has caused me to reflect about other office settings I’ve occupied in my career.

My first job after graduating from AIB in 1973 was in an insurance firm in Omaha. Two other women and I shared an open work area; for breaks we retreated together to an empty back office, where I drank hot tea long before anyone realized its health benefits. Sometimes, our amicable boss took the three of us to lunch at the country club where he belonged. I was young and impressionable, and I liked those coworkers.   

When I moved back to Des Moines the next year, I worked in a small insurance agency in Beaverdale. That was a storefront office, and my work area was behind a counter that clients leaned against while pondering liability premiums and reporting fender benders. My boss was like a second father to me, and he taught me lasting lessons – not just about insurance, but also about friendship and being a good person.

Eventually, I completed a journalism degree and went to work for The Des Moines Register. For more than seven years, I worked in the editorial department, where windows faced an alley and the dirty wall of a neighboring building.

Those editorial writers were the smartest group of people I’ve ever been around. They taught me to consider other viewpoints and aspects of situations and opened my mind to the significance of world events and neighborhood relations. I loved the work I did there.

I also spent more than 13 years in The Register’s newsroom. That block-long expanse was crammed with unkempt desks occupied by cynical, eclectic characters who were dedicated to their profession and loyal to each other. The room was too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer and too stressful and noisy year-round. But the people there became my friends and mentors.

My new office is by far the nicest I’ve occupied in my business and journalism career. Afternoon sunshine filters in through its floor-to-ceiling, energy-efficient windows. The room even has its own adjustable thermostat!

Yet now as I look back at where I’ve spent my work life, I realize that what made each location memorable has not nearly as much to do with office aesthetics as it does with human interaction. I can’t wait to find out what interesting personalities surround me and what lasting impressions this new stop will create.