Right, so let me tell you about this whole “colleague pictures” saga. It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Just gather some photos. But oh boy, it turned into a whole thing a while back at my old place.
The Grand Plan: A “Friendly Faces” Board
Management got this bright idea, you see. They wanted a “Friendly Faces of Our Team” board for the reception area. You know, to look all welcoming and human. And guess who got tasked with pulling it all together? Yep, yours truly. My first thought: easy peasy. Send an email, pictures flood in, slap them on a board. Done.
I drafted a nice, cheerful email asking everyone to send in a recent, friendly-looking photo of themselves. I even gave a deadline, thinking that would help. How naive I was. The first few days? Radio silence. A trickle of photos came in, mostly from the keen ones who probably had a folder of pre-approved headshots ready to go.
Chasing Shadows and Weird Photos
Then the real “fun” began. I started the gentle nudges. “Hey, just a reminder about the photo for the board!” Still, not much. So, I had to get up and actually walk around, desk to desk. That’s when the excuses started rolling in, and believe me, I heard a few good ones.
- “Oh, I don’t have any good pictures of myself.”
- “I hate having my photo taken.” (Fair enough, but still needed one!)
- “Can’t you just find one on my social media?” (Which usually meant a picture from five years ago, holding a fish or something.)
- “I’ll send it by end of day.” (Which rarely happened without another three reminders.)
And the photos I did get? A wild mix. Some were super professional, passport-style. Others were clearly cropped from a group holiday photo, complete with a stray arm around their shoulder. One person sent a photo of them in sunglasses and a hat – totally unrecognizable. I had to gently go back and say, “Umm, maybe one without the accessories?” It was like being a photo editor and a diplomat all at once.
There was this one guy, Gary. Sweet fellow, but a bit eccentric. He sent me a picture of his dog. His actual dog. When I questioned it, he deadpanned, “He’s friendlier than I am.” I had to chuckle, but then I had to explain that, no, Gary, we need a picture of you.
The Never-Ending Process
This whole process of just collecting the pictures dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Probably three weeks, all told. I had spreadsheets to track who’d sent what, who needed chasing, who’d promised and not delivered. It was a proper project by then. All for a “friendly faces” board.
Finally, with a collection of somewhat useable (and a few questionable) photos, I started arranging them. Trying to make them look like a cohesive group, despite the wildly different styles, resolutions, and lighting. That was another battle. Some were tiny, pixelated things; others were massive files that could have been printed as posters.
In the end, I got something up on the board. It looked… okay. Ish. People would walk past, stop, squint. You’d hear murmurs: “Is that supposed to be Kevin?” or “Wow, I haven’t seen that haircut on Sarah in years!”
So yeah, that was my adventure with colleague pictures. It taught me that sometimes the simplest tasks are the ones that really test your patience. And that getting a group of adults to provide a decent photo is harder than herding cats. Next time someone suggests something like that, I’m quietly suggesting we hire a caricaturist instead. Less hassle, probably funnier too.
