The Fridge and the Photos

We had our usual weekly mandatory meeting and it was fairly straightforward. I was starting to feel that maybe things are turning around. Then the supervisor says “I don’t want to open up a can of worms but…” Right away your imagination goes wild. Not to be cynical but sometimes management comes out with an idea and you wonder if they are in the same reality as you are. What the supervisor was referring to were the photos we had on the group home fridge. The pressing issue that has apparently have captured the imagination of this group of supervisors is the presentation of group home fridge art. Our fridge has a large collection of magnets, photos, and several months at a glance sheets filled with activities, milk bag cutters and the week’s current menu. Sure it’s cluttered, but it seems to sum us up pretty well. It’s the center of activity. Life seems to revolve around our fridge. The supervisor questioned why there were pictures of staff’s family pinned up and not many pictures of the people who live there. In fact there were two pictures of children and two pictures of pets, the rest were a mixture of group home pictures. It was a reminder of home. When you work the afternoon shift you miss a great deal of your family’s life. It’s nice to have a little bit of home in the midst of working in our other home. In the office there was a selection our favourite pictures of the Residents that has since been relocated to the fridge. Even on the office door there is a group picture of all of us wearing Toronto Maple Leaf jerseys in a group portrait. The kind of thing you would hope to find in a group home where there is a sense of true sharing.
I don’t know why this has irked me so much. I do have a couple of theories some of which include being turned into automatons. Was the point of this to have a certain picture ratio? Does it go deeper than that or is it all about appearances? Is it just micromanagment gone wild?
We have since removed our pictures.