A guy near me has all sorts of pics of his wife and kids, all the professional shots with the backgrounds, etc.
I keep ribbing him about it, asking when he’s going to get rid of the stock photos that came with the frames.
I read an opinion column on CNN talking about how straight bigots don’t want to hear about that “gay stuff”. It’s one thing to know a co-worker is gay, another to talk about things that imply that gay nasty buttsex is happening.
Anyways, the writer explains how family photos, talking about the wife, talking about going on straight dates, etc, all serve to remind homosexual folks about all that nasty straight sex and childbirth they aren’t engaged in. That it’s the same thing, either we tolerate our gay coworkers mentioning that they had a really good night last night (not going into details, but just mentioning it happens) or we shut up about our kids, wives, and all the rest of the trappings of straight life.
Given that the openly lesbian department head of the law office where I work has a picture of her spouse and several of her kids in her office … I doubt it. 
It makes me smile to see some of the kids’ pics and drawings, etc. More than once it’s led to discussions about shared interests we might never have had otherwise.
Pictures of my wife and kids are something I have several of. It never occurred to me that anyone would object, and no one ever has.
If anyone ever does, I am perfectly prepared to bore them to tears with an endless monologue on everything my wife or children have done, are doing, will do, how well they do it, how well I think they do it, how well their grandparents think they do whatever they did, with a thirty to forty minute side trip in which I describe what the dog has been up to, until they go away and leave me alone.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t have walls. My desk is in the middle of the room next to another desk. But if I did I wouldn’t have and pictures of family. Not because I find it unprofessional. I just don’t want my customers to know what my kids look like. I do have a used M81 igniter and a dummy 20mm round.
Well, mentioning that one had a “really good night last night” (wink wink) with or without details isn’t really appropriate for the workplace (unless you happen to mention it privately to a coworker who is also a personal friend), but
this.
I have one of those electronic picture frames at my desk at work. It holds hundreds of photos, and I can update them any time. I love it! I keep a hard copy photo of each of my kids from school for the current year pinned up, along with a few nice photos and a couple of Far Side type comics. Really, it’s all for me, and no one else. You’d have to be deep in my cubicle to see anything anyway. I don’t care what other people do with their cube walls; it’s their space. But while too much is a little weird, I do wonder a little about someone with absolutely no personalization, no “flare”, whatsoever.
Tangentally, what about where someone posts a photo of their kid instead of themselves on their company intranet profile? Or, where someone’s home voice-mail is their kid and not themselves (“we’w not home. weave a message aftuh the beep”?
If it was unprofessional, then professional people wouldn’t do it. And they do.
I had one boss* who lamented that, as a woman (in the '80s), if you had pictures of your family in your office you were too home-focused. But if you didn’t have pictures of your family you were a fucking shark. No way to win that one. (And, in that office, she was probably right. The male execs had family photos and nobody batted an eye.)
*She was a shark BTW, or maybe a barracuda.
It depends on the office. I haven’t noticed a lot of personal items kept around the cube in the current grey box of hell I work in. I think a lot of us are contractors, which might be part of it, but not all, and I don’t recall seeing photos in any of the cubes. (Although I haven’t gone out of my way to look either.)
Of course I learned many years ago to never leave anything at work that I couldn’t easily do without. There was that one boss who decided my cancer was too inconvenient so fired me. Over the phone. On a weekend. I never saw my desk or any of my personal effects left on / in it again.
So I bring nothing to work that I don’t bring home with me the same day.
I think you missed the point of that column.
Don’t sex workers usually work in hotels? If they pull out photos of their kids and put them up in a hotel room, that would be kind of weird.
This. Older women in support positions have a lot of personal crap on their desks.
Most professional-level people I know might have one photo of their spouse, and one of their kid(s). Or a pic with spouse and kid together. That’s it.
The wall of art/wall of photos is weird to me. It’s not home, it’s work.
I have a few giant microbes on my desk (e. coli, MRSA, and flu A) (I work in healthcare IT, with doctors. They love the microbes.). No photos, no cute stuff. I’m going for a mostly-clear workspace. I don’t like clutter.
When I first started working in this office twenty years ago, I had a few baseball cards up. Over the years, coworkers have brought me memorabilia from different places. Bet no one else has a Gary Gaetti pennant from his late 90s years as a Card. I had to move the die cast Terex crane up out of reach because engineers are wont to play with it.
The photos of my grandparents actually have phone lists and reminders for passwords trapped to the back. Occasionally, I need Mr. Jones’ cell phone number, but most of the time, I’d rather see a picture of my grandparents fishing in the gulf in the fifties.
A display of beanie babies isn’t my style in spite of my older woman status, but if it floats your boat and isn’t offensive or detrimental to your work, what the hell?
…got the theme from 9 to 5 running through my head and a couple of you look like Dabney Coleman in there as well.
Oh good grief. Yes, weird. And unprofessional. And something that won’t happen outside of hooker with a heart of gold fairy tales.
Some work out of their homes too. While hopefully they wouldn’t have the actual kid there while they’re working, it’s perfectly conceivable they could have a kid who’s off with a family member or a daycare or something, and still have photos around. I’m just saying this as a hypothetical. 
I’m one of those people (apparently a minority) that doesn’t have anything personal in their workspace. I’ve just never felt the need - I know what my family looks like and I’ve never needed a photo to remind me that they exist. I can sort of understand why people do, but that’s just not me.
Instead, my walls are covered in work related stuff - phone lists, various crib sheets and reminders, that sort of thing. I did have a picture of my car as my desktop wallpaper for a while, but I deleted that in the end - the screens would be covered with open programs within about 30 seconds of me logging on and stay that way all day, so I didn’t see much point.
One of the advantages, I guess, is if I wanted to do the dramatic ‘quit and walk out’ thing - all I need to do is grab my phone, wallet and keys and I’m gone. Spending ten minutes putting all my personal effects in a box would kind of destroy the dramatic effect. 
One thing I do have a lot of is what looks like random crap. I’m something of a fiddler and I love to have something to play with if I’m on the phone or thinking about something. I used to have one of those stress ball things until I killed it, but then I discovered that almost anything would do, so now I bend paper clips into odd shapes, dismantle and reassemble cheap pens, that sort of thing.
My office is a bit weird. I’ve got an antique broad ax and and samurai sword hanging on the wall both sharp enough to shave with. I’ve got one photo of me and my wife and one of me and my friends. The only other thing I have is a sign that says “I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was going to blame you”. All of which make me smile. I’ve also got my inappropriate for work drawer that contains two bottles of booze, four rocks glasses and a loaded .357.
In my opinion, this is becoming less common as people will use family photos as desktop wallpaper/screensavers where they can get away with it. Also, smart phones are serving a little of that purpose.
I love Kipling. Which two poems do you have pinned up?