💬 The Office That Needed a Makeover

From the series “Stories from the Desk: What the Numbers Don’t Show”

When I first became a supervisor at H&R Block, my office was on Main Street — polished, professional, and proud. It had rich wood-framed cubicles, soft lighting, and even a private office for me. I’d worked hard to get there, and it felt like proof that I’d earned my place.

So when they told me the branch was being moved to Victory Street, it stung. Victory was no victory at all.

The new space had once been a hair salon, and you could still see it in the walls — white tile halfway up, odd cutouts where shampoo sinks used to be, and gray carpet so worn it looked more like fabric than floor. The smell of old product and mildew- even a hint of sewage wafting up from the open drain pipes left still lingered.

It was the kind of office that said nobody cared enough to fix it.

When I asked for privacy dividers, they sent me one of those thick, padded standing panels — the kind that’s supposed to balance on two metal feet. Only this one didn’t. Its feet were bent, its fabric stained, and it leaned against the wall like it had given up on itself.

I remember standing there, staring at that sad divider, and thinking, If I’m going to spend a whole season here, it’s not going to look like this.

So I asked permission to redecorate — they told me I was only allowed a $300 budget for materials and my time could be compensated but only minimum wage. The time was short — it was the holidays, and the office was set to open January 2nd. They agreed to let me and probably expecting me to move a few desks around. and buy a couple of rugs.

But I had a vision.

I went home and got to work. I looked for fabric in the old H&R Block colors — deep navy and white —I ended up not being able to find enough fabric in Navy so I compromised and added maroon. My husband and I spent two weeks over the holidays in that freezing cold office, sewing box-pleated panels late into the night. We kept the radio on for background noise, but as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it felt surreal to listen — Christmas carols on every station, cheerful stories about families gathered around warm firesides, eating big dinners and talking about joy and togetherness.

My husband and I spent two weeks over the holidays in that freezing cold office, sewing box-pleated panels late into the night. We kept the radio on for background noise, but it felt surreal — Christmas carols on every station, cheerful stories about families gathered around warm firesides, eating big dinners and talking about joy and togetherness.

Outside, less than a block away, people were huddled in doorways near the Salvation Army, trying to survive that brutal ice storm. Some had rugs or carpets pulled over them for shelter. I remember driving past and thinking, I don’t know how any of them could make it through that cold.

Across the street from that little office was Paul Morrel Formal Wear, where my mother worked for several years as a haberdasher. I used to watch her from the window sometimes — always neat, confident, and proud, her tape measure draped around her neck like a badge of honor. When our family lost nearly everything in a house fire in the fall of 1999, that same company quietly cleaned every salvageable thing we owned, right down to the kids’ smoke-stained stuffed animals, and refused to take a dime for it. That kind of kindness stays with you.

There was a tree right in front of the office, its trunk and branches bent low under the weight of the ice, like it was bowing. It stayed that way through the whole first week we were open. Every morning I’d look at it and think, that’s what we’re all doing — bending, holding too much weight, but still standing.

When the sun finally came out and the ice began to melt, I watched that tree straighten itself slowly, almost gracefully, until it stood tall again — as if none of it had ever happened. I’ll never forget it. It felt like a promise: the heaviness doesn’t last forever, and what’s bent can still rise.

We kept our coats on while we worked, alternating navy and maroon fabric to cover those half-tiled walls, determined to make that place feel alive again.

“What’s bent can still rise.”

He helped me to devise a system to create the panels, and did all the heavy lifting and ladder work. I stitched tab-top curtains for the front window, painted two dented file cabinets navy to match, and even spray-painted that miserable divider so it would blend in and finally look like it belonged. I used it to create a bit of privacy, bracing it between two desks so it could stand tall again. My favorite part was where I sewed an extra long tab top panel and hung it from an arrow shaped curtain rod that was hanging from the ceiling - probably used to hold some kind of signage- the privacy it provided between two other desks was only an illusion but it worked.

When I unlocked the office on opening day, it didn’t look fancy — but it looked intentional.
It looked cared for.

The other supervisors came by one at a time to see it. Each of them stepped through the door, looked around, and said some version of the same thing: “You actually made it beautiful.”

That year, clients noticed too. They said it felt warm, welcoming — not like an afterthought. And that was my real victory.

Later, when the company changed its colors to lime green, another office called me in a panic. Their huge front window had been half-covered in aluminum foil to block the sun. They said, “Could you come up with something?”
So I designed a lime-and-white Roman shade to match the new branding, and they called it “stunning.”

Looking back, that move to Victory Street could have felt like a demotion. But it wasn’t. It was a lesson in leadership — that pride isn’t given to you; you build it yourself.

Sometimes leadership looks like spreadsheets and reports. And sometimes, it looks like a woman standing in a half-gutted salon with a sewing machine, refusing to let the place — or herself — look defeated.

That’s what I built on Victory Street.

Looking back, that move to Victory Street could have felt like a demotion. But it wasn’t. It was a lesson in leadership — that pride isn’t given to you; you build it yourself. And sometimes, what’s bent doesn’t just rise — it becomes stronger because it had to learn how.

— Winter 2001 • Victory Street Office (during Arkansas’s historic December 2000 ice storm) —

Victoria Stokes is a bookkeeper, writer, and creative living in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Through her ongoing series “Stories from the Desk: What the Numbers Don’t Show,” she shares the human side of bookkeeping — the lessons, the heartbreak, and the unexpected beauty that hides between spreadsheets and tax forms.