Mood Lighting ... at work?

Fluorescent lights are never flattering. I avoid looking in the mirror at work too long - each blemish, errant gray hair, and other flaw seem to be on spotlight. I guess it's the next best thing to daylight?

Which brings me to an interesting phenomenon developing in my workplace ... mood lighting. Two of my coworkers, who joined the department in the past year, do not use their overhead lights. I've never seen this before so it's fascinating.

Instead of those awful, fluorescent overhead lights, these colleagues have either a table lamp or torchiere which ever so subtly casts shadows on their workspace.

Very curious, I must say. One of them almost looks like a gamer: door closed; laptop and torchiere glowing through the window (which looks out into a maze of cubicles); earbuds always in; and shoulders slumped towards the computer screen. I keep waiting to hear beeps from Donkey Kong or Super Mario Brothers when he makes it to the next level. Or at least the yelps and yahoos of a record breaking game. (Yes, I know there are much more advanced games these days, but this colleague and I are both 30-somethings from the good ol' days of Atari.)

What makes me smile most is the fact that when my colleague is actually out of the office, his overhead light is on. So it's brighter in there when he's not working, than when he is.

Just the opposite of 99% of the rest of us ...