Edit View. Window. HELP!

The background of everyone's monitor in my workplace is bespoke 'wallpaper' which includes both busy photos and text. For me it's the visual equivalent of a siren. I've tried changing it to plain grey in settings and it lasts until the next sleep/screensaver then when I use the computer again it's back to the distracting cacophony. I enlarge windows as much as I can to hide it but it still screams at me around the edges. The most recent wallpaper had white outlines round everything and I cracked. I asked the IT department to allow me grey so I could work. Not their responsibility, they said, it's Internal Comms. So I emailed Internal Comms and asked them if I could have a grey background so I could work. They told me the wallpaper was a useful way of communicating with staff about the organisation.

I consulted someone who knows more than I do who told me I might have a 'Sensory Processing Disorder' and sent me some websites to read. Well blow me down. Disorder? And there was highly ordered me thinking I was 'normal'.

I read (on the plain grey background of my computer at home), did a précis and sent it with a couple of useful links to Internal Comms. I heard nothing for a week then got a message thanking me for my interest in their work and asking me what I thought of a new picture they were thinking of using.

I replied saying I was disappointed that they hadn't read what I'd sent them and that swapping one sort of confusing for a different sort of confusing was not a solution. Nonetheless, it was a great photo and should be used for a poster or flyer. Just not for monitor wallpaper. I got an almost instant, slightly wounded reply saying they had read what I'd sent and that they'd ask the IT department whether it was possible for me to have a plain background.

I didn't hold my breath.

I work on reception for an hour every day so that the two receptionists can take turns having a lunch break and normally I succeed in doing some of my own work while I'm there. Today I wanted to focus on an unusually intransigent credit card reconciliation but the phone interrupted me almost as much as my monitor wallpaper, the arts team were preparing for the matinee premiere of the Christmas play, clients were coming in for the cookery club and a group of people were trying to decide which of three Christmas trees to decorate, then wondering loudly where the decorations were, then noisily decorating it. It was one of my busiest times ever on reception. Suddenly things went quiet and my brain started to clear. I looked up. Everything that had been going on around me was still going on. Puzzling. 

I looked down. My monitor background was black. I could breathe. I could think. 

It took me almost no time to find the missing e-receipt for the reconciliation and get everything to balance then I sent a joyous thank you to Internal Comms.