How to change empty_label for modelForm choice field?

Question

I have a field in one of my models like the following:

 payrollProvider = models.CharField(max_length=2, choices=PAYROLL_CHOICES)
 PAYROLL_CHOICES = (
        ('C1', 'Choice1'),
        ('C2', 'Choice2')
        etc.....
                    )

When I create a model form for this field, Django correctly generates an HTML select box, but includes a default blank value of "---------".

I would like to know how to change this default value to some other text, such as "please choose value".

I believe I should be able to set this in my model form's init via the following, as documented in this answer and several others:

self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"

However, this isn't working for me. When I include that line in my form's init, "--------" still shows up as the initial choice in the select box. I'm pasting the relevant forms.py below, but it seems that others have also been unable to access / modify empty_label. At this link, the questioner describes a way to delete the default empty_label value (which I was able to do successfully via his method) but what I really want to do is to modify the empty_label that is displayed.

Any ideas?

Here's the code for the form in forms.py, with the empty_label code that isn't successful at changing the default "----------":

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].widget.attrs.update({'class' : 'yp-signup'})
        self.fields['payrollUsername'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Username'})
        self.fields['payrollPassword'].widget.attrs.update({'placeholder' : '  Payroll Password'})
        self.fields['payrollProvider'].empty_label = "please choose value"


class Meta:
    model = Company
    fields = ('payrollProvider', 'payrollUsername', 'payrollPassword')
    widgets = {
        'payrollPassword': forms.PasswordInput(),
    }

Answer 1

dokkaebi, that won't work properly. You'll receive the following select code:

<select name="payrollProvider" id="id_payrollProvider">
<option value="" selected="selected">---------</option>
<option value="" selected="selected">please choose value</option>
<option value="C1">Choice1</option>
<option value="C2">Choice2</option>
</select>

The only relatively convenient way that came to my mind is to do something like this in the form:

class PayrollCredentialForm(forms.ModelForm):
    class Meta:
        model = Company
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(PayrollCredentialForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields["payrollProvider"].choices = [("", "please choose value"),] + list(self.fields["payrollProvider"].choices)[1:]