Tag Archives: Christmas

Is There Anything Worse Than An Office Birthday Party?

15 Dec

December 15, 2011

Is there anything worse than an office birthday party?

First of all, it is in the office. Offices are not conducive to fun. Unless your office is in clown college, that is. So while they might try to put up a few streamers and maybe, if someone is ambitious, three or four balloons the fact that it is still the office is belied by the OSHA signs, file cabinets, and filthy industrial rug.

And then, the people. You work with these people all day. Some of them you can’t stand. Some you don’t even know. These are not your friends, these are people you might never choose to see if it was up to you. But you work with them and you are stuck with them so at best, you put on a smile and bear with them through gritted teeth.

Finally, the cake. If there is ever a sign of the office pecking order, it is who gets cake and who doesn’t.

And that brings me to my story.

The Company I Am not going to mention divided certain agents- er, workers, into teams. Each team has 9 people and they are in a pod with their associated office accoutrements. Just a few feet away is another pod, etc etc etc.

Let’s take 3 pods, A B and C. I am in pod B.

I am very friendly with the people in pod C. While they are not in my line, we all fraternize and mingle on the floor. They get along very well with each other. Too well, really, because while they are very productive, much of their time is spent organizing birthday parties and pot luck dinners. Last week a lot of time was spent putting glitter on Santa hats. Sheesh. For the record, I am not involved in their parties and have not gotten a slice of cake. Not a problem.

Over in pod A are people I am not quite as friendly with but I do get along very well with their supervisor and my closest friend on the floor is on that team. They were throwing a birthday party for their supervisor and bought a cake but had no plates or forks or napkins so they stuck the cake in the fridge until someone could bring in the stuff the next day. (For the record, my complex has one of the great office cafeterias/buffets/private restaurants around so they could have gotten plates and forks from there.)

The next day came and guess what? No one brought in paper goods. But the cake had already sat overnight in a smelly office fridge so it was eat it or trash it time. My friend from the other team, knowing that I have pretty much everything from hex keys to plates and forks in my desk asked me if her team could have some plates and forks. I said sure. For a price.

I wanted a piece of cake.

She thought I was nuts. And on some level she might have been right because I actually did not want a piece of cake and would have refused if offered. This confused her. So why did I want the cake?

I wanted the consideration. If I were going to help them out I wanted to be asked if I wanted a slice. Petty? Yes. But I call it a sociological experiment to make myself feel better.

So back upstairs they were looking at the cake and wondering if they should just rip it apart with bare hands monkey-style when my friend said that I had plates and forks and napkins, let’s ask him.

And they did not.

Rather than let an outsider into their little office birthday party they decided to slice the cake with a particularly sharp pen and use clean manila folders for plates.

I don’t understand.

Also not understood is why my friend was glared at when she got a single plate, fork, and napkin from me for herself and ate her cake like a normal human being.

I don’t get office birthday parties.

Know what’s worse? The office Christmas party. Wait and see.

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Coffee

13 Dec

December 13, 2011

Those of you who know me know that I don’t drink coffee. I think it tastes awful. If you melted some brown crayons in hot water and made me drink it I probably wouldn’t know the difference. I have nothing against coffee. Feel free to drink it. I will say that I like the smell of coffee. If I’m in a diner and a large pot is brewing I’ll enjoy the aroma, but that’s where it ends. Therefore it may come as a surprise that I was recently shopping for a high-end coffee maker.

It wasn’t for me, it was gift. A pretty stupid gift, in my opinion. To my way of thinking, you brew a big pot of coffee and it’s there when you want some more. If it gets old you spill it out. And it doesn’t matter what kind of coffee you make, a good coffee maker- or even a lousy one- will make whatever coffee you put in it. Now please, don’t ask me about cappuccino or espresso. I can honestly say that I have no idea what they are. Those drinks scare me. They come out of huge brass steampunk-ish machines, all pipes and gears and levers, and little nozzles that shoot hot steam out at random intervals. I avoid stuff that I don’t understand and can scald me. Like women.

Plus coffee drinkers seem to have this really intensive coffee-based lifestyle. Days are measured by how many cups you’ve already drank. Blends, brews, specialty mugs, flavored creamers. It is all too complicated for me. Diet Pepsi is easy. Pop open a can and drink. Coffee is really more of a commitment. Starbucks is out of latte mocha and chive? Whole day ruined. (Is that a real drink? Sounds like it but I may have just made it up.) If I’m out of Diet Pepsi I’ll have a Cherry Coke. No big deal. The other day I drank a Mountain Dew. OK, it tasted like water from a poisoned well but I didn’t moan about it.

But on this day I wasn’t looking for any kind of specialty coffee, I was looking for a specialty coffee maker. I won’t name it here because frankly I can’t spell it. Keuregg? Korreg? Korea? I don’t know. It is a weird not-so-little machine that makes exactly one cup at a time. I guess that’s good if you live alone and only plan to drink one cup all day, but what coffee drinker stops at one cup? I’ve seen one-cup makers before that pour the coffee into a little dwarf size coffee pot but this skips the pot and pours the coffee directly into the cup. I guess that makes a logical kind of sense. I suspect the next step is a coffee maker that pours the coffee right into your mouth. All you need is a flexible nozzle, like a hose. Or maybe some sort of coffer maker/water gun combination.

On the other hand, what doesn’t make sense is the way the Keurig (that’s it!) makes the coffee. Instead of scooping coffee into the maker, you stick a little pre-filled specimen cup of coffee into the thing and it somehow ejects the coffee grounds from the thing and makes you a single cup of coffee. So every time you want a cup of coffee you need to stick a little specialized thingy into your machine and those thingies are made by exactly one company, the same one that makes the coffee maker. And if you run out of little specimen cups of coffee, too bad. The maker only works with those.

The machine is expensive, the coffee is expensive, and I was in some sort of weird store that seemed to sell odd and unusual coffee makers and food utensils, none of which made much sense to me.  Spatulas had strange flanges, pots and pans had little side cars, and there were lots of trendy people in skinny jeans and berets walking around.

This is not my lifestyle.

I eventually bought the Keurig for an obscene price that they should be ashamed of themselves for charging and got out of there as fast as I could good.

Imagine you, knowing nothing about adult undergarments, suddenly found yourself in an adult undergarment store trying to find a particular pair of Depends for your elderly aunt. That’s about how out of place I felt. After this, the person getting this gift damn well better not regift it.

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