I’ve advised this story earlier than, however I feel it’s been a number of years, so I’ll inform it once more.
I beforehand labored for an organization that did “vacation adorning contests” round Xmas. To me, this simply learn because the proprietor successfully saying, “Adorn the workplace by yourself time and out of your individual pocket, and be grateful to me for it,” so I wasn’t a fan (there have been loads of instances the place the proprietor or administration would resolve to do one thing “enjoyable” after which foist the prices off onto the employees, so which will have contributed to my intense dislike of these items).
Anyway, the proprietor needed to maintain these items secular, and whereas I appreciated not having faith pressured upon us, I did assume they took it a tad too far, contemplating even issues like coloured lights weren’t allowed. On account of this, every year would have a theme to it that we have been supposed to embellish round. One yr, the theme was “Winter in New York Metropolis” and the supervisor I labored with was *manner* too into these contests. She obtained the thought into her head that she was going to herald the Bare Cowboy to essentially promote it. For many who don’t know, the Bare Cowboy’s a man who goes round NYC enjoying guitar whereas carrying solely tighty-whities, a cowboy hat, and cowboy boots. He’s form of a dwelling vacationer attraction.
The proprietor was such a prude that she generally obtained upset about individuals displaying an excessive amount of ankle or shoulder and would cancel informal Fridays for the entire workplace for months over it, so I attempted to persuade this supervisor, repeatedly, that bringing a dude into the workplace in solely underwear was a extremely dangerous thought, however she wouldn’t hear of it.
Considerably anticlimactically, it seems that it’s actually costly to have the Bare Cowboy come to your non-public social gathering, and all of the plans to have another person play the half fell by.
That mentioned, nothing tops the primary yr we did this contest.
The proprietor saved teasing some thriller prize for the successful workforce or division. Now, the proprietor was extraordinarily low-cost, so I felt very assured it might be actually lame, however loads of my coworkers have been actually into it and needed that prize.
The competition occurs, and the proprietor pulls an “everyone wins” and declares that quite than simply having Christmas Time off, we’d have Christmas Eve off as nicely (they have been Monday and Tuesday that yr).
Everybody else appeared actually comfortable about this, however my first response was horror. Our work was such that we have been all the time doing paperwork generated from the earlier week, and we would have liked to be achieved with it finish of day on Friday, no matter the rest. In order that meant we’d be cramming 5 days of labor into a 3 day week as an alternative of a 4 day week. I discussed to a number of of my coworkers that I believed this was a foul thought, however they advised me to relax, stop being an Eeyore, it’ll be fantastic.
Wednesday after Xmas rolls round, and we discover out {that a} member of our very small workforce has the flu so dangerous she will be able to’t even get off the bed and nearly definitely received’t be in in any respect that week.
We labored 12-14 hour days Wed-Fri that week, and somebody made a GIANT mistake as a result of we have been all so exhausted. Most of that brief but lengthy week is a blur to me, however I assume I most likely mentioned “I advised you so” greater than as soon as.
