Fun At The Office Today (Long)

[dafischer]

So, today at work we had the 1st annual "Employee Easter Egg Hunt". (Stop snickering!) The company's Blow-Smoke-Up-Your-Ass Committee decided that this would be a great morale booster, and the notices went up about two weeks ago. Cash, lottery tickets, and other goodies to be inside the eggs...wowee!

After much head shaking and eye rolling, some of us were thinking how this could be made more fun by planting some "special" eggs for the affair. But, nothing more was said or done. Until this morning. One of my buddies drags me into his office to show me something, which was a dozen plastic 2 piece eggs. Each one had a little slip of paper inside...4 with "Good for one free lunch in the cafeteria", 4 with "Good for one company logo polo shirt", and 4 with "Get back to work, loser" on them. The plan was he and another guy participating in the hunt, and discreetly dropping the eggs and walking away. This I had to watch.

So, at 1:15 sharp, there's about 60 people gathered out on the lawn next to the parking lot, wating for the signal to look for the advertised 55 (soon to be 67) eggs. I wish you could have seen how it looked when the crowd was launched...full contact Easter Egg Hunt. Yes, adults all. So, after about 15 minutes of amusement, all eggs were accounted for. "Official" egg results..1 with a $20, 1 with a $10, about 10 with $1 scratch off lottery tickets, and the balance filled with jelly beans.

The "Unofficial" eggs caused some consternation when the lucky finders went to redeem their Shirt and Lunch tickets. After some head scratching and confusion by the committe members, 4 lunch vouchers and 4 polos were handed out. The 4 "Get back to work, loser" holders weren't amused. Anyway, now the questions as to how'd that happen were starting to fly, and most likely an inquisition will begin. Four of us know, we ain't talking, and it could have been anyone, so it'll be fun to watch.

And before anyone mentions cheating the company, the shirts totaled $48, and lunch $24, for a total of $72. The lost time for the hunters, the organizers, and the setter-uppers probaly totaled 5 times that. My buddy just enhanced the idiocy.

Anyway, it was the most fun I've had at work in ages. Happy Easter everyone.

[gprsh924]

Anyone who actually got upset about the eggs are losers and should get back to work. it was obviously a joke and should be taken as such

sounds funny, haha

[masraum]

Sounds excellent! Wish I could have seen it. We got a free "new service/product" kickoff lunch the other day, complete with quiz to prove that we had listened to the lecture.

I did however win a door prize which was $75 at one of several restaurants which is pretty cool.

[dafischer]

Don't you just love what's passed as "morale boosting" to employees these days?

[red-beard]

Our "Christmas" party had Sketch Artists, Tarot Card and Palm readers. We had a "Make a Santa Claus" contest with a bag of parts.

The good news: Prizes included a pair of 1st Class Airline tickets anywhere Continental flies. So it was worth sticking around...

[Neilk]

That's great!!!!

I recently got a company t-shirt and mug.... Great Give me the cash instead.

[MRM]

That is truly an enlightened employer. I have a similar story. My former employer would not allow corporate funds to be spent on a Christmas/holiday party (or at least the local manager was unwilling to spend money in her budget for it) and the best they would allow was a two hour lunch break to accommodate a pot luck party in one of the conference rooms. At precisely 2:00 the manager would rise from the table and say "Okay, everyone, it's 2:00. Back to work."

One year the lack of enthusiasm for such a joyous occasion was palpable. Rather than suffer the indignity of no one bringing anything or going to the office "party" the manager emailed everyone the following quote that I memorized forever: "Due to lack of interest, the holiday party has been canceled." It was the best Christmas that office ever had.

[RoninLB]

at an old job they stopped x-mas parties due to drinking and pent up angers leading to fights. It was wild while it lasted.

[on2wheels52]

I have fun like that almost every day but then I'm the boss. Don't have any employees but the customers can be good foils.
Jim

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Reminds me of something that happened at my old place. They brought in a do-nothing middle-manager type (translation: overhead) who proceeded to strut around and mark her territory by trying to tell people what to do - bad scene. Anyway, I remember this one time I was having a "discussion" with one of our mechanical engineers (total freekin' slacker/skater/do-nothing) about why he ought to PLEASE finish off the calculations and drawings for an HVAC system that was about two weeks late. He started mumbling his usual list of excuses, how it wasn't his job and so-and-so said they'd look at it and whatever. Sure enough, Jan (our new nark) "prairie-dogs" her ugly mug over the cubicle wall (she sat next to this guy) and says (schoolteacher-like), "now Charles. . . regardless of who said they'd do it, don't you think it would be in the interest of being a team player to follow up on this?"

Got my blood roiling a little. The sassy, smug manner in which she said it, plus the fact that she was undercutting MY authority to deal with this guy kind of irritated me. Not to defend Charles (the lazy engineer), but I looked Jan (nark) right in the eye and said (loudly enough for everyone around to hear), "you know, Jan. . . it's been my finding that if someone has to TELL you you're on a 'team'. . . that you're not actually on a team". Couple chuckles and snickers from around. Deer-caught-in-headlights look from Jan. She just sort of melted back behind her wall. I finished my conversation uninterrupted and somehow made it back to my desk without busting out laughing at the fact I'd been able to do that with a straight face.

Don't miss that kind of corporate crap at all. "Team-building" exercises and "quality circles" and schit like that. Puke.

[cstreit]

The number of people I've met who seem to have made a career out of these "team player", "lets leverage synergies", and "I'm here to facilitate a meeting of strategic empowerment" type phrases is staggering.

It's precisely why I always worked for smaller companies and startups. There you either have a "git 'er done" attitude or you're out. I know that at most startups, if you started "leveraging synergies' and talking about being a team player, you'd more than likely have the team leverage your azz right out the door.

[Zeke]

Originally posted by cstreit
The number of people I've met who seem to have made a career out of these "team player", "lets leverage synergies", and "I'm here to facilitate a meeting of strategic empowerment" type phrases is staggering.

It's precisely why I always worked for smaller companies and startups. There you either have a "git 'er done" attitude or you're out. I know that at most startups, if you started "leveraging synergies' and talking about being a team player, you'd more than likely have the team leverage your azz right out the door.

That's pretty funny. I like your take.

RE: An inquisition, are they serious? What ever happened to the company prank? (Oh, some fire fighters fed dog food to one of their own and jokes are now off limits. This was in LA and the the "victim" is black, so the law suits are flying.)

Hell, in earlier times, pranks were legendary. And, they were good for moral. Go figure. I guess the dog food thing was in poor taste (sorry).

[legion]

Yes, pranks are good for morale IMO.

1) They usually reinforce behaviour that is good for the group. For example, the Air Force pilot tradition of a "bolt". They reinforce this behaviour in a way that rules and regulations simply cannot. The guys who is usually the target of a prank is usually targeted because of some behaviour that others in the group want to eliminate.

2) They let everyone blow off some steam.

3) They break up what otherwise would often be a dull day.

[scottmandue]

Originally posted by milt
RE: An inquisition, are they serious?

Sorry, couldn't resist...


Christmas? Easter? I work for the state we are not allowed to even think about those holidays anymore.

In a related incident we had our "employee appreciation party" last night (read: all holidays rolled into one PC amorphous party).

With no ill intent on my part I invited a group from my department down to San Pedro to meet at the brewery then go for the Thursday night art walk after... we all had a good laugh about "missing" the big party.

Last place I worked had a "team building" exercise put on by the "funster committee" every so often. They decided to do a paper airplane contest. Guess which entry was mine.

[the]

No. 8?

[legion]

The question is: Did it win?

[Schrup]

I can't do it anymore because of my postition, but before I got promoted, whenever there was any kind of "morale function", that was my cue to sneak out & go home. I was never caught.

[cowtown]

Haha, full contact easter egg hunt.

Yeah...Have you guys filed your TPS reports yet? Because if you haven't filed your TPS reports, I'm going to have to go ahead and ask you to come on in this weekend.

[stomachmonkey]

We used to spend 50 weeks a year planning for a trade show that took us 1 week on site to build that was only open to the public for 2.5 days.

The last month before were typically 7 days a week in the office.

The week of onsite setup was grueling to say the least"

So one year, after the show HR gets the key players together. They want us to put on a "mini show" for the employees who don't get the "priviledge" of going to the show.

Dead silence from the group. So I looked at HR and said, "Fine, we'll charter buses and pick everyone up at their houses at 4:30 in the morning. We'll drive them around for 10 hours. They'll get the flavor of the plane ride. Then we'll drop them at a hot dirty warehouse and have them move and unpack boxes for a couple of days. We'll make them sleep during the day so they experience what the time difference does to their sleep pattern and will feed them crap food the whole time. Then we'll make them stack shelves in a supermarket for a couple more days and finish it off with 3 days of standing on their feet while the same song loops every 3.5 minutes. For the full affect we'll hire people to eat garlic and then close talk them. etc... etc...

The HR woman started to give me s**t about my attitude. I cut her off and said, "If you had half a clue what was involved with this show you'd know damn well that it's not a party, it's WORK, HARD WORK and they had a lot of balls asking those of us who just finished it to do it again so others don't fell "left out".