December 4, 2015
Dear Everyone:
One of the benefits of no longer working for a living in December is not
having to endure the “Year-End-Holiday-Celebration-Don’t-Dare-Call-It-‘Christmas’-Lunch”.
Back in The Good Old Days, the “Christmas Luncheon” was something people
looked forward to. Lots of
alcoholic beverages, generous amounts of food, more alcoholic beverages,
live music, dancing, loads of fun.
Then some people would go work on their Christmas shopping.
Others would go out for some serious post-Luncheon drinking.
I remember one department that always insisted the restaurant furnish
twelve round tables. Each
table would have multiple open wine bottles.
And multiple copies of published sheet music for
Christmas Carols.
At some point, everyone was required to participate in singing
the
Twelve Days of Christmas, each table warbling their contribution
all the way to the end.
This is the same department that conferred the “JR Ewing Award for
Nastiest Lawyer” in the business each year.
For those of you too young to remember,
J.R. Ewing,
played by Larry
Hagman, was a character on a TV Series called
Dallas.
The department in question had a lot of
lawyers.
They also seemed blissfully unaware that they were violating the
copyright laws with their unauthorized copies of those published
Christmas Carols.
Some decades later, I was helping with some “old records” for a
department that was the “descendant” of that original department.
Sure enough, I found very old copies of that same sheet music of
Christmas Carols still held in someone’s office years after the
luncheons had died away.
People would get drunk at the “office party”, not just where I worked
but all over the country. In
time, someone got himself killed driving home and the family sued the
company. That’s when the
“unlimited” drinking staggered to a halt.
Instead, the company issued “drink tickets”, two to each employee.
After two drinks, if the employee wanted more he/she could pay
for themselves and the company figured it was off the hook.
They also told people not to return to the office after the
lunch. This is because
someone somewhere got pulled over and told the officer “I’m just going
back to work” which put the company right back on the hook again.
Take away the alcohol and those luncheons started to get fairly boring.
So someone decided instead of forced Christmas Caroling, they
would introduce “team-building”
exercises. The only one I
remember consisted of a package of uncooked
spaghetti and
marshmallows.
The challenge: Each
table was required to build the tallest structure.
Winner gets a prize.
Oh, boy! Could this possibly
be more fun?
Is the Party Over Yet?
Then someone complained that Christmas was, by definition, a Christian
celebration and
not-everyone-is-a-Christian-you’re-forcing-us-to-participate…and so on.
Hence the “Year-End-Holiday…” name change.
There was once a TV series that spoofed science fiction shows like
Star Trek
and Star Wars.
In one episode, everyone was wishing everyone else a “Happy 64th!”
Apparently it was the 64th time that a “Universal
Holiday” was being celebrated that year.
When one person said he didn’t know what gift to get for his
co-worker, someone suggested: “Give
him a plant”. He replied:
“My co-worker is a
plant.”
At least they didn’t have to build a
skyscraper with
marshmallows and spaghetti.
Love, as always,
Pete
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