Oh, naive friend, allow me to enlighten you; Or, Where I gripe about work, part 537

#537) My friend Katherine emailed me last week and asked when our office Christmas party was, and what it was like. She said she liked to imagine how it might be different than the average office party. I chuckled out loud, and then told her I would answer her question here. Based on previous job experience, I think most people probably associate the work holiday party with cocktail attire, a night out somewhere glamorous- or at least nice, live entertainment, drinks, and yummy food. Her estimate of how ours would be different had something to do with people fighting over chicken wings. While it was a valiant effort, she was actually far from the truth. Because, here at lab land, there is no holiday party. Unless you count - and I guess you could - it is a holiday celebration of sorts... are you ready?; It's pretty exciting! The great news was first told to me with big smiles! We all go out to lunch together at a near-by cafeteria! yaaay!!! So, Kat, instead of visualizing the fighting over the wings, imagine about a dozen people dressed in their Christmas sweaters, giddily gobbling up an all you can eat buffet during a work day. Cheap Man may or may not have taken an enema the night before - either way, he can be heard saying,"less talking, more eating", because he must eat as fast as possible to get the most for the money. Most everyone will think this is a great treat. My friend Robin will be disgusted, and not eat anything, and pretend that she is not hungry. I'll nibble at a couple of things, take a look at all that gravy, and start to feel a little disgusted. I will then make up for my lack of real food by eating three desserts. Because we are government funded, any sort of perk like a party would be seen as a misuse of taxpayers money. So we get absolutely none of them - nothing monetary at least. Holidays we can do. The upside here is that you don't have to worry about what to wear and there's no strangely intense pressure to bring a date. yay?

**** speak of the devil - this posting was just interrupted by Vienna Sausage Lady. She rushed in in a state of alarm, because a spread sheet I had created had been given to her by her boss as an example - the formatting that is. But she had looked at all my results, and came rushing in to question them. I just had to remind her that we do completely different things and she shouldn't compare them (she does this a lot). And then she asked us if we'd be wearing holiday sweaters tomorrow (see! I told you!) because this year's glorious lunch happens to be taking place tomorrow. And she said she'd really like to swing by the mall and get our photo taken with Santa. And then she lingered longer to talk about cramps and menopause. Just go ahead and shoot me now, people.

#538) Ridiculous emails - they just keep getting worse.
This deserves its own post, judging by the indignation it brought out in me, but I'll just throw it in here while I am on the subject of whining about work. There is a whole email problem around here that I won't even get into right now because I don't have the time - it mostly has to do with people in places I have never heard of sending emails to people - like me - who don't need to know that an earring was found in their bathroom because we aren't even in the same city - but I digress... This email did apply to me. It makes so little sense, that in a way, it epitomizes the ironic way that time is wasted, all in the name of maximizing work time. I plan on framing it and hanging it up here. Here is how it's written (if you may work with me, please pretend you never saw this):

On Monday January 7 (Power Company) will have to turn the power to the building off. We will need to turn everything off that morning by 8:30. (Power Company) should be finished with the transformer repair by 12:30.

The phones and email will not be working during this four hour time frame.

The staff is expected to report to work as usual.

hmmm... where to begin here. I mentioned it to my boss's boss this way: "So... that email from (Everybody's boss) said that the power will be off on the 7th? And that email will not be working? (he nods.) Um, won't everything not be working?Like the computers that enable the email? And our instruments? (which we need to do any work) And lights and heat?" He leaned back in his chair and said, "Yup. The power will be off." He said that in the olden days, were something like this to happen, we just wouldn't come in till 12:30, but that Head Honcho would not hear of that.

I tried turning off the lights in hear the other morning. It is really dark, people. And you know something about January? It's cold then. And on a Monday morning? I am not going to be very happy. At all. I will be sitting here in the dark, cold, and bored to death. And I will surely be thinking of my warm bed at home. I asked him if I could bring board games and he didn't respond.

There is a tv station near us, and there seems to be a paranoia around here that if we were to say, all come in late one day, it would be all over the news that night, with the headline, "Government employees waste time!!" As my friend Liza said, "I'll tell you what's a waste of time, government employees sitting around for 4 hours in the dark. Amen sister.
Actually, I get into work at 7:30, so make that 5 hours. This is bullocks.

and gripe #539)"Uniforms?!"
There is a big communication problem around here. I won't get into the details of that, either. But here is the latest little surprise - something that was handed to me on Monday. It was a piece of paper that read, "Please pick your TWO favorite colors for the uniform we are working on developing." What?! Uniform? Are we not humiliated enough?
On the 2nd page there were little bars of color printed out from a color printer - a very bad color printer from the looks of it. I took this over to Vienna Sausage Lady to see what she knew about it, since she likes to be up in everybody's business, and boy did I get her worked up. I felt bad after I asked. Because we are supposedly currently broke, and may not have an office pretty soon, and maybe not even jobs, and because there are all sorts of problems that need to be addressed, she felt that this was a grave misuse of time and money. All valid points, however, even if this were not the case, and even if I knew I wouldn't have to pay for them out of my own pocket (VSL speculates on this), I'd still be vehemently opposed. See, I think I've seen a little preview of this "uniform". A few years back we were given shirts as a "thank-you gift". A new coworker who I will call, Poor New Girl, said that as long as they were cute that would be ok. Oh, Poor New Girl, you have a lot to learn. Robin called them "big burlap sacks with giant collars." Does that sound cute, miss young and stylish? Also, they were all - every one of them - men's sizes! And that made me angry - on principal.PYG asked if she could get an extra small - but you know what I mean, right? About men's sizes? An extra small is still going to be big in the waste, and probably not fit in the chest, and then it will still be long. But it will be long and narrow, for a snug around the hips fit that one desires in a polo shirt. And the sleeves will still come down just below your elbow. So where we were supposed to write in "black, navy, stone, yellow, or green", I wrote in "Freedom" by my name. Will this annoy Head Honcho? I'm not really too concerned. I think I may be getting slightly more cantankerous with age.

I welcome some dialogue about the uniforms. It may be the only way I get any information.

Ok, I think that may be enough griping for one day. If you have read this far, I will be very surprised.