HURRAY!
As you can tell, today is not Monday. It's not even Tuesday, in fact, but *Wednesday*, and the first opportunity this week I've had to be clever in your direction.
'Such a busy girl!' You might be saying. (Or you might be eating your Popsicle and wondering when in the world I'll get to my point...)
Anyway.
Today, as I celebrate the ultimate demise of my least favorite project so far in my employment here, I consider all of the projects still left on my plate for the rest of the afternoon.
I have to finish my invoices. (Neverending project, I tell you. Someday I'm going to drown in a sea of red ink, and they're just going to watch me float away.)
I have to clean up the untidiness that has taken over my desk. (The only thing stopping the Red Ink Flood is the sea of paperwork sopping it up.)
I have to do the actual *billable* work that is sitting next to my keyboard, staring at me longingly... Calling to me with its pretty Defense Logistics Agency logos and big words like "Task Deficiency."
But that's not what's keeping me the busiest today.
No, not even the call of actually making the company money can lure me from my current project...
Once a month, my dear company holds a Status Meeting. It mostly concerns large numbers, mesmerizing (if not morbid-looking) graphs and the ever-popular "State of the Office" address which involves such crowd-pleasing talking points as "Core working group" and "Overall billability..." not to mention our beloved moments of health and safety. It's always a thriller, I'm telling you.
But, despite the riveting nature of the information at these affairs, we sometimes have trouble getting attendance to the level at which it should be. A wonder, I know, considering the material... But nonetheless, that's the way it works. So we resort to a low-life, underhanded scheme to coerce WorkerFriends into the meeting room...
Bribery.
Usually in the form of food.
Now anyone who works in an office can tell you the magical nature of food within a corporate environment. It's mind-boggling how a tray of muffins or a jar of lollipops can be depleted without seeing a soul in an hour-long period. (It's true. Set a box of muffins on your desk when you're working at it, and it will last all day. Set it out and go to a 9:00 meeting, and you'll come back to a desk covered in nothing but crumbs. The sneakiness is what makes me giggle - As if being caught munching happily on a treat is tantamount to treason within a cubicle maze. "No! I don't eat at work!" And they toddle back to their seats, where the food will inevitably drift directly to their posteriors... But that's a subject for a different post. Perhaps you could check out
http://dearengineerfriend.blogspot.com/2011/06/nervous-habits.html for a little more bottom-flavored fun, if that's what you're in to. But not like *that*, because we don't do that here.) Yes, food in the corporate world is destined to live a short and secretive life.
But this wasn't just food.
This... was ice cream.
Yes, for this month's Monthly Meeting I managed to wrangle the head honchos into agreeing to an ice cream social for our beloved troopers.
Which was met with a resounding chorus of... wait for it... nonchalance.
Yes, the EngineerFriends I had worked so hard for barely seemed excited at all for the prospective frozen treats.
Eliciting responses for flavors was like pulling teeth. First, I got blank stares. My second response got a chorus of "whatever you get will be fine..."s and by then, I had had about enough. I was going to get Ice Cream, damnit, and they were going to *like* it!
So I bummed a head honcho's credit card (totally liberating feeling... Keep it under $65, and they don't even ask for your signature...) and bought four gallons of ice cream and a basketful of sprinkles and sauces. I toddled back to the office and immediately began rallying my troopers.
"Are you excited for the ice creamy goodness today?" I would ask.
"Oh... sure." was the response at 9:15 this morning.
"Oh! Kind of!" was the response at 10:40.
"Oooh! That's right!" was the response at 12:10.
And finally, at 1:30 this afternoon, I was approached with this whisper of a thought, bordering slightly on hushed concern:
"Will we be eating the ice cream soon?"
With a smile, I said of course, and that there was a small basket of candy bars in the kitchen to tide anyone over who would simply faint at waiting for a whole hour and a half more before the ice cream was produced for consumption.
There will, of course, be some downfalls to this highlight-of-my-week. As I set up at 2:45 for the meeting to begin at 3:00, there will be those who straggle into the kitchen and insist that their bellies cannot wait a moment longer. There will be those who arrive at 3:20 and grumble that the good choices are gone, that what IS there is melted and that they really don't like ice cream at all. But for now... I remain hopeful.
And for now, they just called my name in the lunchroom. Perhaps I should go see what's going on. Sweet afternoons, my ReaderFriends.
**Note: They thanked me! They actually *thanked* me!! For my thought, and my hard work, and my orchestration of this delightful afternoon... Right out in the open, in front of God'N'Everybody... That was weird. Kind... but weird.
