Santa, Baby

Well, just got back from upstairs, where our office hosted a little Christmas party for the employees with a gift exchange and snacks/refreshments. Here's a rundown of how things went for me:

15:00 - Leave my Dilbert cubicle, head upstairs to Ground Zero.
15:05 - Lady at the table with all the gifts says we should start raffling for which gift we get, so I reach my hand in and pull out a number (14).
15:06 - Director (of another group) tells us to hold off until he can give a speech.
15:10 - Speech, and announcement of Christmas Decoration winners.
15:15 - Gift exchange and refreshments: gift exchangers (participating people) go to get their gifts and open them, everyone else head towards the food table.
15:20 - Gift is opened, and it's not disappointing because I've already lowered my expectations appropriately. Head outside to the food table.
15:25 - It's empty. Cleaned out like Costco samples on Sunday morning.
15:26 - Have a milk tea instead.

So if you participated in the gift exchange, you were basically punished by being distracted getting a gift that usually was not what you wanted in a million years (and likely deemed worthless by the whole of humanity). I say distracted, because while you were spending your time pretending to be all pleasantly surprised with your gift, everyone else was spending theirs pretending to be a pack of hyenas attacking the prey food table. So by the time I got out of the gift exchange, the displayed trays of cakes and snacks were mysteriously replaced with stacked trays of crumbs. It's no wonder gift exchange participation has reportedly been rather sparse in recent years. (At least there was enough milk tea left for me to fill a Dixie cup and retreat back to my cubicle again. For that, I'm thankful.)

This is by far the least Christmasy of all Christmases I've ever spent. But here's hoping that yours is going better than mine: Merry Christmas!