gullybogan

Dear Reader,

Mister Widget closed down his Manufactory today for the festive/summer season, and granted his employees a wondrous boon to celebrate – an office excessmas party!

Well, more like he bought some caterer’s drums of coleslaw, some rolls, napkins, and sixty dozen stubbies of beer, and told all the widgeteers to meet in the loading dock at noon.

Topless Karaoke

Over the last few weeks i’ve been hearing some choice office excessmas party stories floating around the place, about girls singing topless karaoke, or lying unconscious in pools of their own vomit, or shagging guys in toilet cubicles, so i was ready for some high quality shenanigans. Sadly, all those stories come from (and stayed in) other ppl’s excessmas office parties; ours was to be much more sedate.

To begin with, we all sort of stood around the edges of the loading dock, holding our free drinks and looking at each other, wondering who was going to be the first to start singing topless karaoke.

Then some line managers began making speeches, to, you know, recognise ppl.

By which i mean “humiliate”.

You know how in The Office (UK) that David Brent guy thinks he’s funny, and believes that he has this great sense of humour, and all his subordinates think he’s a great guy, and all that, but in truth he’s just an annoying knob? Well, i reckon that they (whoever “they” are) should show that series to all line managers everywhere. It should be standard management training material for anyone who feels driven to climb the career ladder so far up that they need to wear either a tie, or high heels, or both.

The “humorous” mocking of widgeteers’ minor errors throughout the year done with, we started munching on coleslaw like a bunch of ruminants waiting to be led to the milking shed, confused as to why we were all still standing around so.

Slowly, however, in the absence of milking, small talk began, and ppl started to laugh, in isolated pockets, at things that had nothing to do with line managers humiliating workers.

Film Critics and Comb-overs

The afternoon wore on in that way, and eventually ppl were getting tipsy, courtesy of those seven hundred and twenty stubbies of VB. A particularly drunk woman came up to me and asked me if i’d seen a particular movie. I said i hadn’t, but she nonetheless gave me a ten minute run down on the use of mis en scene throughout the whole three reels of this minor epic, slurring her words, and barely able to stand.

She concluded her thesis, nodded to me, and went off to sit on a series of men’s laps.

Shortly thereafter it looked to everyone as if Eza (a girl from Invoicing whom everyone male in the enterprise admires for her skills in wearing fluffy jumpers in winter and halternecks in summer) was going to peel off, jump on a table, and start hammering out I will survive, but then it became clear that she was just adjusting her bra strap, and everyone put away their cameraphones.

The whole afternoon was looking like being a complete dud, until this fiftysome dude from accounting took his comb-over on over from the accounting huddle to the card table where the septagenarians from FOH were sitting. Once he got there, he went down on one knee and started making chatting up overtures to this one septagenarian in particular, an elderly lady with a blonde perm reminiscent of a fifties’ pin-up girl – albeit one with cheeks sagging down to her chins, false teeth, and bifocals.

It was all a bit disgusting.

I mean, i know that old ppl have the right to a sex life, too, but could it not be going on right in front of me?

Some of the secretaries noticed comb-over’s advances and started tittering and pointing. It was becoming the sort of free-range humiliation you get at real parties, rather than the sort of concocted, line manager orchestrated humiliation you get at office parties.

So things were looking up.

The grandmother he was propositioning successfully rebuffed him, however, thus narrowly avoided ending up locked in a diskette storage closet somewhere with him, formatting his floppy.

Dessert was cold cheese with cream, so i bailed and went back to my cubicle to pack up my desk.

Slamming That Door

When i got to the carpark and was safe inside Amber, my laptop snugly lodged in her hatch, i made a special ritual of slamming her door on the year.

So special that i opened it again and slammed it a second time.

And then i drove away, into my vacation.

If you needed a widget before excessmas, dear Reader, i’m afraid you’ve missed out.

The only thing leaving the manufactory for the next four weeks or so will be reflections from the windows.

Yours,
Gullybogan