Office Perks

Back in my "career days," I worked in a real office with regular office hours. You know, Monday through Friday, weekend and holidays off (mostly). And I remember thinking that it was such a grueling schedule, only because I hadn't experienced motherhood yet. Well, to be honest, there were some very demanding times. The day trips, where I'd have to get up at 4am to get to the airport for the first flight out only to return around midnight and then get up for a regular workday the following morning-- that kind of compared to motherhood. Only I didn't have to do it day in and day out for long stretches. And once I made it to the weekend, it really was two days off. Ah, the memories.

I don't miss it. Except for the friendship with my coworkers. It was nice to get to socialize with other adults all the time. But then again, there were office politics too . . . at least play dates don't end with people getting fired. But I digress.

Every so often our office would hold a team meeting, where our bosses would get up and go over whatever important stuff they felt we needed to know, as well as try to build some office unity. (The best part of it was that they always had lunch delivered, good food we didn't have to pay for. Then they'd try to keep our attention while we all munched away. No easy feat that.) Well, one of the "fun" activities of the team meeting was the Bonehead Award.

Everyone in the office was eligible to receive this illustrious award, and anyone could nominate someone for it. There was actually a little drop box where you could anonymously drop in a slip of paper explaining why so-and-so deserved to win the award this month. And what did you have to do to get nominated?

Why something dumb or embarrassing of course!!

These slips of paper were pulled out of the box, and then the dumb or embarrassing moment was then read or told aloud to the whole office. Best of all, the winner got the special recognition of a dog bone on a chain to display in his or her cubicle until such time as a new bonehead winner was announced. Great team building activity, don't you think?

I must admit, most of the stories that came out of this game were truly hilarious. As long as you weren't the person at the center of it. Well, I had my share of nominations. Most of the time, it was because of something that happened with one of my coworkers. The other really young consultant was a guy named Aman, and when he and I went out on work trips together the worst always seemed to happen. Once we flooded out the site of a half-built gas station and nearly got attacked by some very furious construction workers. Oops. Another time, after a very poorly done hydrant flow test where we managed to spray the fire marshal with water, our car battery died on the freeway-- in the middle of a lane we couldn't get out of, right during rush hour traffic. Our battery was so dead we couldn't even get the hazard lights on. That was fun, to have angry commuters shouting at us when they finally maneuvered past the several mile long backup we caused. Oops again. Eventually, our boss decided the two of us couldn't go out on trips together. He said (as nicely as possible) that since we both looked practically like teenagers, and these unfortunate things kept happening, it wasn't very good for the image of the company, as if they only had incompetent kids as consultants. Sad, but probably true. Aman and I just had the worst luck together.

Well, my terrible luck with Aman never actually won us the coveted Bonehead Award. I did, however, win it once. Check back soon for the tale of how I became the not-so-proud owner of a dog bone necklace for a whole month!