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Holiday Cheer in the Workplace?
inherent asks: "With the holiday's quickly approaching, the a
fternoon here at work has begun degrading into a large-scale
decorations-fest. Having recently graduated College, I'm used to
much more 'outlandish' decorations than those I see going up on cube
walls around me. What are some /.ers best and worst memories of
holiday cheer in the workplace?" I'm from the school of thought
that leaves the Christmas decorations for when it's closer to
Christmas rather than before Thanksgiving, but maybe that's
just me. But, for those of you who just can't wait to share the
cheer, this year...this one is for you.
I keep it in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet. Flasks store better than liter-bottles.
I won't speak for everyone else but where I am everyone seems to want to toss this chear on me. I would rather happily keep on working and not notice the time of year.
I do not celibrate christmas or any other of the fun holidays during this time of year. I would rather them do away with them if possible.
What bugs me the most is everything everyone seems to do is all christmas related. Generic decorations I do not mind, but I would rather not be confronted with a picture of St. Nick at the work place.
Guess what I'm trying to say is decorate and celebrate if you must, because if no other reason we all need to lighten up and take a break, but make it generic so those of us that are a little disgruntled with this time of year are able to keep on working. Forced participation in the company or IT christmas parties... Yick!
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
Due to complaints that the phrase "Christmas Tree" was too religiously oppresive to some(One person, actually) we renamed it the "Holiday Bush."
Each year, we look forward to being called over the PA system to "come to the loby and decorate the bush!"
I have petitioned management to institute the celebration of Festivus .
I think that a corporate celebration of Festivus gives a brilliant opportunity for the traditional "Airing of grievances".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
xsnow!
I've been running xsnow between Dec 1 and Jan 1 since about 1994. It's about the only true tradition I have.
Actually, I don't even like "fun" or "happiness." And so many people these days walk around with smiles on their faces, like it was coming back in style.
Please do not involve me in your "relationships" or "emotions." I'm here to work, and so are you.
(yes, it's sarcasm.)
People around here like to bring all sorts of food in for the whole group to snack on during the day. It ranges from Christmas themed cookies to cheese, crackers, cold cuts, & cake. That beats decorations anyday.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Festivus has gotten entirely too commercial, dammit.
http://www.xmasresistance.org/
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Yup. The typical pot-luck dinner. However someone, who was easily figured out, brought rum cake. We're not talking normal rum cake. This thing was completely saturated with rum. A slngle slice was almost the same as taking a shot.
Needless to say, there was much christmas cheer going on in the sysadmin and DBA staff. Other than some laughs, surprisingly, nothing was said.
When I was working at HBO, we held a "decorate your cubicle" contest. As I tend to be a bit obsessive-compulsive about competitions, I decided to really go to town on my cubicle.
:)
I picked up some scrap pieces of wood from the local lumber shop (basically gardening stakes) and nailed them together to create a simple inverted-V roof that sat on top of the cubicle walls.
I then covered the frame with the brown paper that you can wrap packages in (came from UPS) to make a roof, as well as the sides of the cubicle. With a little imagination, it looked like a little brown house.
After that, I used cotton along the edges to mimic the icing of a gingerbread house, and bought lots of lollipops and candy canes which I stuck on the outside.
In the end, it really did look remarkably like a Gingerbread cubicle.
One of my coworkers, once he saw it, replaced the little nametag on the outside (which read Peter Hamlen, Systems Analyst) with Esmerelda, Wicked Witch.
The best part was that Dec 28th was "Family Day" at HBO, so there was a steady stream of children coming onto the floor saying "I want to see the gingerbread house". Not a lot of work got done that day...
Rope-light! Yeah! I gotta get me some of that!
I was watching an old Airwolf the other day where that was being used as data cable in a hi-tech comms room. All I can do is reset the hubs to a beat to get a flashing effect. (accompanied by screams froom the users....)
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I would gladly settle for a re-enactment of that memory.