Gene-O-Lantern

Even though it’s over three weeks away and even though we have a ton of work to do already, my company likes to do these employee appreciation days a few times a year. Essentially, they pull people off their regular duties for 10 minutes of nonsense and then it’s back to work. On top of that, they bring in the big shots to actually shadow you to get a better understanding of what you do in a given day. Essentially, they pull the senior executives off their regular duties for 10 minutes of nonsense and then it’s back to work for them too.
At the end of the day, we all breathe a collective sigh and wish each other well for another year, ultimately trusting each other that we know just enough to do our own fucking jobs.
The trouble is, the appreciation thing lasts for an entire week. That means 5 days of silly bullshit like “finger football,” bingo, jersey day, and the latest entry: the jack-o-lantern contest.
Several pumpkins were brought in and the managers were given a time in which they could choose their pumpkin. Since my team doesn’t really actively participate in these kinds of things, we waited until the last minute only to find the most ugly and unappealing pumpkin out of the lot.
We then waited until the last minute to start to solicited ideas of what we wanted to do. By this time, other teams were in full develop mode, gaining each team member’s contributions and putting on the finishing touches.
Again, let me remind you that we hadn’t even started ours.
Someone takes the initiative to email everyone with the “We’ve got to participate too, so what are we going to do?”
I jokingly reply: “Gene Simmons.”
Apparently, the demon was the only response, which meant that I found the pumpkin, a Sharpie, and some white grease pain on my desk. I began working on it and immediately began whining about it using the pretense that because this team event was now looking to be an individual contribution.
“This better not be negatively affecting my stats.” I demanded.
“I’ll talk to scheduling.”
Regardless of how stupid this thing was, I’m not about to throw away the possibility that I could effectively throw away my normal job duties for some stupid jack-o-lantern contest.
I threw together a dumb looking replica of Gene and briefly fretted at how awful it looked. But then I realized that that is what made it so awesome. It didn’t matter how awesome the other jack-o-lanterns looked. Our team’s was the most “metal” looking, a primitive hark back to 7th grade art class presented by grown adults forced into an admittedly juvenile situation.
You wanted the best, you got the best.