For Real?

Is this the Twilight Zone? Punked? Some modern day Candid Camera? Seriously, because it is just way too strange around here for this to be real life.

Over Christmas, the employees (meaning everybody but the contract employees) did a Secret Santa $10 limit gift exchange. Sometimes I am extra glad to be a contract employee because I get out of stuff like half-day seminars about employee benefits and the Secret Santa $10 limit gift exchange. (That's 2 Starbucks coffees people. I could give you a lovely bar of gift soap, or I could have 2 coffees. I think we all know what's better for everyone in that scenario because I assume you already have soap.)

Anyway, because the most exciting part of my job (besides the coffee sitting on my modular office furniture) is listening to all of the conversations around my cube, I come to find out that a lot of my fellow cube dwellers ALSO gave their supervisors gifts in addition to participating in the Secret Santa $10 limit gift exchange. Is that supreme sucking up or what? When I was in a law firm, the associates never got the partners gifts. Except maybe if the associates were in really good spirits, we would refrain from flipping off the partners as they left our offices (or not). Sometimes the secretaries made the lawyers some Chex Mix or cookies, but the gifts, if any, flowed down, not up. This allows the earth to continue to spin in the correct direction.

In other bizarre news, although I am not in the class of employees eligible for employee benefits such as the 401(k) and the Secret Santa $10 limit gift exchange, I am, apparently, required to participate with the regular employees in the annual practice of a self-evaluation performance review. I file papers, but I suppose I could stretch that out to a review.

To: Human Resources. From: AG

"This coming year, I will try to file papers faster and more accurately. I was filing the company's documents based on the color of the paper, then by font size, but if you think that alphabetizing them by client would be more appropriate, I am nothing but a team player. While I have the floor, I would like to request a company wide policy that any correspondence to me from a fellow employee, or to the outside world from this company, not be signed with "namaste," "aloha," or "live laugh love."Just a thought. XO, Loves ya!!!!!!! AG.