Christmas party
Every so often at work we’re required to watch a short, popcorn training on best business practices. The 5-minute reminders cover topics such as data security, health insurance privacy laws, or workplace sensitivity considerations, and I’ve learned the importance of setting strong passwords, safeguarding personal information, and not sexually assaulting my coworkers. While a lot of the information is rather obvious, it’s also very dry. We’re usually required to complete one such training a month, so I usually fulfill my requirement on the 31st, or one day late, on the 1st, if the month only has 30 days.
One of the recent topics was the importance of critically thinking before posting negative content about your work on social media. Apparently corporate disapproves of negative, public attestation of the company. I only skimmed the training, but the reasoning went somewhat along the lines of protecting our brand image, which the prior generations of leaders worked so hard to build. Just like a Jenga tower, it’s much harder to build a solid foundation than it is for shaky hands to crumble the construction in a single stroke. Just one bad avocado can spoil the whole bag. While I have only good things to say about my company - I’d genuinely love to spend my entire career with them - it got me thinking if my blog counts as social media.
Part of the goal of this blog is to comedically capture the mundane parts of life. I take pride in the posts which most people can relate to, like doing laundry, not having enough hangers, or riding the bus. While not at all mundane, essentially the same as a Fast and Furious movie, my job takes up a significant portion of my day, so it’s hard not to write about. And while the training advised against posting about your job on social media, I unfortunately don’t think my blog is social enough to be considered social media. Maybe someday I’ll fulfill my completely practical dream of being a famous life-style blogger, but until then, I will just have to settle for views from my mom, grandparents, sister, and girlfriend.
***
I’ve been at my company for about two and a half years now, and I’ve been to two and a half Christmas parties. I think technically it’s called the Holiday party, but I have aspirations of being a Christian, so I just call it the Christmas party. Obstinate for Jesus, I’m very pro separation of church and state, but only when it supports my preconceived beliefs. You can’t spell “the reason for the season” without “son of man among us” and some squinting. Anyways, I’ve been to two and a half Christmas parties, and this post will recap them briefly.
2019 Christmas party
The first company party I attended was at the Mariners stadium in the events section. My company rented out a portion of the high-rise section of the stadium, near the box seating. In conjunction with the delicious food, fun games, and holiday cheer already provided, my company paid for access to the Winter Wonderland event within T-Mobile park. Essentially, the public attraction replaced disappointing baseball with an ice rink, Christmasty foods, lights galore, and the World’s Largest Christmas Maze.
Having only lived in Seattle for a few months prior, my plus-one was my best-friend, who was visiting from Idaho during that week. Me being an introvert and havingn't having established strong relationships with my coworkers yet, I mostly spent the night with him. The event included multiple staff from other practice areas, many of whom don’t interact with the Health practice, so dodging small talk amongst the people I did know, proved to be easy work. Picture two clown fish swimming amongst sea anemones. The portion of the night that we weren’t playing Connect Four or Jenga (it wasn’t so much an effort to avoid social interaction as it was just being distracted by oversized children’s games) we were lost in the Christmas maze. In our defense, it was marketed as the World’s Largest Christmas Maze, and the event turnout was much larger than the typical Mariners game - so not too many, but still a decent amount of people to circumnavigate.
An otherwise amazing time, the red blunder of the night was my drinking decisions. My alcohol tolerance is dismally low since I didn’t drink much in college. A lot of the fraternity parties I went to turned out to be libraries, so they didn’t offer alcohol or closed at ten. Throughout the night, I drank three glasses of wine. Not just any wine, three glasses of red wine! I drank the red wine too quickly. Right when I walked into the party, the alcohol table greeted me and offered me the choice between a glass of white wine or red wine, then whispered in my ear, “How would you like your night to go?” The choice was similar to Morpheus offering Neo either the blue pill or a red pill, but not only does Neo choose the wrong pill, he chooses three of them.
Long story redacted, the next morning I was pretty miserable. Overall though, a great Christmas party.
2020 Christmas party
The 2020 Christmas party was canceled due to Covid. So, instead of giving us delicious foods and the chance to cordially connect with coworkers, my company graciously gave us $500 cold-hard cash to be used however we’d like. The one stipulation was that we couldn’t save the money (actuaries tend to be pretty frugal), and we had to take a picture of the purchase, posting it on the whole-office Team’s page, to be reimbursed.
Some of the more memorable choices from my coworkers included a large roulette bet at a local casino (and winning), a lavish dinner date, and sparkling earrings. But better than all of that, I chose Powell’s bookstore in Portland. One of my favorite places, Powell’s always gives me good stories, and being able to buy hundreds of dollars in books, on someone else’s dime, is a fantasy.
While technically cancelled, I’m counting the 2020 Christmas party as another success. Since it didn’t happen though, I’m only giving it a weight of one half.
2021 Christmas party
The most recent Christmas party, three days ago, inspired the topic of this post. This go around, my company rented out an entire bar, food and drink inclusive, for the 200-person event. The warmly lit venue fit the cohort stug with a good mix of booths, tables, and standing areas. If you really want to get a picture of the place, just google Redhood Brewlab in Cap Hill.
The majority of us have been working at home for the last year, so our entire interaction has been through a laptop screen, so I’m happy I got to talk to a lot of my coworkers, who up until now, I thought were just floating heads that I regularly see in Team’s bubbles. It’s nice to know that they’re doing well and are full-bodied.
While not particularly noteworthy, this has been my favorite Christmas party. I’ve been working from home so long that I’ve contracted a minor case of extraversion. I genuinely enjoy working with all my coworkers and it was heartwarming to get to interact with a good portion of them. The venue was well chosen, the food was good, and camaraderie was merry. Overall another success.
