it's been a month. Sorry, I'm trying :(

So I just finished my first major project related to my promotion at work. It was a gong show, but I think it went really well.

I was assisting the supervisor in charge of Customer Service Week, which is an industry wide excuse to balloon-and-streamer the heck out of your office (not so much with the streamers, for us) and wear funny clothes (no really - we had Crazy Hat, Tacky Tourist, Safari, Beach and Jersey Days) and play games and give out prizes and eat copious amounts of food.

It's actually kinda humorous that the colors of Customer Service Week really resemble those of one of the Big Three political parties - the smallest of those three. But the CS Week organizers are in the States, so I'm mostly sure it's just a big coincidence.

I really saw polarizations between the personalities of some of my coworkers. I was really enthusiastic and got into the idea of boosting morale, piggin' out and competing for prizes. One coworker complained that the office shouldn't become a "romper room", another insinuated that suspicion would arise if the judges for a particular contest were only from this-department and not from that-department. (Truth be known, we had comments from one guy from that-department and a lady from unknown-unrelated-department that were also taken into consideration. So no, no bias.). Sadly none of the sources of the negativity surprised me, be they due to individual personality quirks or tendencies on particular circadian rhythm (and therefore a certain shift).

I definitely learned to pick my battles. If a certain person doesn't like you personally, they won't be willing to help you in even the tiniest of capacities. Some people apparently care more about nitpicking about your wording in an email rather than ANSWERING IT with the requested information. Some people care more about the prizes than the participation.

On the flipside, you wouldn't believe the INCREDIBLE spread we had for the potluck - we have big long islands in our kitchen spaces and in this one the island was full, as were a few small tables and a ton of counter space. We invited 3 or 4 other departments to come nosh and STILL had a ton of extra left over.

The only real shortcoming I saw was a shortage of food from our ordered Chinese on the first day, but I wasn't involved in the ordering so I wash my hands of it. ;)

All in all, I'd say it was mostly a success, and I'm looking forward to next year's shenanigans. I just hope some of my cohorts get into it a little more. And I think that none of the spoilsports should be allowed to come to the Christmas party.

:P