Today was the annual work retreat. It went all right. The food was good. They are now on a sustainability kick and told us to bring our own plates and wash them there, and gave us two packs of free portable silverware to use at work. They try to mix up our groups every year at these. Happily, I got assigned to sit with very nice people and did not have to deal with Shark Tankers, even though one of them was pretty much looking like a sulking rain cloud in my direction all day.

For the icebreaker, we had options for questions to answer, and I actually answered “what is your favorite year?” with “This one.” :) I’ve been in two plays when I never thought I’d be in any, I got a new car, work has improved, I’m getting an office, I have all these new friends, karaoke.... Almost everything is kinda coming up Jennifer in 2019, y’all!

BigBigBoss was there in the morning to give kind of an inspirational(?) talk about the business, and brought up various issues in such. We attempted to bring some up as well.

Then we had to write down suggestions as to how to improve processes in the office. I did not want to do this even though I have a loooooong list, but got told to say it anyway. My suggestions were added to the list and then we were told to vote on them. I was the only one who cared about any of mine, which figures. Like I said, I don’t see the point of offering suggestions if they aren’t going to be moved on....anyway, not surprised there.

After lunch, we had to sit through a talk on the food pantry, and then the poor girl was somehow not allowed to take any of our leftover catering from lunch with her by the catering people, which seems really ironic somehow. (They let US take it at the end though.)

Then we had to come up with ideas for a new mission statement, because now that we have new management, we have to redo the mission statement. My group was pretty much like (a) the old one was sufficient, thanks, and it’s not like anyone on a practical level cares about that stuff on a daily basis or even remembers it, (b) hey, let’s rip off other people’s mission statements online (No joke, BigBoss said, “I think stealing is always on the table.”), (c) working here is like the “this is fine” dog and someone suggested we use this reversal of it instead as ours, and (d) I was all, who the hell cares about mission statements and values when everything is on fire, we can never improve everything because everything is always on fire, and the real practical mission statement here should be “get stuff done.”

The final presentation was on sustainability, which our coworker says she knows nothing about (she wanted to do 15 minutes, BigBoss wanted an hour, they compromised on it being a half hour long and half of that being an online trivia game) but “I am a self-proclaimed expert on Googling things.” This featured lines such as “and then the polar bears die...” and “for every piece of plastic, there will be a fish.” And on one drawing: “Is that a piece of underwear that takes 500 years?” “It’s a disposable diaper.” Her 15 minutes wound up with, “So you’re probably thinking, (name redacted), this is depressing and sad, why are you ending our day this way?”

But hey, we got out of work by 3, and I went home and went swimming and then took a nap, followed by hiking outside once it cooled off. So that was nice.

I also finally got back to checking my e-mail about auditions. I saw two sets of auditions going on in the next few days that I’d like to try--I wouldn’t cast me in the shows but I think it’d be fun to read for them. I also heard back from (As You Like It) Jim about the parts in the other play and frankly, it sounds like my friends may be too young for how they want to cast it. So....I dunno there. Makes me a bit sad, but not under my control.

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