Chaos Attraction

Office Holiday Hijinks

2003-12-19, 5:56 p.m.

I have to interrupt the musical series because I've accumulated too many funny and weird holiday-related stories over the last week that I haven't been able to put in here, and they simply must be shared with everyone that doesn't read the LJ.

Here we go!


On Monday, I had to mail a package. Yes, the worst mailing day of the year. Normally, the campus post office is fairly low traffic, even at lunch. Even today, it probably wouldn't have been bad.

Except for this one guy, who seemed to be foreign and probably Swedish, who was mailing 30 packages, one of which was a VCR and needed insurance. They were piled like a wall in front of the poor clerk, who was scrambling to organize and tape and tag them all. The line quickly got long enough to go out the door and across to the wall on the other end of the hall.

There was one lone worker to take care of all of these people, and she was having a breakdown. In between dealing with his various packages, she was calling other people and begging them to come in. "You won't get paid, but I'll give you part of my pay!" (She said later they normally had more workers in at this time, but this year? No budget, of course.) People were moving out of line and getting fed up, which kept moving me up, so I stayed. At one point the girl called out, "If anyone needs stamps, the bookstore sells stamps!" That got one guy out of line.

When he was done, the foreign guy apologized to all of us. Profusely.


On Tuesday, I was entering my office building and I saw Santa entering through the doors on the other side. Followed by about ten policemen.

He didn't seem to have been arrested- most likely it was for the chancellor having some fancy party with security or something- but I fantasized for a moment that Santa had committed some crime, or was a stripper, or something else far more creative than real life.

That day, I also caught my boss walking down the hall, singing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer." I was so proud.


On Wednesday, I came in to work to find a cat (far left) on my desk, a gift from the head of the department. Three of us in my area got cats, one got a dog, and one got a Santa.

One of us with the cats discovered they had a drawstring behind them. When she pulled it, the cat vibrated.

There's just something funny when your Christmas bonus from your boss is a vibrating pussy.

(ba-dum-bump!)

I went out shopping with Jess that night, and when I left my apartment I found a UPS slip about a foot away from my door. I about plotzed. No name, no indication of what it was, just the usual "someone must sign for this/two days left" crap.

That night I heard a sad story from my mom. She knows someone in town who had signed up for some Secret Santa program. She'd told the guy who got her name that she wanted a Chia Pet. (I have no idea why.) That all she wanted was a Chia Pet because she didn't get gifts at the holidays. Her anti-Santa got her nothing.

Mom was all, "How sad is your life if all you want is a Chia Pet and you don't get it?"

Mom decided to pick her up one the next day. She also bought an elderly friend of hers a teddy bear. It was the first one she'd ever been given.


On Thursday, we got another Christmas bonus from an even higher-up, who delivered us big bags of red and green fortune cookies. The new people at work promptly spent the rest of the day playing the "in bed" game.

Had Mom call UPS while I was at work, and it turned out the package was for someone else entirely who'd put down the wrong address. I was much relieved. UPS didn't really give a crap about this, much like FedEx didn't in that story. Mom was told that if the people cared, they would call and ask about their missing package. After that call, she begged me to get ahold of this package and find the rightful owners of it. However, I found no UPS note when I got home that night.


On Friday, we had some fun. We had a birthday and cake and cookies, but also... there were some exotic chocolates. Ones with uh, certain kinds of flavoring one wouldn't normally expect to see at work. We had fun. I got a stash to see me through most of a week at my parents' house. But even before the chocolates, people were wacky; I saw one woman smack another (not the birthday girl) on the butt a few times with the cake cutter, then immediately stick the cutter in the cake.

I discovered that there's a harp in my office. There's another department next to ours on our floor, and I was passing through it hunting for people when I skidded to a stop. What the heck's a harp doing here? I had to ask, so I walked into the cubicle quad area. Turned out one guy there was a harpist and did gigs- that was his explanation, though I never did find out if he practiced during work or not.

We had a meeting today, and much to my amazement, someone in the office brought her new pug puppy. I spent most of the meeting (dull and not having much to do with what I do there) staring at the puppy as it climbed around, sniffed, napped, bit the poor birthday girl's fingers... Livened things up, anyway.

Meanwhile, there were so many people crammed into a small space that one woman sat on the floor. Soon enough, she was literally lying on the floor underneath the table, with her shoes off!

I came home to find the package for the other people, sitting on my floor. I guess Heather'd been up and awake at the exact right time, so I handed it off to the manager to deal with.


On another subject, I have been thinking about getting website business cards, to hand out to people I know IRL if I think they'll enjoy my stuff. I'd get a set with just the main weblog (and maybe my novel? haven't decided on that yet) to hand out to those who may not be trustable with the journal(s), and another set with the journals on too. Most of my ranting on the subject can be found here.

For those of you wondering, I'm debating getting something like this for the journal and blogs card. Though it has been suggested to me that I post most of these on one page, probably this one. I haven't decided what to do with that yet, though. Haven't had the money to pay for more space and I'm about out.

Well, I'll think about it all, I guess. The idea is pretty exciting, plus I can order 25 or so and that's really all I'd need, which is cool.


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