Whacky!

There comes a time in everyone’s life when a critical decision must be made. For me, that time was last month and it further bolstered my desire to get out of here. I know there are workplaces that are somewhat professional, yet they allow individuals the freedom to be…..well….individual. There are places where khaki pants don’t matter and your contributions are more important than which shoes you wear. Maybe I need to work at a place run by hippies. Or an ad agency. Maybe someone could pay me royally to write crap like this on a regular basis.
I digress.

Each year here at one of the largest cellular companies in North America, our craptacular HR personnel decide when we can wear what. Specifically, on May 15th, it is suddenly acceptable to wear shorts. Only appropriate shorts, mind you, and only on Fridays. Because on Fridays, we apparently are not required to be professional. This makes me wonder why we need to show up at all on Fridays, but again I digress. Then in September, I believe also the 15th, the debauchery of shorts-wearing ceases since you know, it’s Autumn and all. Never mind that temperatures hover in the 80s well into October. September is it, dammit, and we shall not bare our legs. As an aside, our first allowable day to wear shorts was rather chilly, yet our good friends in HR failed to warn us with “NO SHORTS TODAY DUE TO COLD!” And I thought they were looking out for us with the edict of shorts/no shorts. We are too insipid to determine for ourselves how to dress seasonably.

So this year, seemingly in an effort to make sure everyone knew it was ok to wear shorts once again, our spiffy crew of well-dressed, etiquette-honed HR professionals issued a declaration straight off the cutting room floor of the movie ‘Office Space’:

May 16, 2005 - May 20, 2005
Casual Dress all week with a theme each day.

Monday - Hawaiian Luau Day - time to break out those Hawaiian shirts, you know you have one...
Tuesday - Crazy Tie Day - how big and crazy can you get?
Wednesday - Sports Fan Day - show your team spirit
Thursday - Around the World T-shirt Day - wear one of those souvenir t-shirts from a vacation
Friday - Crazy Hat Day - pull out that 10 gallon cowboy hat

With Summer almost here, it is a great time to review the dress code.
Employees violating the dress code will be sent home.
Details on the treats will come shortly.

These declarations are so fantastic that they really require no comment. Just head shaking. Shake your head. Go ahead – I know it’s unbelievable. But I shall comment anyway. I must.

Hawaiian Shirt Day. The staple of all office merriment. For starters, there was no luau (what’s with the office luau anyway??? it seems to keep haunting us). The only “treat” was at the building next door which is inhabited by all of the people exploring their first jobs outside of the fast food industry. They had a chocolate fountain and people from our building were not invited. They were checking ID badges at the door, and there was a two item dip limit. Treat indeed. They had precisely calculated the amount of chocolate required for the fountain if each person dipped only two things. I'm sure they assumed that everyone would only be dipping food.

Crazy Tie Day – We don’t wear ties to work in the first place. Who thought it was a good idea to allow us to wear casual attire (shorts and t-shirts) then ask us to drape whacky ties around our necks? This event was about as popular as George Bush giving the keynote address at a stem cell research seminar.

Sports Fan Day – Ok, not much to bitch about there. I mean, a fairly high percentage of folks wear team shirts anyway on casual day. But I have to say that this was not very creative, you HR minions.

Around the World T-shirt Day – I think the most exotic thing I saw was “Hard Rock Las Vegas”. Not a single “I went to Buckingham Palace and Kissed the Queen’s Ass” shirt to be found. Not even “I survived the Tsunami”. Nothing. And still no treats as promised.

Finally, Crazy Hat Day - I’m sure they had visions of everyone running around the office like madmen hooting and hollering, pointing at each others’ outta sight hats, laughing hysterically, and truly enjoying this marvelous place we loosely call “work”. They call this work??! AND we get to wear crazy hats?? How much better could my life possibly be?

I don’t know. Maybe we all just would have appreciated a week of wearing comfortable clothing without the games. Most of us have moved beyond middle school and we don’t really need to be given a lollipop at the doctor’s office any more. But it might have been nice if we had received the glorious treats we were promised. Well, actually on the exploding climax of the week, Friday afternoon brought us a couple of tubs of ice cream, a vat of hot fudge, and a handful of chopped nuts.