Holiday Fever in the Office

Today was definitely not a Monday. I woke up in a far better mood and managed to have quite a productive day at work. This is actually quite a feat since the holiday spirit has hit everyone in our office and everyone is a little more relaxed.

My office is an interesting place to work. There are six of us altogether and it's an interesting bunch. It's the kind of office where you're just as likely to be discussing work in our daily update meeting as you are the, uh, sexual prowess of a pig. Today's meeting ended up with one of my coworkers going online to see if she could, in fact, confirm that a pig's penis was really the same shape as its tail.

In case you want to know, it seems that it is.

I can't tell you how we even began this discussion. I think it was a coworker who just wanted to share something he'd seen on National Geographic.

My point is that my office is rather laid back at times. Today, for example, the three men in the office were taking turns playing golf in the open space we have.

It's a nice change of pace from my last office where even having a conversation in my cubicle felt like a crime. The nice thing is that everyone works. There's no one who doesn't pull their weight but we're still allowed to have fun.

It's nice to have fun at work. It makes it easy to get up in the mornings and go into the office. I haven't once had that "Oh, no, I do NOT want to go to work today" feeling that became so familiar in my last job. I mean, granted, it's not like I'm leaping out of bed in the mornings and saying, "YAY! I GET TO GO TO WORK TODAY" because, well, let's face it, given a choice, would any of us really be that excited to go to work if the alternative was staying home in a nice warm bed?

Yet I don't mind going in and the days tend to go rather quickly. They go very quickly on days when we are in an urgent rush to fill a position. Those are the days where I look up and it's lunch time or it's already time to leave.

Then there are days like today where the holidays are almost upon us and even though there's work to do, it seems more fun to stand around and converse about random things. Today's topic of conversation was dinner at our bosses house. He's planning on making 'chicken Wellington.' Me, I think this will be interesting but then, as a foodie, I'll pretty much try anything once, especially if I don't really know what I'm eating. Chicken Wellington will be no feat for me but we have some finicky eaters in our office who are the type of people who order a dish in a restaurant and then say "no X, X or X" so, when they're done ordering, they've pretty much ended up with a tortilla and cheese or a potato and cheese or a cheese sandwich. They're all a wee bit nervous about the food. I'm quite excited- I like it when people cook interesting things and our boss has promised us that he'll have plenty of alcohol so if it's bad, we can compensate with liquor.

I won't be drinking that much because I have to drive home and, also, I have a personal rule about not drinking too much with coworkers, regardless of the setting and how comfortable I am with them. Besides, it's often more fun to watch other people get a little silly when they drink. One of my coworkers has already requested a designated driver and I can tell you, she's entertaining when she's had one too many glasses of wine. She's the type of person who pretty much says what she thinks anyway but with wine, there is no filter and no topic is off limits.

I haven't had a real office Christmas party in a while. At USC, we had a rather formal lunch every year. At my last company, we didn't even have any type of Christmas gathering last year so to have one that's already guaranteed to be interesting is going to be a pleasant change.

It's nice that the holidays have taken control. I suspect that for the rest of the week until we leave at noon on Thursday, things are only going to go downhill as far as work and topics of conversation go.

Given that today's topic of conversation was pig penises, I'm a little afraid.

Happy Wednesday!