We’re doing secret santas at work. That probably means we’re going to have a party. A root canal would be more fun.
At a previous job, corporate IT, we has a “secret santa” thing.
It was all nice and anonymous, as befits the software engineers who were reluctantly drawn into the joys of “team building”.
So therefore, I naturally thought about the really, really downmarket sex shop I drove past every day on my unconventional “beat the traffic” route through a fairly low income neighborhood. It was named “Hanky Panky Sex Shop”, all hand painted by someone who had never heard about typography. I took a couple of collegues, so they could choose some fun.
Inside was a cornucopia of delights. Clearly the stock did not turnover too often, there was a selection of 1980s mustache VHS tapes. Some cheap trinkets. Some ancient, dusty dildos. The proprietors of the place were two elderly ladies, whose overblown makeup and “casual” sense of dress implied more than just service with a smile.
I elected to make my purchases - cheap, but not too cheap, a VHS video of gay porn was around US$1.00, a set of anal beads just US$0.50. Choosing carefully, I opted for a VHS tape on which the cover showed two gentlemen wearing nothing but moustaches and cowboy boots, although they were turned away from the camera such that nothing too indecent could be seen.
I lovingly wrapped it, addressed it to my immediate boss, for that is who I drew in the lottery. And waited.
My boss was a genial fellow. Friendly, easy going, but super straight, like many fairly conservative people. He could take a joke, but this was putting him way, way out of his comfort zone.
So the “secret santa” got started. Everyone is in the company bar, everyone has had a drink or two. The thing is, we are expected to unwrap the gift in public, and suggest who we think gave it. So my cohort carefully spread out through the room so we coukd not catch each other’s eye and give ourselves away with laughter.
So it goes fairly normally until BOOM. The anal beads came first. Then edible underwear. A few rounds later… the gay porn VHS. My boss was mortified.
Hilariously, after the event was thankfully over, he quietly left the tape on the desk of our leas architect, who was a) openly gay, and b) not into cheap 80s cowboy porn. Fortunately he was a friend of mine and saw both the initial humour and the complete awkwardness of our boss’s method of disposal.
I only stayed in that job for three years or so, but tbe subject of “secret santa” did not disgrace our email inboxes ever again.
Introduce me to your boss. I’ll bring in a team of consultants that bill 3x your salary to fix whatever is wrong. We probably won’t be able to fix the problem, but at least we can make some money discussing it with senior management.
It seems to me there were better ways of ditching the Secret Santa thing without being utterly shitty to a nice boss.
Matter of opinion, really.
He took it in his stride. He was and is a good boss.
My immediate boss isn’t the problem. It’s the higher ups in Florence or wherever the hell they are.
Well, I thought it was a great story and I’m glad the boss was a good sport. In fact, I would have preferred if the Secret Santa tradition continued. One year I drew my boss in the SS, and got him a hockey card for one of the players he really disliked and bitched about. Of course he knew immediately who it was from but he too was a good sport. Mostly.
Only the ladies at my workplace ever exchange Christmas gifts. This year it’s a random gift card exchange, which may or may not involve ‘dirty Santa.’ Joy.
Maybe this is a workplace rant, but…
My employer’s vacation time is use-or-lose every December 31. The vaca time is fairly generous (I get 5 weeks a year - which I do NOT alway manage to use). We could in theory take all our vacation time at the beginning of the year - meaning a) no more vaca time that year, and b) if we quit halfway through, we have to repay any un-earned time.
They also MAJORLY hype billable hours - to the point where doing “only” 40 hours a week gets you Spoken To. It’s barely an excuse if you are on a project that caps you at 40, even. I once got Spoken To because my utilization rate was extremely low, halfway through the year. I pointed out to the person that I’d been on DISABILITY for 4-6 weeks. He basically went “oh…” and dropped the subject. On another occasion: I had forecast (using a web tool) that I’d put in 40 client hours one week, forgetting I needed a sick day. Well, I took that sick day, put 30 hours on the client, and 20 on a proposal. And I got a nastygram for billing so many fewer hours (30 vs 40) than planned - meantime, my TOTAL hours reported added up to 60.
Anyway: December-related: As you can imagine, many employees hoard their vacation time - because if we need to use some later, but have blown it all earlier in the year, there’s no more vacation time available until the next year. As a result, many of us take a LOT of time off in December.
Company management gets annoyed every single year that billable hours are so low this month.
I, like many people, hoarded time. I’m pretty sure I’m going to eat at least 1 week, possibly 2. I tried to go into our reporting tool to see how much time I’d actually used - and it DOES NOT WORK.
It worked once, a couple months ago, but not since then. Fuck it.
And I tried using the hours forecasting tool - because I’m quite sure I did not input that I’d be taking several days next week.
Naturally it isn’t working either (not new, either).
I just left a company where the CEO is from Florence ! Well he is in the Palace in Houston , but from Florence originally . Guess we worked for the same organization!
Not a rant but my employer’s new acting director appears to be a combination of Al Roker and Jim Cantore.
You should send that photo to Pixar. He looks like a real-life embodiment of one of their characters.
It seems our landlord forgot people would actually be working in the office this week; the building is freezing. 
So they fixed the heat, but I got locked inside the building after hours and had to call 911 to get out.
Isn’t that a fire code violation?
At my job in my position, I talk to some business owners who employ our clients with developmental disabilities. They talk occasionally about onerous government regulations and I’m always interested but don’t want to delve. Yet when I read news articles about such activities, I can see how it’s onerous.
Eg this evening I read that the US govt had to grant a mass extension to businesses to file Beneficiary Ownership Information. I can understand the government’s need to know but the process on the websites would seem to take forever and cost a lot of money. I thought it involved just filing a little form but I was wrong as about that.
Very late, but presumably any door that they could exit through was alarmed, not inoperable.
Absolute bombshell at work today–a person who is in an entry-level position has been promoted to department director, instead of the person who is the understudy to the current department director and who should have gotten the job. I feel bad for everyone involved, especially the people she’ll be supervising. I don’t think she’ll last long, and it seems cruel to give the job to someone who will be in over her head. It’s been a rough year at work, but things are changing, and maybe next year will be better.
If someone entry-level got promoted over the person who was logically next in line, gotta wonder who this person is blackmailing or sleeping with or both.
Literally entry level? As in first job out of college? That’s utterly insane, like malfeasance/shareholders lawsuit insane.