2004-02-20

Who says two wrongs don’t make a right? Yesterday afternoon I caught a mean case of not giving a flying shit, and I failed to make the ream of copies I needed to bring to today’s four-hour planning meeting. Whoops. Today I came in early, planning to rectify the situation; however, I failed to take into account the craftiness of my old nemesis, the photocopier. Ten paper jams, two paper refills, three misaligned staples, fifty muttered curses, fifteen not-so-muttered curses, two hands covered in toner, one full hour, and a partridge in a paper feed later, I was still not finished photocopying. BUT! This meant that I was tragically forced to miss the directorate’s “fun” “meet-and-greet” “team-building” exercise at nine AM. Oh woe! I surreptitiously slipped the photocopier a bit of tongue, after giving it a final drubbing with my steel toes for good measure: you have to show these things who’s boss.

Ah, the ignominy of team building. How I haven’t missed it. This time I it took the form of short-bus human bingo: the staff were forced to supply tidbits of personal information – specifically information that their coworkers didn’t know – which was then catalogued on bingo cards. Everyone then had to make the rounds attempting to match the squares of personal trivia with their owners, the goal being to get a straight line of boxes checked off and also to make complete fucking asses of themselves. I’m truly sorry to have been forced to skip that, although it would have been fun to give fictitious personal information: “I have a highly contagious upper-respiratory infection of unknown origin! Also, I just had a fantastic vacation in Singapore!”