Work Party

I love a work party. Well, at least I used to love work parties in our old department. Pretty much the whole department took that stuff seriously. No bags of plain potato chips or store-bought cookies. We had homemade bean dip, these awesome little ham sandwiches, deviled eggs, a pork loin one time, this awesome pie made up of chocolate pudding, candy bars and something else; man, those days were awesome. Not only would I not have to bring a lunch, I could step outside my office periodically and grab some treats throughout the day.

Work parties are different at the new library. Sure, my department always does it up right, but the building-wide parties are a bit disappointing. First of all, the whole, "Hey, you guys are awesome, you deserve a party. Now sign up to bring food" thing is sort of weird, but whatever. Hell, we're getting rid of bottled water, you can't really expect a fully paid for spread.

Then there's the fact that most of my department never goes to the things, which is just sort of weird. I mean, free food!

So we had a party a couple weeks ago. I made a cake. I gotta say, my cake is pretty bad-ass. The actual cake is nothing special, but the frosting has enough sugar and bad stuff to make you join Weight Watchers just looking at the thing. The actual ingredients include a stick of butter and a pound of sugar.

So I bring my cake in a little after 12. Now that's another thing. You don't want to get there too early or the good stuff isn't laid out yet and you're just sort of standing around trying to make conversation with the people from other departments you try to avoid. But if you get there too late, everything is gone.

I was also waiting on a co-worker. He had made this Thanksgiving casserole, which combined everything awesome about that holiday into one wonderful tray.

So, I made the mistake of setting my cake down on the wrong table. You would have thought I came up with a dead rat on a plate for all the screaming that was going on. I had a good mind to take my cake down to my desk and have my own cubicle party congratulating myself on all my hard work, but I carried on.

Then there wasn't any place to sit, so I took my plate out on the patio. This was also a major faux pas for some reason.

I made two trips - I didn't have completely loaded plates, either. I could have stuffed some more treats on my plates, but figured I didn't want to deprive others. My co-worker's Thanksgiving Surprise hadn't arrived yet, but I figured I'd be able to sneak up after my next desk shift.

Well at 2:00 I sneak up there and all the food is being cleared away. I see one little piece of my cake left which I was going to snatch, but someone else wanted it, and I figured I wouldn't have to clean up the pan that way, so it was theirs. The true tragedy, however, is that all the Thanksgiving Surprise was eaten.

The two people from my department that went to the thing were dreamily talking about it all day.


This is not how a work party is supposed to end. You are supposed to have food hanging around the breakroom for the rest of the day. I actually felt hungry at the end of the day. This should never, never happen at the end of a work party. With no Thanksgiving Surprise to warm my heart, my ride home was sad and lonely.