One down; one to go …
Christmas fucking parties, that is.
Yesterday evening witnessed that copious vom-fest of abhorrence; that suppurating hæmorrhoid on Satan's festering arse; the Office Departmental Christmas Party …
Which I totally avoided by the simple application of the words "Fuck off!" to CJ when he came shuffling round the office with the menu.
Some of you might remember that he was also carrying a sheet of paper on which the senior management team had run a sweepstake on which particular swearwords I would use when invited.
Every office has to have a token curmudgeon and they are used to me now.
I hate Christmas.
I hate parties.
I especially hate Christmas parties.
I reserve an extra special loathing for office Christmas parties.
Don't get me wrong; I actually quite (I suppose "like" is too strong a word) … er … tolerate some of the people I work with but the prospect of actually "socialising" with them is slightly further down my "boy howdy, I'd sure love to do that" list than lining up the world's population of incontinent over-eighties and licking their bodies clean.
As I've said before:
The people in my office talk of happy families and babies, babies, babies.
I hate their simpering, cretinous partners and their ugly, shrieking, puking, shitty little brats.
They talk of football.
I hate football.
They talk of television soaps and "reality shows".
I hate dumb-fuck television.
They talk of fuck-all else.
I hate bores.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
The main office party is yet to come and attendance is compulsory at that one, though I usually manage to duck out while people are still arriving; but last night witnessed the departmental office party (as with departmental meetings, you enter sane and depart mental, though in this case you can add inadvisable levels of drunkenness and unfortunate sexual advances to the mix).
And I successfully avoided it (Yay), extending my unbroken run of party-pooping grumpiness to seven years.
But …
Gen took her camera and was foolish enough to post the photos on the departmental drive this morning.
Holy crap, what a festival of ugliness.
As people started drifting in this morning (at least half the room is "off sick" today … ha!), they checked out the photos and filled the air with wailing and lamentations.
The result of which is that Gen has now been persuaded to remove the photos lest they "go public" …
But not before Old Dive burned the whole lot to DVD and popped them in my bag (do I hear "heheheheheh")?
This evening or tomorrow I may post some of the appalling results to justify my Christmas party curmudgeonliness to the more festively inclined among you.
I won't do it here at the office because I want to live until dinner time.
What - if anything - gets posted depends on how sadistic I feel when I get home.
38 comments:
D'oh!
Thanks for pointing out that this one got posted twice, Lynn.
Unfortunately, having deleted one of them it took your first comment with it.
Bummer about the paper. Does that mean you no longer have access to a Mac?
At least you've avoided the Christmas party so maybe you should count your blessings.
What will it take to entice you to be mr mega scrooge and post the lot?
Yes you are scrooge and I am the grinch.
Oh you silly thing you deleted the wrong one! This 'boo' one was just to make you giggle as you looked in.
The first comment I made was long, long, long, full of admiration and compliments for you, credit card details for you to shop for your Christmas gifts and a proposal of marriage. Ah well. Never mind.
lol. Yep the paper's demise is indeed a bummer. I am reporting for another local paper for whom I've written for the last 5 years, but it's only occasional, ad hoc stuff, not like writing the whole Tewkesbury paper as I was before. Yes I had to give the Mac back. I am back with my little laptop, lovely though it is, I don't know how long it will last. I have avoided the Christmas party, indeed, but I seem to have avoided being paid too, yet. I just chased the cheque and they say it's in a 'batch of invoices being worked on at present' and 'should be with you by Friday, Christmas post permitting'. So, then it takes 5 days to clear through the bank - will I have some cash by Christmas? Who knows. I could rant all day about this, to my mind people's 'salaries' even freelances, should not be treated the same way as tradesmen's. What think you, wise Dive? Yours, Deeply Frustrated of Tewkesbury. x
You'd think it would be easier all round if they paid it straight into my bank - details I always put on the invoice! Subterfuge, laziness, bad management or no money in the kitty? I can't decide. I'm frightened to.
Kate, all it will take is for someone in the photos to piss me off today.
Which is very likely.
Hee hee, Lynn; that first comment sounds a doozy!
Wow! The cheque is not merely "in the post", it is "in the Christmas post"!
That sounds ominously like the paper has folded (sorry, couldn't resist) and anyone who is owed money is in for a lot of fruitless chasing.
I hope that's not the case, Lynn, but maybe your new paper could somehow look into the demise of its rival and where the money has gone.
well you know i got a phone call from one of them bitching about what a spoil sport you are.
Hee hee hee!
i am soooooo checking back in later today! if you're scrooge and kate's the grinch, i'm just a heathen! we'll all be non celebrants together.
BUT, there's always an open house here on 31dec...for my birthday!, so all y'all had better plan on attending THAT holiday party! please xoxoxo
Boy howdy, that sounds like one humdinger of a party, Savannah.
I'd be delighted to come …
if only I had a passport and air fare.
Sigh …
xoxoxo
Ha! I love your honesty, Dive.
Post the pictures up, I say!
There's one xmas party at work yet to come which is a glorified piss up in a boozer, I suppose I'll go but I'll be staying away from anyone that 'talks shop'.
I'm working on a series of shots that show the real side of christmas so i will post them after the whole silly affair ends.
And yes the tree is going to go up in flames for the photo shoot.
I may even burn santa in effigy.
PS; That fish stock sounds the bees knees. Add a little brandy, perhaps?
I know, Dive, it's not sounding good is it. Though other areas of the newspaper have survived. I live in hope and misery. The new paper has tried but got nowhere. One of their main contacts was... me. So that hasn't helped.lol. Might be a possibility if I don't receive it though. I wouldn't have any qualms about that.
Right now a Christmas hat is sounding good.
I wonder if everyone secretly (and not so secretly, in your case) hates those Christmas parties. My office party is on the 18th and I am dreading it. I work all day with these people, and while they are a nice lot, I really don't feel inclined to dress up and then spend the evening with them as well.
But, our office is small and as one of the senior staff, I have to be there and drag along Bing as well.
Ugh.
Kate: only in effigy? Set man traps on your roof on Christmas eve; we'll get that fucker yet.
Istvanski: Good luck at the Christmas party!
I find adding bees knees to stock is a little fiddly, and boy, so those bastards get angry when you pull their legs off!
Lynn: I love the fact that you were the "mole" inside the rival paper.
The situation does sound sucky, though.
Maria: if all else fails, throw a sickie.
I'm not sure I want to see photos of the party—I'm scared.
I've got my own Christmas party tonight, but it won't be a drinky party—it's a pity.
A Christmas pity party, Robyn?
Poor you. Make the best of it; at least it might give you something icky to post about.
Can't wait till you get home, dive!
Me, too, Nathalie … though for different reasons.
I think she means more's the pity it's not a drinky party. Don't you Robyn?
I know; I just couldn't resist it.
Hee hee.
LOL Dive! I wasn't the mole. Merely a contact because they knew I reported for them and wanted to know what was going on when the paper folded. I couldn't tell them a thing!
LOL I knew you knew. Ha! You and I and our English quirks. It's impossible to pass them by isn't it. Were you and I separated at birth by any chance?
Aww, shame about the mole thing, Lynn. it would have been fun to have a spy in our midst.
As for the other; I think a diet of Radio 4 and its appalling punnery is to blame.
Nah I know that caper, seen the movie. You kill Santa whilst he is on your roof and you end up becoming the next Santa.
However that does give me an idea for a few mugshots of the biggest break in artist of our times.
Now where do I find a couple of coppers who would arrest Santa so I can photograph it?
Ha haaaaaaaaaaa!!!! I love this post dive and agree with you on the baby talk. I've said it before and I will again: this (the scrooge character) is some of your best writing,dive.
Merry fucking Christmas!!!
I've read this post three time now and I enjoy it more each time. We have one Christmas party here at the hospital in which everyone SHOULd go but I've only been once and that was once too often. It's basically a "look to see who's arse you can kiss up to party".
Kate: our coppers shoot innocent people seven times in the head; you'd better stick to Aussie police.
Rich: it's so nice to find a kindred spirit.
Cheers!
laughing my arse off. Victorian coppers spend so much time getting their guns off there aren't enough bullets for the rest of the states to have a go.
Rich - lucky it isn't a room full of proctologists.
Ah, the office Christmas party. Too bad you didn't go, because then you'd have countless stories to amuse us about the bad food, horrid conversations, etc. But I can see why you'd want to skip it. Looking forward to a few photos though! Our "party" is Friday after work, in our building, and no dressing up (we can wear jeans on Fridays) or "significant others" invited (no money for that). Just free booze and food on the way out the door on a Friday night, without necessarily having to mingle.
Kate: Sigh … 'tis a sad world.
Katie: Sounds like the legal profession sure knows how to party.
Hee hee.
They even staged ours in a Japanese restaurant in a desperate attempt to trick me into going but no way was I falling for that one; it would have put me off sashimi for life!
You know. "Normal" people talk about the most boring of things sometimes. They are always making those "lowest hanging fruit" (as Jamey calls 'em) types of jokes. They say the expected thing around the food buffet. You get to meet their spouse and have even more awkward convo's with them......it CAN be enough to keep you from ever wanting to leave your own house.
I tend to make these parties more about....well ME! It is fun to think of a personal theme (say Geisha, maude, filthy rich) and then just become that person all night working the crowd like a night club act. That's what I used to do at my work parties. I quite enjoyed the way they would look at me like I was magical (never freakazoid, no never that ;)
Of course there was alcohol at those, so the guests were always more amused and more tolerant of my Shananigans.
Jamey's parties are so dark I can't ever see who's there. And he works for a Christian company so the "entertainment" is always on the edge of total corn dorkery. We missed his this year and I was ACTUALLY disappointed. There are fewer and fewer opportunities for me to get my imagination on these days. Last year I went as Beyonce'. Maybe that's why we didn't go this year. Hmm....
This is a great post Dive. I enjoyed it. Are there any photos of Amanda is various stages of undress? lol
One year I suggested that instead of going out to dinner for our work Christmas party and having to make small talk with the boss's wife, I suggested that we all donate our dinner money to charity. Everyone readily agreed so I guess I wasn't the only one who couldn't standing another boring dinner either.
I want to see the photo of Amanda. Hee hee.
Post the photos! We bloggers will have lots of fun with them!
My faculty party is actually kind of fun. We do beer tasting and make fun of the administrators who make their obligatory visit and leave as fast as they can.
Hi, Shan!
You are so right about "the normal". I try to avoid them when I can.
Sounds like you'd enjoy our office parties. There are usually shenannigans aplenty; not so much at the departmental party (where folk have to look one another in the eye the next morning) but at the big office party, which every year results in at least one person "agreeing to leave the company" in the new year.
I would have thought a Christian company would be the one type of organisation who would get Christmas right. I actually quite enjoy corn dorkery.
As for the thought of you as Beyoncé … we MUST have photos!
Mark: There are always photos of Amanda in various states, though usually of inebriation rather than undress as this is a family blog.
Mme: I think you've hit upon a winner of an idea! I'll suggest it for next year.
Neetzy: Unfortunately our bosses like to use "party" as a verb so they are there until the bitter end, embarrassing themselves and everyone else.
I've posted a few of the photos but it gave me the shudders just looking at them.
My Christmas party is on Friday afternoon and some f@#$^whit suggested we all sing a song. Know any really rude ones. I thought about "Too Drunk to Fuck" but I can't remember the words. I might just have to shoot myself instead - it would be more pleasant!!!!
Yay for the Dead Kennedys, Jules!
There are lots of videos for that delightful ditty all over You Tube. You really should learn the words and give it a go. Hee hee.
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