| Office Party |
|
It was a low point in my former advertising life when I found myself working on an "age defying" eye cream that looked very much like semen. It was terrible because I don't believe in defying age, to begin with. I believe in just letting yourself get old and ragged. So I objected on principle. But also, I hated my boss; an arrogant stump of a man who insisted on writing every mediocre headline himself. He would walk into my office and toss off a pun. "Hey, what about 'Save Face' for a headline?" I couldn't bring myself to even turn and look at him so I would stare straight ahead of me at the wall. I'd say, "Um, I think I'll probably be able to come up with something a little better than that by this afternoon.". Which only made him love his own corn-turd of a headline even more. "Yeah, Save Face. That's pretty good. You know? I think maybe we should go with that." I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on some German Shepard semen and slip it into his daily yogurt. And I was not the only one who hated him -we all did, the entire creative department and most of the account executives, too. So the office was a simmering cauldron of hatred and resentment. In addition, our age-defying client was rumored to be talking to other agencies, so we were in Save Our Ass mode. And we hadn't won the downscale retail department store account we'd pitched the month before. Moral was low. Stress was high. And senior management decided to soothe our collectively wounded psyches with an office party. Office. Party. Two words that should never be combined. A memo on bright yellow paper was sent around. The party would be held at a nightclub in downtown Manhattan; a particular venue that hadn't been cool for seven years. The party would begin at 4:30 in the afternoon on a Friday. And it would last until 11. Attendance, the memo emphasized, was mandatory. But there would be an open bar. Open. Bar. Two words that should always be combined. Except in the context of an office party. Because almost nothing is more dangerous to one's career than an office party fueled by booze. At this time in my life I was still drinking. And by drinking, I mean, I was pouring scotch down my throat nightly, in vast quantity. I shared a cab downtown with the art director I was partnered with, Steve. Steve was also a heavy drinker so we were morbidly excited about the mandatory party. We would, we figured, get extremely drunk and then kick back and make judgments about people -their hair, their outfits, the way they danced. We would watch the romantic couplings occur and place bets on which of our co-workers would be most humiliated, the ones doing the Walk of Shame the following morning. We would lean against a far wall, looking smart and aloof -cooler than anybody else. We understood the dangers inherent in an office party and we would not become casualties. But this was not to be. Instead what happened is, we got shitfaced and then spent the evening debasing ourselves in a multitude of tawdry ways. Too early in the evening, Steve suddenly noticed the incredible beauty of Karen, from Print Production. "I mean, I look at that chick every fucking day but I've never really seen her before. She hides it. But underneath, she's incredible." What I found incredible about Karen was the severity of her acne and the fact that she would wear a low-cut dress when her chest was just a field of red corpuscles. Add the coke-bottle glasses and the long, greasy hair and it was astonishing to watch her out there on the dance floor with Steve, sucking face. I was still sober enough to say to myself, "He'll regret this in the morning. He will deeply, deeply regret this night." But it wasn't even an hour later that I, myself, was embracing the very guy who handed me the mandatory office party memo in the first place: Doug, from the mailroom. The evening spiraled downwards from there. Steve spent the night with Karen. And then called in sick the following week, too ashamed to be seen in public. I, at least, did not sleep with Doug from the mailroom, mostly because Doug was heterosexual and insisted I leave him alone and not continue to cling to him or offer him cash to remove his clothing. Steve and I would continue to field questions about our behavior at the party for a month after the event. We had become a warning to others, attending future events. If you can? Learn from my mistakes. Understand this: an office party is a set up from Satan. That's all it is. In my history of attending office parties I have personally witnessed an intoxicated Flash programmer saying, "You don't know shit and you should keep your fucking nose out of our business," to a boss; a sixty-year-old producer remove his shirt on a dance floor and do "the bus driver,"; a floating temp on her knees in a stall in the men's room. And do you really want to risk the possibility that a photograph of you passed out on the floor with a wet spot on your crotch or vomit next to your head will be emailed throughout the internet? This famously happened to a magazine intern in New York City. Of course, not all office parties take place in dance clubs or rented spaces. Your company, for example, might have in mind an "outing" and so you might reasonably expect to be safe. I once worked for an agency where we had such an outing. A bus picked us up at ten in the morning and drove us to a country club in New Jersey where something occurred far worse than blowjobs in the men's room: a three-legged race. Senior management had organized the agency into colored "teams." Red, yellow, blue, green. We then participated in events like water balloon toss, tug-o-war and the above mentioned three-legged race. Beer was consumed, but the physical activities counterbalanced the effects of the alcohol. We remained terrifyingly sober throughout the day. If you think that telling off your boss or accepting an advance from a co-worker is the worst thing that can happen to you at an office party, consider the possibility that you will see the testicles of every man you work with, peeking through his shorts as you jump on a trampoline. Alas, there exists the possibility that you will be implored by your direct supervisor to attend the office party. When refusal could put your job in danger. When you have already used your dead grandmother excuse and you will simply have to go. In this case, make sure you follow the Ten Commandments of Office Party Attendance:
|
In stores now!
Order a copy of Augusten's new book online at one of the following stores:
Check out the commercial for You Better Not Cry
