It's a Celebration Bitches!

After looking around my office I have come to the realization that with rising gas prices, higher unemployment, and an overall flailing economy that there is a lack of morale among the workforce that should be addressed. Even the lucky ones of us that have jobs right now seem to be disheartened in the workplace. I did a little research and (using my amazing ability to draw vague parallels between two unrelated objects) discovered that the root of our depression in the workplace stems from the lack of national holidays that are celebrated on a large scale. We need holidays for people to rally around like Independence Day. Who really gives a crap about Columbus Day except that it inconveniences you due to the banks being closed? So what we need is some new holidays that can be enjoyed even if you don’t get off from work because of them…nay, I go further and say that we should invent holidays that you can enjoy especially at work.

I am making a push all over the nation to have to have Congress declare today Point Out an Annoying Co-Worker and Expound Upon Their Horrible Faults Day. I believe this will be big in government offices, like the one I work in, due to the “flattery” (ass-kissing) that goes on daily. In government offices (or most corporate offices) you can’t just come right out and tell a co-worker that they have the IQ of a raisin, or has no sense of humor, or has a funny smell (old whiskey and despair) emanating from them. Most of the time you have to just bear the brunt and wait until after work so that you can spill all of your grievances out to a spouse/best friend/total stranger, or you can write a blog about it. This is why we need to have one day where we can discuss, candidly, with co-workers all the reasons that they suck without fear of retribution.

Okay…so take a hyena and breed it with a chimpanzee, then give it a cold, then boil it in hot bacon fat while beating it about the head and shoulders with a tube sock full of chocolate covered peanuts. The sound it would make it coming from the office across the hall. At first I thought Maybe a large water mammal is dying, and then I thought Maybe I’m dead and this is my personal hell, and then I realized that the sound hovering above all of our cubicles was actually a form of laughter.

Yes, laughter. Not the tinkling laughter of children playing in summer creeks, or the full bellowing laugh from a great joke that starts in your lower abdomen and continues to roll in waves through your body. Think of nails against chalkboard, Wicked Witch of the West laughter. The kind of laughter that floats through the air and gently alights on your ear, only to then perform a flying roundhouse jump kick, in the style of Steven Segal, to the back of your eyeballs from inside your skull. So I popped my head around the edge of my cubicle and fully expected to see an arm sticking out of a cauldron and a green-faced harpy reading Dave Barry. Instead I see my boss on the phone looking very pleased with herself.

Like the careful observer of humankind and its traits that I am I studied my new subject with rapt interest. How could a woman in her 60’s (or maybe 70’s…or myabe80’s…hell, I don’t know) get the lung capacity to bring this out-of-tune bagpipes of a laugh to bear and send it to hover in space somewhere around the equator? Was she previously the lead singer in a Death Metal band? What the hell is so funny and why can’t be in on the joke? What is that on my shoe? How much hardwood do I need to redo my living room? I wonder what’s for dinner?

Sorry, I got sidetracked. So, as I observed (and tried to staunch the flow of blood from my ears) I realized that she was laughing at her own jokes. Possibly it could be that no one on the other end of the line was laughing (they were probably dead due to their cerebral cortex suddenly revolting and escaping through the ear to beat them senseless with a cricket bat) so she decided, in the interest of keeping the one-sided conversation going, that she should laugh at what she was saying to show everyone in our office (and most of the Northern Hemisphere) that she was funny and effervescent and people liked her. The problem is that no one could hear her after approximately 37 seconds because our eardrums had burst in attempt to save our sanity.

So a holiday in which I could discuss with her why my bleeding innards (caused by the crushing sound waves of her laughter) would be a concern to me and the steps to place her head firmly up the rear orifice of a yak to stop her siren screeching would be a welcome addition to our national repertoire in my book. I believe that Point Out an Annoying Co-Worker and Expound Upon Their Horrible Faults Day (or POACEUTHF Day) will be a smashing success in telling co-workers and bosses like this exactly what it is that peeves you off about them and how they can “take a trunkie in the tradesman’s entrance” for all you care (I find it best to use British slang when belittling people you work with). We should all push our local Representatives in Washington DC that this new holiday would benefit everyone, pointing out the possible uses that they themselves could enjoy putting down their higher-ups in a certain house that is painted the opposite of black.

Even if Congress fails to make POACEUTHF Day a national holiday we can still enjoy the fruits this implied holiday by participating in it anyway. Go ahead, tell that co-worker that his mustache looks like a walrus is humping his face! Tell the person in the next cubicle that constantly asking you pointless questions and then answering them themselves while you are trying to finish the expenditure report makes you want to throttle them with wet noodles. Let your co-worker know that his inability to perform even the most menial of work-related tasks makes you wish daily for his lower intestine to explode. It could be fun…at the least it would be enlightening to those who have gained your ire. Good luck everyone!