Office Party!

I’m partying tonight. This is an office bash and it’s a mixed celebration. It is a thank-you party for two people who have completed their short assignments with us. Also a goodbye party for a colleague who’s moving out. And it’s congratulations to the bunch that got promoted. And it is a ‘welcome-y’all-to-the-ol’-family’ to the new kids who have completed training, and induction and are now ‘adults’ in their own right in the company.

The memo said that we could bring ‘Family or one significant friend’ along. Hmm…

For some reason no one brings along their parents to such parties. So that rules out the family for most of us. By a twist of fate, none of the spouses of the married ones are in the city at the moment. And there are the rest of us….singles.

These past two days the whole buzz has been over who’s bringing whom, with people offering to swap dates (“I’ll bring my friend to be your date if you get me someone”) and a crazy amount of blind-date-setups. In the middle of the ‘before big guys arrive morning chat’ I was informed by two colleagues that I better behave since I was going to be paired with a ‘sweet, polite guy from our college’. Five minutes earlier I heard them arguing over whose significant friend he was supposed to be. At lunch they were airing their theories about their ‘co-date’.

I decided to go alone (“independently”!!) in honour of my single-and-loving-it status. Though I did briefly list out people I could ask…naaah, somehow none of them is worth the effort. All till I realized that the whole point of it was to make the party seem a little different from the usual office-masti….having some new people around would probably ensure that we behaved.

I made a half-hearted attempt to add a new face to this melee. Buzzing a friend who cancelled on the pretext of an ‘important presentation’. I hmph-ed and said “There goes her date. Where do I find one for her now?” To which Mr.Cancellation claimed that he thought the date was with me and that he’d never have agreed otherwise. Flattered? Oh well, what the hell, yes I am!

But that still leaves me dateless. I just heard on the grapevine (the inter-office messenger) that the same holds true of everyone else. Ah….so here’s what we’ll do now:
– Have a tournament with the plastic golf clubs someone brought in last week
– Do this even with the director looking on
– Sit on tables and drink
– Laugh loudly at the everyday jokes
– Bitch about the slowness of the systems, the clients, the ex-colleagues

Great….so we’re going to be doing in the open what we do undercover every day at work….have a blast!