Today was work decoration day.
I had a boss in the past who made a lot of mistakes with this.
Basically, here was her decoration plan:
1. Sunday evening, after we close. Yeah, Sunday at 5 PM. Convenient, great time for everyone.
2. Mandatory potluck.
3. If we can somehow have more than 3 trees, that’d be great.
In fact, it was a whole thing with the trees. I definitely wasted at least a week trying to secure a very tall Christmas tree. Which, if you know anything about decorating a big-ass lobby, you know is not the sort of thing they carry at Hobby Lobby. You can order one. But it takes a couple weeks, and then what the fuck’s the point?
I even went so far as to contact someone on Craigslist, see if we could even pay some dude from Craigslist with a company check.
When that didn’t work out, my boss changed gears. She suggested a mini forest. 3-5 trees of different heights, all in one area, should be good. No problem. That sounds great.
This was long after I decided how big a waste of time this is.
Look people, business shouldn’t feel obligated to decorate for Christmas. And I’m calling it Christmas, not because I don’t believe in holidays or something, but because where I live, the people I talk to, everyone says, “Christma…I mean, holiday.” So I’m not going to pretend here.
The real thing for me, is there a desperate shortage of Christmas crap around? Is there a city out there where people feel there just isn’t enough garland and lights and nonsense? That they haven’t seen a goddamn tree yet?
Okay, you want a tree in the middle of the city? I get that. It’s like a community tree. We can all enjoy it. Fine. But does every stupid bank need a tree? And every store? Fuck me, I feel like Satan for suggesting that every enclosed structure in the United States does not require its own tree.
Things are way better than they were. My old boss is long gone. But some of that icky feeling, that mandatory Sunday is still there. With Christmas tunes blaring over the PA system. And the fear that, I don’t know, the next suggestion will be two trees stacked on each other, or to carve a tree from a slab of wood, or to just plant a tree and use radioactive substances to artificially promote its growth.
Though it’s not without frustrations.
-All those jokes about tangled lights? That shit is real, and it’s not funny. I find it in poor taste to joke about that. Because it’s taken a significant portion of my life away from me. Robbed me of LIFE.
-Why to ornaments not have hooks built in? Who the fuck decided it was fine to sell these dumb balls with no way to actually attach them to a tree? That’s like when you go to the hardware store and see the mops, OR you can buy the mop head and pole separate. The same mop head and pole. So I can replace the mop handle I broke over my own head in frustration? What the hell? Sell the stuff with the stuff you need to use the stuff.
-Storing decorations is the worst. It’s out for one month, and the rest of the year you’ve got a closet full of this crap.
-Whoever invented tinsel is a genius, and also should be shot. Okay, that’s too far. He should just have to walk through a tinsel curtain every day on his way to work. Just so he’s always reminded what a pain in the ass it is and atones for what he’s done to me.
All that aside, I don’t mind decorating at work anymore. It’s not the horrible act it once was. But…well, I only did it because it’s my job.
It does kill a little of the fun of Christmas for me. When you see the landscapers out in their warm clothes, wrapping the dead trees in lights. They look awesome, but it’s hard to forget that these guys were out there, and they probably goddamn hate wrapping lights like that. All they see is a bunch of work.
There’s something mandatory about Christmas. Bad mandatory. Mandatory in that way of teachers who took points off your homework because you didn’t put the date BEFORE the class period in the heading at the top of your paper.
It’s petty, and it’s easy enough to do. But there’s a part of me that feels like it’s that little, petty, mandatory shit that really kills. You do a half dozen things like that, and you just start feeling like you’re going from one obligatory act to another and doing a lot less of what you wanted. Which kind of encapsulates the feeling of Christmas for me. I mean, holidays.