I wanted to share a recent event at work. It's been a pretty tough year with severe budget cutbacks, furloughs and were loosing a lot of simply irreplaceable people due to mass retirements (big age gap in the workforce). Long story short there was a last minute decision to have a Christmas party for our building, a first in many more years than I've even worked there.
We had a day to prepare, but a little reflection revealed that this needed to be a good one and for many folks this would be there last Christmas with us before retirement. We pulled together a tree for the conference table, decorations, music, I made a huge pot of Texas chili and several of my colleagues also prepared great food.
When packing up the truck in the morning with everything else on my mind a quick thought occurred. I grabbed everything I needed to get a train up and running around the conference table. During the drive in I started to doubt whether this was a good idea, maybe it was corny, maybe it would be a distraction, or whatever...
Arrived at work (now late because of packing up the train) scrambled to set everything up, set up the train last, and before I knew it the party was in full swing.
I had to refill the smoke unit more than I imagined, and turned down the sound volume a bit so it didn't overpower conversations or the music, but it was really a hit! In fact, despite having won several awards for my chili in the end I got more thanks for bringing the train!
Now I've gone and dug myself a hole in that I have to do even better next year, haha! But it was worth it.
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