Staff Day Indignities

Yesterday was "Staff Day", a day looked upon with varying degrees of dread by most of the staff.  The ones that organize staff day appear to be the only ones that really look forward to it, but do it under the assumption that we are all going to be thrilled with having the day "off", and we are going to enjoy and learn from all the various tortures they have devised for us.  For months, several staff members work to make staff day memorable, leaving the rest of the staff to wonder what on earth they do the rest of the year.


When I asked my branch manager a couple of weeks prior to the event what was in store, he listed the segments where we would be talked at, and then added that there would be a "staff activity".  Because it is inappropriate where I work to express displeasure, I probably said something to the effect that I tended not to enjoy those events rather than exclaim, "Man, that sucks."


He responded by saying that most people who don't want to do those group activities end up saying afterward that they really enjoyed it.  I was about to explain to him the concept of "cognitive dissonance" wherein if you are forced to do something you hate and are told you will love it, just by doing it your brain either explodes or comes away thinking, "That was fun."  But an annoying patron came up to us wanting to check her books out or something, so I never got to educate him on that point.


The event involved was called, I swear, the "Corn Hole Tournament" and I only wish it was as dirty as it sounds.  Apparently, they weren't able to construct the whole game for so many participants, so it ended up being a bean-bag toss where you threw the bean-bags through these overly well-constructed wooden contraptions.  The winner got to take a wooden contraption home.  The winner's team got a day off with pay.


Pretty much this is as insulting as it gets, unless you were to omit the space between corn and hole.  You take a really, really simple activity, so that even us older folk can do it (a lot of us are older folk), and you put a day off with pay at the other end of it.  You don't give us an opt out option, and you tell us how much fun we're going to have.


In full disclosure, I am the only person I know who was there and hated the idea of this event.  Not the event, it probably would have been fun to play with your kids at Thanksgiving, but the idea of the event.  When I found out what the game entailed, I pointed to my shoulder and said I wouldn't be able to do it.  So it was me and a few people with wrist supports watching people that ranged from pretty athletic to those who had to put their canes down to throw the bean bag.


It was so idiotic that it probably wouldn't have hurt my shoulder, especially since with my athletic ability I would certainly not have made it to Round 2.  But at the point where I was wrestling with possible guilt and feeling left out, I decided that I had the right not to have to throw the damn bean-bag, or even like the idea of throwing the damn bean-bag.


In the elevator after the event, with two other women whose knees can't do stairs, I heard, "You know I really didn't want to do that, but it was fun!"