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Ed. Note: The following is the first installment of a semi-regular column by Special Contributor Mark Hammer. The opinions and thoughts expressed by Mr. Hammer do not reflect those of Austinist or its staff. Or, for that matter, anyone else on this planet.*
Dear marginally-employed Austinites sitting at cubicles thumbing through the glossy pages of the internet this afternoon, let me be the first (or, more likely, if your company has any damn decency, the twentieth) to say Happy Administrative Professionals' Day to you all. Because you can’t spell “ennui” without “U.”
Today is the day you all make the cattle call to the elevators to go up or down one or two floors to the main conference room, queue up with Styrofoam plate in hand and awkwardly chat about what this year's gift is going to be (sure hope it beats that solar-powered umbrella from 1988), and how you're so glad it's Hump Day. (Oh, Harry F. Klemfuss, you PR wizard, always thinking, putting this holiday on that most hopeful of days – Hump Day – and subconsciously trying to make us appreciate it more by having it recur on the last specified weekday of a month, much like that other holiday for which we are all so very Thankful. You cad.) You will be greeted by a line of highers-up, from the Vice President to the V.P. of HR, all, eagerly wishing you a happy APD. They mean no harm, they probably don't want to be there any more than you do. Then again, the road to hell is paved with good intentions as well.
But, considering the holiday was created by a PR man from Young & Rubican who was myopic enough to think that handing out corporate logo-emblazoned swag would somehow engender a sense of goodwill or motivate a person to want to keep donating to profit-sharing, the whole thing seems a bit disingenuous. Is it really a day for the employees or the employers? Is it not just a clever ruse on their part to cover their asses while posing under the guise that they care about the worker bees?
“Look, we know you seethe with resentment towards your boss 200 days out of the year, so please, take this coffee cup with your corporate logo on it and have a mug on us. Sure he may take out his undersexed, overworked anger on you when his Viagra-fueled blood pressure is soaring, but you can’t say he never gave you anything. Now hurry up and finish that soggy breakfast taco, chump. We have a partners’ meeting in here later. Huh? Sure it’s not till 3:30pm but it takes time to get the massage chairs juiced and getting the smell of underlings out of the mahogany is going to take hours.”
Look, I see the corner into which they’ve been painted by this Hallmark Holiday. I think Mothers' Day is a crock of shit, too, but I'm at least getting the old gal a card that day. So why not put on a happy face, fire-up the sternos and line up the super-saturated saturated fat buffet?
So, this morning, all of the nice ladies who have slowly had the life beaten out of them while slowly beating the life out of me - daily conversations in the elevator about little league games or which of their friends' hysterectomies went awry this week or how their sister's husband can't seem to keep a dang job, y'all - are pandered to like fundamentalist Christians in October of an election year. They're plied with bacon and mealy cantaloupe and a 6 oz. cup of tangelo juice and given 15 minutes to awkwardly celebrate/commiserate their accomplishment/fate, while secretly sharing in the naughtiness that this is one quarter-hour for which they won't be billing any time, thank you very much.
Today's present is a beach chair. Never mind that the closest most of these folks will get to a beach is through their purchase of a t-shirt with a Bermuda shorts-clad duck on it professing how life can be one, as he sips on a daiquiri. Just keep shoving bacon down their gullets and they are bound to recognize the importance of those health insurance benefits.
So after 15 minutes of buffet fun and 5 minutes spent trying to figure out how to open the latch to discover that your new handheld radio-fan requires 4 DD batteries, it's back to sitting at your cubicle, where you're protected by angels, looking at your daily affirmation post-its and trying to stay focused on your spreadsheet while you fight back the sweat of anticipation over the plate full of "lunch" with which you've absconded from the conference room while your battery-less fan mocks you.
And, thanks again, without you, none of this would be possible.
Break out the wooden shampoo, I’m ready.
Total. Beating.
Did APD whip you as well, or was it just us?
Image (c) Matt Wright.*
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my bosses forgot about this holiday... probably because we "administrative professionals" didn't remind them. bastards.
I have to follow my boss around closing bags of chips and putting caps back on highlighters so they don't dry out. Had I desired such awkwardness (or a co. logo'd change purse and a cold-cut sandwich), I would have definately had to mention it. I consider myself lucky in that regard.
Dear Mr. Hammer,
Thank you for being my hero. That is all there is for me to say.
Love,
Truecraig
we don't celebrate Administrative Professionals' Day on this side of the atlantic, but i think it goes by another name..tailpipe smooching..
I live at 34355 Commonwealth in Seattle. Been up here before?