The Gilded Heard-it-Thru-The-Grapevine Gauntlet
Posted by: intwilightregalia in UncategorizedIt’s that time of year again, that time that always comes two weeks before the big time at the end of the year we all love so well. ::cough::
The great Company Party was held last night. It’s one of those things where I feel:
1) edgy for a week before it,
2) panic the weekend before it and shop in a helpless frenzy for something I like that fits,
3) curse every shoe store in town two days before it,
4) give up and make my earrings of crystal beads and findings I already had the morning before it,
and
5) curse my salon stylist a couple of hours before it after she’s turned me into a newscaster.
As we finally dress for it, it’s inevitable; my husband and I have the yearly white shirt argument.
He puts on the blue shirt. I tell my husband ok please look nice, please a nice dress shirt; WHITE. This company is CONSERVATIVE, I preach. He contends that business is white, and parties are blue or other colors. I retort: NO honey it’s like that in Korea, not here. He replies: “What you want me to wear, a tux?”, and it degenerates. We end up driving in silence for 15 minutes after he’s acquiesced. I feel guilty, he feels grumpy. But he looks GREAT. I tell him so. A car cuts us off and we both yell at it together. I praise his driving. He feels better. We relax.
But I am still dreading the hurdles of the evening.
This company puts on a big shebang at a four-star hotel each year. More sumptuous than any place I’ve ever worked for, because they are LARGE, like LARGE MARGE LARGE, obscenely large. The Department Head, Mr. Old and Inappropriately NOT PC, expects to see you there, and it’s become an obligatory social ritual you can only bow out of once in, oh, 15 years, or maybe if your wife is in the hospital having a baby that night. And I am well below getting my five year benchmark pin, so …. off we go to the gauntlet.
We arrive outside the big ballroom, noting each other’s gowns and introduce our spouses or dates, all of whom look like deer in headlights while spouting something politely casual. Our pics get taken by a photographer who uses too much flash in front of a cheezy fireplace display (We find the resulting photo at the end of the night is fruitless when I see that HAIR!! oh my GAWD what was that woman THINKING?!.).
Then it’s the drill: Stand in line for drinks at the bar outside the ballroom, get accosted by the Department Head and, in front of a cluster of staff and attorneys, watch D.H. have a forced conversation with your spouse who has just been newly introduced and has no idea how to answer your D.H.’s awkward questions:
“The Koreans are really Han Chinese way back in history aren’t they? Aren’t you actually all from Chinese?”…..
Three faces go pale with nervous side glances, one rolls their eyes (he’s behind Department Head’s back, of course), and spouse replies tactfully:
“In my country, we became the Chinese’s successors.” I was soooooo! proud of him. What in heaven’s name else could you say? That’s my guy. I practically high-fived him once Mr. D.H. was gone.
I’m in the top 10% of my company, and by that I mean: the 10% comprised of nonconservative “je ne give-a-damn pas” sorts +/or completely clueless non-societally conscious postal worker and janitorial ones.
The remaining 90% being people who are APPROPRIATE middle class rank and file sheep content to say all the right things, eat just enough to be polite, schmooze just enough to make their quota, drink just enough to look the right amount of slightly silly, which is considered “festive”, and dance in fuzzy antlers and blinking santa hats to some aging super whiteass band that can’t syncopate and couldn’t get truly funky even if you abandoned them in blacksploitation film set for a few years, and doesn’t even have the brains to get a black chick singer to front them. (They had a guitar player that bore a warped resemblance to Neil Young who got sweatier and stringier as the night progressed, and I had more fun watching the girl trumpet player in the back who accentuated her little tiny toots and riffs with a kick of her feet. (She was so marching band–It was cute though, in a GO MICHIGAN! kind of way.) Anyway they were about as new as an old Gloria Estefan tune (no offense Gloria). And that was the NEW stuff).
There is one advantage to this torture ritual: You get to pig out, if you so choose, or get drunk, if you so choose. There’s an open bar for the hour before dinner with top shelf alcohols so you can prepare to embarrass yourself later.
The buffet menu choices: 5 or six hors d’oeuvres, all top-notch, salmon, pate, etc, GIANT SHRIMP (this is all I want), and I mean GIGANTIC shrimp, Oh right there’s an oxymoron; 3 kinds of Chinese or Hawaiian stir fries, a pasta table (five kinds), 3 meat carving tables (beef, turkey, ham), with thanksgiving fixings, a salad bar, some upscale quasi-mexican grilling, some quasi-meditteranean wraps, some Thai dishes, some salad, and OH YES, all you can eat SUSHI. Even nigiri.
Finish with an entire desert ROOM with Bush de Noel, a chocolate fountain where you dunk your fruit or rice krispy treats or whatever, bananas flambe with ice cream torched before your eyes, and like 20 kinds of pies and torts and serious creme brulee, with an espresso bar. It’s INSANE.
This is why we endure insulting racial stereotyping and bad bands.
We get to snicker watching our bosses dance with their wives, snipe at our inferiors bringing scantily clad hot girls (which will either boost or destroy their status — no one can tell until Monday), and spend most of the evening yelling “WHAT??” to the person next to you, over some mercilessly murdered Ike & Tina Turner song.
But this means the end of another year, when I can sigh, and be relieved, kick off my shoes that gave me blisters, and know that, along with all the shit I’ve endured and abuse and panic, I’ve fulfilled my company duty, and can now look forward to my favorite time of year.
Bonus time!
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