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Curb your enthusiasm Holiday Cheer -- and Holiday FearBy Rick Horowitz
Talk about your office parties! When you work for StarSpangled, you get used to doing the holidays large. (With that great headquarters of theirs over at 1600 Pennsylvania, can you blame them?) But this year's bash left all their other parties in the dust -- at least at first. There were decorations everywhere. There were special holiday lights hanging from the chandeliers, wreaths and candy canes dangling from the picture frames. There was more food than you could possibly imagine -- giant mounds of this, fancy sculptures of that. And of course, there was eggnog (spiked and non-spiked), for those inclined to raise a toast to the good times. And what good times they'd been! StarSpangled was finishing the year on a definite up -- strong performances in every sector, with even better days ahead. There had been a couple of stumbles along the way; even the higher-ups would probably admit it. And there were a few times, especially during the third quarter, when it looked like the numbers just weren't there, that some of the projections, especially from the Persian Gulf division, had been ridiculously optimistic. "But nobody's saying that now!" This was Don, from Armaments. He'd been with the company forever, and he'd taken his share of hits along the way. Don had never been the gloating type; when things were going well, he'd just smile that cockeyed smile of his, try to convince you that whatever was happening at that particular moment was the absolutely natural, the perfectly expectable, thing to be happening at that particular moment. All this celebrating, for instance -- the handshakes and the hugs. StarSpangled was on a roll and everybody knew it. So of course Condi from Policy would be pounding out holiday tunes on the grand piano -- why wouldn't she? And of course the crowd around the piano would keep getting bigger and more raucous as the evening went on -- why shouldn't they? Even grumpy old Dick, from Undisclosed Locutions, allowed himself the tiniest of grins as he surveyed the scene. (He still wouldn't sing, though, but that's Dick for you.) And the boss? The top guy? He had a warm glow all over his body, and it had nothing to do with eggnog. It was the warm glow of success. The takeover of Iraqnoid Inc. was working like a charm; moving that nasty old CEO out of the way had been the final piece of the puzzle. And no sooner had Iraqnoid been brought into the fold than Consolidated Qaddafi was burning up the phone lines, eager to do a deal. Meanwhile, what about the magic that silky James from Accounting had been able to pull off with the Europeans? And on the domestic side, things were even better! The economy was going great guns. The stock market was climbing. The polls were climbing. "Speech! Speech!" First a handful of people, then the whole room picked up the cry. "Speech! Speech!" Somebody shushed the crowd, and the boss stepped to the microphone. "You folks are just amazing," he told them, and then he reminded them of all the wonderful things they'd accomplished, and how proud they should be about what they'd done. "I know some people sneered when they heard it before," he said, "so let me put it a slightly different way: 'Mission Being Accom -- '" "Uh, sir?" It was Tom, from Security. Nobody had even seen him come into the room, but there he was, standing right at the boss's elbow. He tried again, and finally he got the boss's attention. "Sir? I'm afraid we're going to have to change all the lights. To orange." "Orange?" said the boss. "How can you have a decent party if all the lights are orange?" Tom gulped, and cleared his throat. "That's the other thing, sir: I'm afraid the party's over." Posted 12/23/03.
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Rick Horowitz
