employablog

“Beer at four,” popped up on my computer screen. It was an instant message. Like many offices, mine communicates via IM with people sitting literally next to you. Sometimes, I do it the ‘old fashioned’ way, and shout.

Then a second IM clarified. The beer was free, the beer was in the office, and we would be getting paid while we drank it. There would also be a popcorn machine.

But why, and to what purpose? I was doing content and copyediting today, and had a lot to do, so the beer would have to be drank whilst I edited in my little pod. But free beer, that’s just something, something that you can’t buy. So, I copy-edited under the influence. And it was good.

But still, back to the main idea, why was the stuff free? Well, my coworker said, today is dumpster day.

“Dumpster day?”

“Yeah,” and he gestured to the big dumpster facing his cubicle.

Dumpster day happens twice a year, we purge dated books and paper and trash. It’s a pogrom of paper products. But still, why the tub of free beer? Why the carnival popcorn — the dumpster made sense. But I can clean without beer, in fact, one could make the case that I even clean better without.

“Well, we have the beer because it’s dumpster day.”

Circular.

And it was the same sad clown story from everyone I pestered, save a few lost souls like me, beer in hand throwing caution to the wind holding on to a stupid grin, out of the can, into the man — on dumpster day.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:09 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.