Oh, yeah....

[bzarcher]

Remember that ill-fitting shirt fiasco?

Apparently someone smacked HR/Marketing/Whomever made that decision, because yesterday our department admin sent out an email that size M and size 3X shirts would be available for the launch party today - you just had to turn over the XL shirt you wouldn't be using, so they can turn it back into the t-shirt place for credit.

I had no problem at all with this, and so got a decently fitting shirt with...crappy company branding all over it.

Oh, well. At least everyone else was dressed the same.

It'll be a good shirt to mow the lawn in, too.

The party itself wasn't too bad (free food!) but I was kinda nonplussed when they put together some teams to do an obstacle/games relay course that the event company running the party had created, and called one block of teams "STERLITES!" and all the other teams were named after some of our competitors. Pretty quickly it was established that the Sterling teams in the relay had vastly easier challenges, and the competitors had been deliberately hamstrung.

I realize the value of company propaganda, but if you're going to pull people out of the crowd to take part in a game, don't cheat. They tried to get the crowd pumped up about the Sterling teams winning each event, and I think they'd have had a lot more luck if it'd been a fair competition with people cheering on their friends.

Worse, on two events where the "competition" pretty clearly was going to win, the "referees" from the event company clearly sabotaged them. Once by knocking the egg off of someone's spoon in an egg race, and another time by simply refusing to acknowledge that the other team had completed their section of the relay until the Sterling team had passed.

As it was, a lot of people looked really unimpressed and left early.

Oh, well. At least there was free food.

Comments

[jennekirby.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's exceptionally lame.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

*nods*

On the plus side, though, I think that the cheating/etx was pretty much all the Event company (Fittingly enough, called EventCo!), because some of the people who looked unhappy about some of the more blatant crap were higher-ups in Marketing, Facilities, etx. who I would think would have been involved if they'd requested the thing be fixed.

Hell, I'm betting that they'd have done a subtler job of it, too.

Though the image of one of our VPs of Marketing, after he was picked to be on the last set of "competitors", refusing to run his part of the obstacle course, and instead picking up and carrying off the "Sterling" team member he was supposed to be racing against was HILARIOUS.

[flying-landon.livejournal.com]

If I had been on the competitor team I'd have finished a section, and started just completely RAILING on the "home team" for not being done, regardless of if I was counted as finished.

And when they asked WTF? I'd go "Since I can't get the real victory, I'm going for the moral one." and then continue telling the home team person in question how their daughter is like dead fish in the sack, and the like.

[bzarcher.livejournal.com]

While it would have been highly entertaining, language would probably have needed to have been watched - since this was a work event, held on our campus, certain things would probably get you into a meeting with HR pretty quick. :D