| Straight
from the holler.
by "Buck" December 14, 2006 This week Jeff Kay indicated he was on the verge of a party where drinking to excess would be the norm rather than the exception. I would suggest if you’re invited to such a party, by all means go---and stay at least relatively sober yourself—you’ll never find such entertainment anywhere. I’ve been to affairs where this has happened and they are high drama and entertainment. Years ago, when I worked in Tennessee, we had such a function. The company sponsored this get-together as a way of celebrating a great year. The first sign we were going to have trouble was free liquor ALL NIGHT. An open bar is an open invitation to an army of lawyers—and this was in the days before sensitivity training, Anita Hill was a decade away, and DUI was only beginning to become an issue on the forefront of the American conscience. It was largely considered comical to see a guy veering all over the road. Anyway, this party was staged at a country club in Knoxville. This setting, away from the office, tended to relax the masses. Dinner was pleasant and afterward the boss started a BINGO game. Sort of corny, but when you throw in a mix of heavy booze and high dollar prizes—it tends to change the dynamics of the game normally reserved for those who shuffle their feet and reek of aged cheese. The first “BINGO” screamer of the night won an all expense paid cruise to the Bahamas. Other prizes for the Bingo game were new TVs, home entertainment systems, a $1000 Kroger gift certificate, and scads of envelopes containing varying amounts of cash. I wound up winning 165 dollars in cash. The envelope thing was kind of a game within a game. There were two sets of envelopes from which you could choose if you won. You went to the front of the banquet hall while co-workers made drunken and stupid comments toward you because you won and they didn’t. The boss was standing there with two sets of envelopes. You could pick from a “Cash Prize” or a “Merchandise Prize”. Some of the Merchandise included the aforementioned items like the cruise, TV, etc. However, there were also things like free haircuts, pizza, and cheap garbage. The cash side was a better bet, but you could really have your heart broken. Some of the envelopes contained a thousand bucks—others only 5…you just didn’t know and you were forced to select through a drunken haze with all manner of heckling and hollering going on from the crowd. The boss, being a superb showman, played this to the hilt. It kept you there in the spotlight and humiliated you for a good five minutes. It was great fun—right to the end since it was luck of the draw rather than biggest prize first. Eventually the prizes dried up—but the bar didn’t. The company hired a band to play the rest of the night and it was a rocking good time. I was among the youngest at this company at a spry age 21. However, there was a good crop of women in their mid-20’s…and an even bigger number in their late 30’s and 40’s, divorced, drunk, and horny as hell. By the end of the night the whole party had descended into sort of a Sodom and Gomorrah episode. People were fucking in broom closets, empty offices, cars in the parking lot—it was like Woodstock with holly and eggnog. A group of drunken guys stole two golf carts and were racing them around the course, naturally both of them were wrecked. Another guy dropped a cigar on the table cloth and set his table ON FIRE! It resulted in quite an episode with the extinguisher. Once the fire was out, people were spraying women in elegant evening wear down with chemical fire retardant. It turned into a Halon t-shirt contest. There were various other episodes like broken dishes, puking, and at least two fights—one in the banquet hall and one in the parking lot. However, I didn’t witness the fights, since they happened after I left. Later there were various scandalous pictures that were making the rounds of prim and proper people doing very UN-prim and proper things. Weeks later I was called into the company headquarters office where three lawyers and a human resources manager sat across a long table from me and asked me pointed questions about what I witnessed. Nothing says holiday cheer like a good deposition. I would suggest Jeff Kay attend the Holiday Celebration (aka Christmas party), think of the material it might generate for his blog! Buck Out |
