Baptiste Virot
One of the best bits of freelancing surely has to be the lack of forced fun rammed down your throat and into your calendars. Chief among the necessary evils of corporate life is the office party, be it after the annual all-hands or before the Christmas break. Here, stand-up comedian and writer Sid Singh invites you to the office party of your nightmares.
Comic by Baptiste Virot
We’re gonna have an awesome office party next Friday!!! That way we can turn our company-wide meeting into the biggest corporate rager since Woodstock ’99!
To whom it may concern, which is of course all of you!
Our corporate overlords have been clear! We’re all back in the office and it’s time for a P-A-R-T-Y.
I think we can all agree that we really needed this: something to celebrate the end of the pandemic, which was basically one two-year-long Zoom call, amiright? I mean, I was barely wearing pants by the end of it, which I guess you all saw for real on Thursday ha ha ha. (I’m seriously so sorry.)
So call me Van Wilder, but I have liaised with the office managers and we’re gonna have an awesome office party next Friday!!! That way we can turn our company-wide meeting into the biggest corporate rager since Woodstock ’99! (Still haven’t seen that documentary, but you know I loves me some Limp Bizkit. “I did it all for the nookie” – Them. “Totally, me too” – Me).
So finally a chance for us all to reconnect like we used to pre-pandemic! No more wives interrupting us because we’re “hogging the Wi-Fi bandwidth,” or lame kids needing to be homeschooled when we’re meant to be toiling at the content creation coalface. Honestly, two months into the pandemic I just gave up on teaching my kid. Why do I have to teach him the state capitals when ChatGPT exists, amiright?
Now, I know Corporate had to cancel your bonuses this year (Boooo! Ha ha ha). Trust me: it was out of our hands. Those bozos over in Congress (opposite of progress, right? Did you guys get the meme I sent on Slack?) are really grilling us right now over “stock manipulation” like a bunch of losers. Seriously, as a member of Junior Senior Management, I don’t really have to pay taxes, but if I did, I wouldn’t. Not after service like that! Still, I bring you actual good news to make up for that!
Raymond, HR informs me I will need to arrange for an Uber to get you home if you do what you did last time. Nerds, I loved it!!!
Our benevolent accounts team (“We are not worthy” – Me) has authorized me to spend every single penny of our rainy-day fund to throw the best party since Cindy’s 50th birthday! We actually might have slightly more than $100 left since that stick-in-the-mud returned her novelty zimmer frame and fake teeth gifts—lol, party pooper!
I promise you this party is going to be so legendary that it’ll be the Michael Jordan of basketball of parties, and anyone who misses out will be the Michael Jordan of… baseball. My lovely new assistant Timothy (Michelle, we miss you so much! RIP) is going to get at least two bottles of the top-shelf Champagne from CVS as we speak, so be prepared to be so hammered at the parday that our significant others will need to drive us home. (Raymond, HR informs me I will need to arrange for an Uber to get you home if you do what you did last time. Nerds, I loved it!!!)
Plus, Brenda from accounting (numbers, numbers, numbers!) is going to get her weekend improv team Numbers Numbers Numbers to perform for us!!! So it's going to be hilarious. Please nobody yell out “pineapple” when they ask for a suggestion, because that is going to be my suggestion ha ha ha.
Now, it won’t be all fun and games. Katrina from legal is insisting on giving us a brief (sure) overview of all the new procedures we need to follow in order to comply with the new product launching, so make sure you’re here on time. Just be good sports and sit through it. I’m not sure why we need lawyers to tell us how to comply. Don’t they exist to save us when we don’t? Anyway, just a brainstorm, but wouldn’t it be funny if we all wore our company hoodies and held our logoed water bottles during the meeting just to mess with her? She’ll be all like, “Woah these guys dress the same? They’re a real team and so hydrated.” And we’ll be all like “Yeah!” How hilarious would that be?
For those of you who think you can escape by having to rush off early to look after your kids, think again! I’ve asked Quentin the intern to look after all your little ones in the mezzanine for a few hours while we boogie on down. Now THAT’S what I call work experience.
And yes, sir, we can totally boogie this year. My wife said I can borrow my daughter’s karaoke machine that we got her for her 16th birthday! So if you want to dance to literally anything in the catalog that we got, I will sing it for you! Duets welcome! (“Shallow” anyone?) But nothing too weird, okay? I will not be singing any of those emo songs that Brendan tried to get me to sing last time. This is supposed to be a fun party, not a sad funeral for your 14-year-old self, you nerd!!!
To all the new employees who we hired during the pandemic, I’m so excited for you to join. Maybe it would be fun if you guys created, like, a fun little comedy skit about joining, maybe something that really gives it to HR or legal? I can totally tape it and send it to our board. What if you did a sketch about the REAL reason Mark, our CMO, had to go on leave? I’d laugh for sure! Ha ha ha. Just an idea.
Anyway, let’s just have the time of our lives!
Please note that attendance is mandatory.
Your fearless Junior Senior Leader,
The rebel leader of middle management,
Sid
