The Curious Case of The Odd-Smelling Flowers

Everyone at work is already buzzing about the upcoming Christmas party.  It’s not that I work for jerks, it’s just that they aren’t very sociable when it comes to their staff.  However, once a year they throw procedure to the wind and show that they really know how to host a shin-dig.  I’d like to tell you the story of the girl that got way too drunk at the last party I attended, but shamefully that girl was me.  No one realizes they’re the “drunk one” until they break a heel on an Atlantic City street and find themselves face down in front of an oncoming cab… I mean, that’s happened to you, right? 

That night I learned that no matter how many tequila shots mixed with vodka chasers (Ugh! Was I serious?) you’ve consumed, you develop the reflexes of a cat when your face is about to become hamburger meat in a yellow-cab’s wheel well.

Not to mention the fifty dollar bill I suspect accidentally stuck in the juke-box instead of a five, as well as the fact that I couldn’t get out of bed until sometime around sunset the next day.  But that’s not what this blog is about.

Pollyanna aka the “Secret Santa” game. 

As though the holiday season isn’t stressful enough, we faithfully add every year the obligation to guess what someone you barely know, who you never really gave a second thought to until you were forced to pull their name out of a fishbowl would like as a Christmas gift… For ten bucks or less.  I’ve been given cheap perfume (really cheap), cop-out gift cards to stores I don’t shop in, and misshapen plastic ornaments that still smell of the factory in a country that doesn’t even have Christmas.  I’ve decided that the true object of this game is to purchase something for your unsuspecting recipient that they at least won’t throw away until after the party.

It seems that no matter how hard you pray while you’re sticking your hand in that fishbowl you never get the person at work you know best.  No, you get someone you either hate or have to ask “Who is this?"  This year I got one of the kitchen guys. I could have done worse, at least he’s nice to me.  Back in October when he caught wind that it was my birthday he ran outside and picked me a small bouquet of flowers from the pots he keeps out back.  He presented them to me in a milkshake glass and I kept them on my kitchen table for about a week before they died.  Sweet gesture, right?  Unfortunately he didn’t know the truth about his flowers.

About a week ago I showed up for work to find the flower pots had been moved indoors.  They looked pretty sitting there, but in the confines of the corridor I noticed a very peculiar, very un-flowery smell coming from them. 

“What’s up with the flowers?” I asked when I got inside.

“It smells like that because so-and-so has a bad habit of getting drunk at night and pissing in the outside flower pots!”  Then he got up and took them all out to the dumpsters.

But…

Wait.

Those are…

My birthday flowers!!

So I know what I’m getting this guy for Christmas this year. 

Chia-Pets.  Keep them in your window and hope so-an-so doesn’t finish a six-pack and find them.

I threw away the milkshake glass.