Good Enough For Government Work: An Exercise In Career Limiting

This year's company party was head and shoulders above last year's in nearly every major category by which people generally evaluate parties. While last year's venue, the Boston Aquarium, offered an overall better scenery (read: when faced with the awkward realization that your coworkers do not make the best conversation partners in an after-hours setting, you could pretend to look engrossed with the fishes), the food this year was surprisingly even better (what's better than a Peking duck station with xiao long bao sides subcontracted from King Fung Garden, you tell me!), but more importantly, this year featured an open bar. In days prior to this party, disgruntled mumblings had been plagueing the general workforce about the location of this year's after party and plans for securing the booze after the anticipated 9 o'clock last call at the expensive cash bar (a repeat of last-year's sobriety debaucle).

And while I did, in fact, end up in some very good conversations with my coworkers and was delighted to meet some of their significant others, I obviously couldn't have left it well enough alone. As was to be expected, the open bar had its way with me, and several glasses of wine and beer later on the dance floor, I found myself at the urging of Tom (god, maybe dating him is actually the real career-limiting move), apparently butt-dancing (and when I say butt-dancing, I don't mean my stupid humpty-hump dance, I'm talking your average middle-age spazzy office-party butt-shake) on the dance floor in front of my CEO. I don't really want to get into it but Tom says the look on his face was a combination of confusion and... while not horror, clearly something suggested that all was not right with the vision he perceived before him. Damn, I mean, it wasn't an Elaine Benice-style spazzy-dance a la Seinfeld... do I really look that bad on the dance floor, folks?

Even so, I'd like to think that my dancing was a lot more awful than I'd actually perceived it after a night of drinks and food, and that was the cause of my CEO's look of bewilderment, as opposed to the reason Tom suggested, which was the fact that whenever I dance, my cleavage does its own little dance of freedom and joy (regardless of whether or not I am wearing a bra). This, I sincerely hope, was not the case, as there's nothing I would be more horrified at than being construed as attempting some form of sexual harrassment. Christ, the office party was crawling with enough cougars aware of how much money he was worth that he was probably having enough trouble beating them off with a stick, let alone avoid the drunken butt-shaking of a harmless 23-year old engineer who was merely showing her appreciation of the open bar and the Evil Bratislavan DJ that they'd selected for the evening (who pressed each song-selection button with the care and precision of an evil mastermind pressing his Big Red Button and rubbed his hands together maniacally between sets as if slowly plotting our demise as opposed to his next mix).

Of course, my evening festivities were cut somewhat short by Tom's upset stomach, which caused him such a great amount of pain and sickness that some time during the night, during one of his many trips to the bar, he was forced to make a side detour to the bathroom to throw up the entirety of his Peking Duck meal and every last delicious appetizer he'd ingested. I figured that at that point, going to the after-party with some of my coworkers was out of the question, and we left with a certain sense of urgency such that I seemed to suddenly (and perhaps, at that point, thankfully) disappear from the beer-soaked views of my coworkers.

Once back at home, I was indeed surprised at my ability to get the car back in one piece (had there not been an emergency, I'd planned to stay at the party a little longer and sober up before driving over to my friend's after-party), as I proceeded to fall over into bed beside Tom, where I'm told I mistook his legs for his arms etc. in an upside-down fashion, and was only marginally dissuaded upon receiving a fart to the face (I guess I must have a really low opinion of Tom's oratory abilities when I'm drunk). In retrospect, I probably didn't need the after-party to get wasted, as it seems that the open bar took care of me just fine. I can only hope that everyone was as toasted as I was and nobody remembers this on Monday morning, such that we all return to our merely moderately awkward professional interactions as we have before. Ahh, office parties - perhaps it's true what they advise in all those corporate-ladder crawling advice books: taking advantage of the open bar is a no-no. It's a good thing I don't have any immediate aspirations of achieving a management position. Unless booty-shaking is a management requirement.

Further bulletins as events warrant.