Fun at work

What a fab day at work it was today! They have a team who organise theme days, trips out, competitions etc etc and today's theme was the Wild West. Normally these end up being a flop as nobody dresses up and there are no activities going on on our floor. However, today was an exception. I don't think I've ever done so little work in all my 21 years of service! A lot of people including myself came dressed in check shirts, jeans and cowboy boots and hats (the hat was borrowed for my pic), some had Indian headresses, one bloke had a complete cowboy outfit and bless her, Paulina who visited us from another floor, was dressed in a squaw's outfit. Oh and I also found a sheriff's badge at home which I wore. I believe I acquired it in a game of pass the parcel which Al had arranged when we had a kids theme as a girlie night in!

At 10am they organised a sausage hunt. I volunteered to be the 'hunter' for our section and each person was given a clue to its whereabout. Martin Kelly, our manager, had hidden the sausage earlier on. The clue was: RANCH JUDO RISE. ???? After wandering around bemused for 5 minutes, nobody had worked it out so we were given another clue - the fact that it was actually an anagram of the sausage's hiding place. With Jill's help, she immediately identified the word 'under'....& I chipped in with the fact that the J must be the beginning of someone's name & so just a few seconds later, we had worked out that the sausage was under Jo's chair! I was the first to get to it and so won some chocs for the team and also a bottle of wine for myself for taking part. As I don't drink wine, we raffled it and raised a bit of extra cash for the Essex Air Ambulance. Katy won it.

A little while later, everyone was given an empty toilet roll holder to make a totem pole. They provided stuff to decorate it with; shapes, lolly sticks, bobbles, coloured paper, felt tips etc. Well, the office then turned into Blue Peter! I was in my element - I love makng stuff. t was amazing how different they all ended up. Hayley made us giggle as she made a person rather than a totem pole, with a plum for a head and made a handbag out of staples, a feather and an HSBC logo. They got a lady from another floor to come and judge them all and guess what? I WON!!!
I couldn't believe it - I hardly ever win anything and that was two in a day!!! This time I gave my bottle of wine to Hayley which she was grateful for.

A few of us took part in the Wild West quiz on the intranet but it was pretty hard. We only managed about 8 answers out of 30. Vicki got on the phone to her other half who had access to the internet but she ran out of time as the quiz needed to be submitted before 3pm.

Lastly, all the correspondence sections had a massive game of pass the parcel. Can you imagine?!! Jo and Jason were both playing harmonicas for the music. Two parcels were going at the same time and twice a flying one across the desk nearly took someone's head off! Poor old Sarah Daintree was trying to take a call from a grumpy customer whilst all this was going on.
Eventually there were two winners (not me this time). Some people who received raffle tickets when opening a wrapper , ended up with tins of spam and beans.

At the end of it all, I managed to complete only one piece of work in our queues, sorted the post and wrote a few letters. Still, I'm not gonna worry about it - work were encouraging staff to participate in the day so what do they expect?!