Working is WORK and It's Not Working

The last three months at work have been a real challenge, to say the least. We recently implemented some new programs and there have been daily technical difficulties to deal with. Everybody is having a hard time keeping up with their work load because of the constant computer malfunctions. It has been QUITE stressful, lots of extra hours, we had two office closures in the last few weeks, one due to computer outage and one due to La Nina...the weather pattern from HELL. Our company offered no raises last year and by the way, we don't get cost of living raises anyway so our normal raises are far below what other companies offer and then this year they said the max raise would be 1%. I bought a pack of cigarettes with my annual raise! Woot Woot...parTAY! Anyway, the point is our morale has been at a very low point. Today however, our department had 3 massage therapists come in and we got to have 15 minute massages if we chose to. Now that is a nice benefit. We got our quarterly bonuses today and we had some cookies to help celebrate. We are very big on celebrating every possible event with food. That means we are a very BIG department, literally and "figure atively"
I head our department Fun Committee...volunteers who organize special events and take care of planning our monthly birthday celebrations. We do things like organize Bake Off', Chili Cook Off, Tail-Gate parties and usually during the holidays we have a decorating contest and various other little things throughout the year. We had to eliminate all of those things this year because of the challenges and not having enough time to plan activities outside of actual production. Our office will be moving to a beautiful new facility on December 20th. This year we have no holiday decorations up at all. BUT...the Fun Committee will be decorating the new office with a couple of trees, some wreaths and that sort of thing so that when we move over there it will be nice and festive. We are hoping to get back to a more normal pattern of combining both fun and work once we get settled in.
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