How Not to Behave on Christmas

So, last Friday the company that I am currently contracted to here in Germany threw their annual Christmas (Weihnachten) party. I didn’t go. Turns out, I believe, that ended up being a good decision on my part. For one thing, the entire thing (I guess they had a band there) was done in German. As I am sure most of you are already aware, I do not speak (or understand) German. Yeah, I know, that’s nobody’s fault but my own – the fact remains that I am completely unable (well, “unwilling” at least) to comprehend things when they are delivered to me in Deutsch.

Also, I saved myself €20 by not attending. You see, the party is free to the full-time employees of this company; however, if we contractors wanted to attend, we needed to shell out €20 (€30 if you wanted to bring a guest). I actually asked Julie if she wanted to attend this party to get a bit of insight into the corporate world that she will soon enough be entering (Oh, by the way, congratulations are due for Julie as she has just recently been accepted to the University of Florida on a “full-ride” academic scholarship! Way to go, girl!) although she decided against it. That’s cool – saved me €30 since I decided not to attend myself – and I really doubt that we would have had very much fun. Corporate Christmas parties are always questionable on the amount of fun offered – usually they turn into just one more opportunity for the “pets” of the bosses to, once again, grab hold of a buttock and pucker up. Since kissing ass is something that I do not do, I usually need to find fun by other means and an open bar can become dangerous…

My first experience with this was back when I was still living at the Theta Tau house and working at Ticketmaster. We had a Christmas party; and, being that it was Ticketmaster (pretty much the only place that you could get tickets for any show in the southeast Michigan area), the party was held at the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit. Not only was it held there, but we (well Ticketmaster) had the entire venue to ourselves. The bar, unfortunately for me, was open – wide open – and I took advantage of it…

At the time, my drink of choice was a Tom Collins. I lost count of exactly how many Tom Collins I had that night, but I know it was a large number. How I know this is from the results. It was another night of, as Dave Attell puts it, “time traveling”. One minute I was sitting at a table drinking my Tom Collins and, what seemed at the time like one minute later, I was waking up in my bed back at the frat house. Exactly what happened between these two seemingly unrelated events was completely unknown to me. It wasn’t until I returned to work the following evening that the stories started coming out.

Turns out that I was the last person to leave the Fox Theater that evening. In fact, the staff of the theater must have noticed my car in the parking lot (after locking me in, I would guess) and needed to head back in to find me. The worst part about it all was that I was allowed to drive home. Luckily for me, the Fox Theater is actually rather close to the Theta Tau house and I was somehow able to make it home in one piece. My car had a new, and very large, dent (well, if you could actually call the body being so bent out of shape that the driver-side door couldn’t be opened a “dent”) right between the front left tire and driver-side door. How that happened is still a mystery; however nobody’s come “looking for me” so I’m thinking that I somehow did it on my own…

This, my friends, is not the way to behave – the fact that it was at a corporate Christmas party just makes it that much worse. Of course this was just a computer operator’s job at Ticketmaster, so I really wasn’t too worried about any negative repercussions. When I was working for Avant!, however, I should have been somewhat more concerned…

The Avant! Christmas party (at least for the Colorado employees) was held down in Colorado Springs. Now Colorado Springs is a bit of a drive from Broomfield (where I was living at the time) – about 2 hours or so… It was decided that I would head down there with my buddy Doug (who was working in sales for Avant!). He picked me up in the “Dad Van” and we (Doug, his family and I) headed down to the Springs for the party. Since it was scheduled to be an evening party, we all got ourselves hotel rooms … you know – to put off the drive back until the next day. After checking into our rooms, we headed to this bar/restaurant (I have no idea what the name was…) where the party was scheduled to be. Once again – open bar…

I really don’t remember very much of that evening; however, sufficed to say, I once again awoke in my hotel bed with absolutely no knowledge of how I had gotten there. This time, however, my wallet was nowhere to be found. So … not only was I waking up with confusion and a serious hang over, I also suddenly had a mystery to solve – I needed to find out where my wallet ended up. Unfortunately I was unable to solve this mystery before we needed to start heading home; so I boarded the “Dad Van” with Doug and his family and traveled back to Broomfield … sans wallet.

Luckily for me, I received a phone call later that evening from this club down in Colorado Springs. They had my wallet. After a short (2 hour) drive back down to the Springs, I was able to retrieve my wallet (with everything in it, amazingly…) and repeat the drive back home. Talk about a long day…

Well people, I guess the reason that I am writing up these stories is really nothing more than a bit of an exhortation for everybody to, unlike me, take care this holiday season. If you’re heading to a Christmas party this year (perhaps for work) and are planning on doing a little drinking, be careful. I got lucky on both of the incidents mentioned above; however things, very easily, could have ended much worse – it’s amazing I haven’t killed myself (or even worse – somebody else) yet. If I end up being stupid enough to continue doing such careless things, I’m pretty sure that I will. Lives can very easily be destroyed at any moment – it’s up to us to make sure that we limit this possibility as much as we can. So please take heed this holiday season and remember that you take sole responsibility for your actions. Think before you do and don’t do what I did… Besides, experiences are just so much more rewarding when you actually remember them.

bis später,

Coriolis