One of the nice things Mr. N would do for us News Monitoring Services employees every year was throw a Christmas party. Generally, they would take place at his house. He would provide food and drinks, play Christmas music on his stereo and we would just hang out and have a good time.
In 1996, he decided to do something a little different. Since we were an unofficial AVR affiliate, he managed to get a few of us invited to their Christmas party in Los Angeles. He went all out and rented a stretch limousine to take us to Los Angeles.
But he was limited to the number of people who could ride in the limousine, so not all of our employees were able to go. I was able to get Mr. N to allow Kelz to come with me. I was the only employee permitted to bring a guest. (However, Mr. N brought his 10-year-old son.) At first, Kelz didn't want to go because she didn't have any decent clothes. I told her we could go shopping and I'd buy her clothes. She agreed to go after that.
Kelz and I went shopping at Nordstrom at Fashion Valley. She picked out a shirt, leggings and a bra. That probably cost about $50 altogether, but it was worth it to me. She didn't have any more excuses for getting out of the party.
We gathered at the workplace and waited for the limo to arrive. My co-worker Riz was there and she was thrilled to see how pregnant Kelz appeared. Everyone was excited about going to the party.
One of the other employees was Kaed. She was a recent new hire. Riz had hired her, but got upset about it when she started training her because she had lied about her computer experience. Riz still kept her as an employee, but it meant that she had to start training her on how to use Windows instead of how to monitor news.
During the training, Kaed met Mr. N and his biggest fantasy became true. He'd always wanted to have sex with a woman who worked for him. Somehow, Kaed was into him flirting with her and they started sleeping together. ("I'm finally getting something I want out of the people I pay!")
After the limo started on it's way to LA, Mr. N had an announcement to make: "Kaed and I are getting married!" (But I really don't know that he was serious.) All of us lightly smiled, but didn't really have much to say about that. We just kept enjoying the ride.
Halfway to LA, we hit some really bad traffic. However, we did eventually get to the location for the party. It was a restaurant that featured a live polka band. There were a lot of people there. We saw Mr. D, who used to work for us, but started working for AVR's location in Burlingame a couple of years earlier.
For the most part, we had a good time. The food was good. At one point, Riz got Kelz to go on the floor and dance with her. Later, Kelz and I went into a vacant part of the restaurant away from the noise, sat down and talked for a little bit. Next to where we were sitting were these two doors with very ornate frosted windows. The next thing we knew, Mr. N's son came running through the doors, tripped and SHATTERED one of the windows. He didn't get hurt. We didn't get hurt. Some restaurant employees came to clean up the mess.
Then a manager came out and talked to Mr. N. He was going to have to pay to have that window replaced. It would cost about $600. Mr. N did not look pleased.
Later, AVR held their awards ceremony. The head of the company talked about how well AVR had done in the last year. Then, he announced names and handed out the awards. This took about 30 minutes. After he was done, he introduced Mr. N, who was going to hand out the awards for News Monitoring Services. But first, he started talking about how his company was doing. At this point, all the AVR employees got up and started leaving. Our little group was all that remained to listen to Mr. N's spiel. He handed out the awards, but I didn't get anything.
I was completely unaware of this, but Kelz knew what was going on. Kaed got very jealous of the way Mr. N was talking to some of the other women he knew at the party. He was allegedly acting all flirtatious with them. This led to a big argument in the limo, in which she brought up her ex-boyfriends. Mr. N had a look on his face that appeared to say, "This was ALL a bad idea." Everybody was quiet the rest of the way home.
So yes, this was the worst company Christmas party I've ever attended. The only good thing was that Kelz and I didn't get into any fights.
No comments:
Post a Comment