Hold it, Buddy

There’s one more element from our office holiday decoration. The week before Christmas week, someone put a cardboard cutout of Buddy the Elf in our VP’s office, facing out through the glass wall. I’ll confess that the first time I saw it, I freaked out. It’s really creepy.

As it happened, the VP was out sick the first three days that thing loomed out, and when he got back, the first thing he did was move it out of his office. Then—like the garden gnome in Amélie—it just started wandering.

Someone put it in the office next to the VP’s; I suggested that the woman whose office that is wouldn’t appreciate having that creature looming over her, so it got moved out into the corridor, just around the corner and placed so you’d have no warning as you turned and ran into it on your way to the kitchen or the big conference room.

Well—I happened to see it coming from the kitchen, and I suggested to those closest to it (not that I was accusing them or anything) that it really wouldn’t be a good thing if it were left there, because it could seriously cause difficulties. So it got moved. And moved. And moved.

At one point, I came into my work area to find that someone had planted it directly behind my manager (who often stands to work). He took up the challenge, did a reccie and reported that people from Team Ginger were in a meeting away from their desks, so he relocated Buddy to the gingerbread house.

Well, that didn’t last long. The last day of that week, I came out of our work area at my usual speed (ramming) and practically ran into the damned thing, which was parked directly in front of my desk. (I couldn’t see because of all the West Texas trailer park Christmas wrapping.) The office pretty much cleared out, so I planted Buddy halfway between Teams Gruber and Ginger.

Those areas have been pretty vacant for the past couple of weeks. We’ll see what happens when people return next week.