CSotD: Snapshots from the Corporate Prom
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Ed Stein created the strip "Freshly Squeezed" in 2010 as a response to the economic collapse, which he got to see close up in 2009, when, after he had served about 30 years as its editorial cartoonist, the Rocky Mountain News shut down its presses.
The strength of Freshly Squeezed is that he centers it on the family, which, due to the economy, includes the wife's parents, but he maintains the focus on personal economic issues and has a touch that avoids smarmy, formulaic jokes along the lines of "How can we be out of money? I still have checks!" or "Those darned kids!"
It's not fall-on-the-floor humor, but it's a satisfying read each day, which I think is his intention.
And while I'm presuming to know what's in his head, I imagine he went to the Corporate Prom quite a few times over his career. In the military, the event described in today's strip is known as "Mandatory Fun" and it sounds like he would approve that term, too.
Whatever you call it, these annual events are (1) a chance to build teamwork and employee morale in an informal setting where job titles are put aside and people get to relax and show their personal side, (2) a chance to completely tank your career and (3) a whole lot more of (2) than of (1).
But, mostly, it's a chance to find out who's sleeping together. Or to start rumors on the topic. I said this to a newly-hired assistant one holiday season pre-prom and she laughed, but the following Monday exclaimed, "Jeez, you really weren't kidding!"
Nope. Really not kidding.
One of the differences between comics and real life is that there are things that are very funny in comic strips that aren't at all funny in real life and nowhere is that more clear than at the Corporate Prom.
I think my scorecard over the years was two that accidentally degenerated into fun, and at which I stayed until closing, one that was so ghastly that I excused myself to go to the bathroom but actually grabbed my coat and drove home and a whole lot where I followed the formula: Two drinks, four Swedish meatballs, chat with your department head and spouse, chat with Big Boss and spouse, check in with members of your work group, get the hell out.
Oh, wait, I just realized I was blocking one. Which only emphasizes my point.
Some people really enjoy this stuff, but, as I grew older and wiser, I put aside letting myself be bullied by the things I was supposed to enjoy and concentrated instead on things I actually did enjoy, and, while, the further up the ladder I went, the more I tended to be a workaholic in terms of the hours I kept, I otherwise unconsciously patterned myself on Wemmick, the law clerk in "Great Expectations."
Wemmick, you may recall, owned a small cottage decorated like a castle, with a laughable four-foot wide, two-foot deep "moat" over which a single plank formed a bridge that he drew up after himself each evening. He also had a small cannon known as "The Stinger" with which he fired a salute to the flag he ran up on a pole, to the amusement of his aged parent, who was known as "the Aged P."
None of which his employer, Mr. Jaggers, had ever seen.
"Never seen it," said Wemmick. "Never heard of it. Never seen the Aged. Never heard of him. No; the office is one thing, and private life is another. When I go into the office, I leave the Castle behind me, and when I come into the Castle, I leave the office behind me. If it's not in any way disagreeable to you, you'll oblige me by doing the same. I don't wish it professionally spoken about."
And, indeed, after a cheerful visit at Wemmick's, Pip gets to see him regain his work face on the walk back to the office next morning:
Our breakfast was as good as the supper, and at half-past eight precisely we started for Little Britain. By degrees, Wemmick got dryer and harder as we went along, and his mouth tightened into a post-office again. At last, when we got to his place of business and he pulled out his key from his coat-collar, he looked as unconscious of his Walworth property as if the Castle and the drawbridge and the arbor and the lake and the fountain and the Aged, had all been blown into space together by the last discharge of the Stinger.
I was never able to maintain quite that much separation, but, then, Dickens characters tend to be fairly extreme and I think it would be sad indeed if you didn't make a few friendships at the office.
Still, two drinks and four Swedish meatballs will do you a lot better than the opposite.
And, jeez, I'm really not kidding.
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