Okay, I don’t usually like to talk about my job all that much but there are some things that just drive me crazy!  Our department is always up to some juvenile antic.  They call them “Performance Improvement Projects”.  Well, guess what?  They make me feel like I am in kindergarten!  The latest thing is that each office of our department puts on a “State Fair Day”.  Well, you have a choice of whether to participate or not participate.  So, for once I decided not to participate in this “initiative” right now.  I am working overtime, going to school, and oh yeah, I am almost 7 months pregnant, I do believe that I have enough to do right now.  So, I am trying to work this morning, I turned on my MP3 player and jacked up the volume and I could still hear the noise of them decorating our office for this State Fair thing.  They even ROPED off my desk so I had to Limbo under it to get out!  (their state is Texas)  So, I respectfully asked them to remove the rope, I am not going to Limbo out of my desk all day.  Remember I mentioned above that I am working overtime.  They have asked us all to commit to 8 hours of overtime for each pay period right now, yet they want to have a State Fair day??  What kind of Sam Hill management tactic is that?  Oh, let’s not forget how many TREES they’ve killed printing crap to hang all over the office!  Whose expense account is that one coming out of?   But the whole thing is so disruptive that I just want to slap them all!  Just because I decide that I didn’t want to participate in one of their goofy things for once, I feel like I am being tortured for actually doing my work!  Oh, and our manager, brought Chicago Style Popcorn for everyone who participated in decorating!  (and disrupting everyone who was working) Yeah, go ahead, reward people for NOT WORKING!  Oh, this whole State Fair thing is supposed to make it so that other people from different offices in our department can get to know each other.  Hello!  If you don’t work with them, what do you care?  You only see them once in a great while unless you change offices!  I just don’t get it.  I have never worked in a place where they have these PIP’s, it is the most ridiculous thing you have ever seen!  Other departments don’t do this!  Sarah (SIL) made the perfect reference one day to all of this stuff.  She asked “who was passing around the CRACK pipe at lunch?”  Which is so true!  What are these people smoking and where do I get some?  Anyway, sorry to totally VENT, but tomorrow is the State Fair thing, today was just the “decorating” part.  So, thank God my other friend Sarah has the day off and has agreed to kidnap me for a long lunch and shopping for a couple hours so I don’t have to be there for all the Fun and Games!  I know, I sound like a GRINCH, but I didn’t go to college to learn how to put on a “State Fair Day” at work!  I am pretty sure I wasn’t hired for this job because of my decorating skills!