After a couple months, the firm takes a company trip to New Orleans. The first night a ton of people get extremely drunk and cause havoc. The next company trip winds up being a trip to Milwaukee.
New Orleans was really rainy. This was the year just before Katrina. I had a great dinner. I don’t really drink, but there were lots of strip joints, which I did my best to avoid (I didn’t want to hurt my otherwise stellar reputation, obviously).
Saturday, we have like 8 hours of team building exercises, which I have to admit I really hate. It’s like your company is telling you they can make you do the most inane, embarrassing things in the world just because you work for them. I’m supposed to enjoy making egg ramps, human chains, and tons of other crap. I do not.
One session, everyone has to fill out a 7 part questionnaire, which are then read aloud and people have to guess whose answers they were.
One question is “What famous person does a co-employee look like?”
Despite the fact that I barely know a soul there very well and have been at the company only about three months, approximately 25 out of 80 people answer that I look like Uncle Fester from the Addams’ Family. Each time another person voted for me as Fester, the laugh got bigger. Marsellus applauds me afterwards on my good sense of humor, which up until this point wasn’t really much of a fan favorite.
After this humiliation, we are told to make ourselves costumes out of construction paper, pipe cleaners, and various other pieces of materials these life guides bought at a 99 cent store. What, are we in kindergarten now?
I’ve never felt more stupid in my entire life. I spend the next hour trying my best to hide as everyone starts covering themselves with construction paper. The only upside being:
1. Spivey makes himself an offensive Jesus costume that angers about ten people.
2. They were going to make us march about a half mile through New Orleans wearing this crap, but it’s raining too hard and we have to take a bus instead.
My costume is easily the worst, which means I look the least like a complete idiot, but it doesn’t say much for my team attitude.
The bus takes us to the boat, where there is going to be an optional cruise. Mr. Brown is going to the casino to play poker. I ask him if I can go with him, again thinking we were sort of peers, and he tells me I should stay with the rest of the firm. I’m definitely not a peer.
Amazingly, I’m the hit of the boat trip. They put us in groups and give us twenty words that we have to use to write a skit. Half my group didn’t really feel like doing it, and since I’ve finally found something I’m not ashamed of doing – I write and perform the entire thing myself and basically do a stand up routine about just about every person in the firm who said I looked like Uncle Fester. I even put a light bulb in my mouth like Jackie Coogan used to do.
Our team wins the contest in a rout and suddenly I become incredibly popular! I’m still about 30 seconds from being fired, but the rank and file love me!
The other highlight for me was a band of middle school kids doing a New Orleans version of D12 and Eminem’s “My Band!”
Amazingly after this, things start to get better. Skagnetti is moved to a new satellite group, and Mr. Brown takes over our group. He’s not particularly friendly, but he seems to realize that I am competent. By the end of the year, I’m even given a half way decent bonus! Bonuses were supposed to be secret, but another new guy told me what he got and I got $4,000 more. I lied to him and told him I got the same as him and felt like a jerk about it.
Nevertheless, things are starting to look up for me.
