Corporate Logo Gift Baskets

Have you ever gone through something that seems so damn bizarre that you just think it was a dream?

I work in a smallish office. It has been the same crew for years. So, when our bossman, Mr. Hughes, walked in and made the wild announcement that he won half a million dollars from a radio contest, we laughed. And, when he then said he was quitting this place, we laughed harder.

Until he walked out that day, handed us his list of corporate logo gift baskets, and didn’t come back the next day.

Or the next.

Tam and I shared a cubicle, and she was sure he was just taking a vacation. She sent out all of the branded gifts for clients and started designing the holiday gift baskets with logo. We were both sure he would walk back in at any second and be super proud of what we had accomplished without him.

Big nope.

Our office was small enough that there was no ‘second command.’ Sure, we had seniority, but that had nothing to do with skill. Mr. Hughes had a habit of letting slackers stick around just because they made good company.

So, there were a lot of cool people at the water cooler water cooling and no one to organize us. Instead, the little bit of work that was handed out before the huge half a million-dollar win was done.

And, no one was there to tell us what to do next. Imagine a bunch of preschoolers without a teacher?

Fine. I will temper my insults.

Let’s say a bunch of middle schoolers without a homeroom teacher.

The end result was mostly both things put together, along with a fever dream that would last a lifetime.

And certainly, no one gave two shits about the best branded corporate gifts or the people they were going to.

And, one by one, people stopped caring. By day three, most of us had started to slack off. It meant tons of extra cell phone time and inventing ways to do anything but our work.

Thomas was still fiddling with the gift baskets with company logo, and it was slowly turning into a filthy but funny design that he had no intentions of using. But, it was something to do.

The logo for gift baskets was blown up on the copy machine and pasted on the water cooler. Since that suddenly and literally became the office watering hole.

Imagine our branded food gifts going out with a picture of a banana as the centerpiece, except the banana was peeking out between two long pieces of bread. Did I mention that Thomas had given the food a drowsy and pleased look on their face?

Yeah. That was happening in the absence of a boss because we are all obviously 12 or some shit.

However, the majority of us kept it PG-13..ish. Cards Against Humanity showed up, which upped the rating to NC-17 for a few hours. I really didn’t need to know about Jan’s marriage, but now I even know what position she prefers.

I didn’t play. Jan was just that loud. (Which she made sure we knew she was always loud. Wink. Wink.)

Throughout the span of a couple of days, we had accumulated a pile of games. Card games, board games, made-up games, it didn’t matter. We just stopped wanting to work. Including me, I was sick of updating the corporate gifts website, and we sure weren’t earning any corporate gifts for employees, either.

The juvenile humor only escalated, and a couple of us came across a game we had never heard of. It had no name on the box, and no one owned up to having brought it.

It’s always good to try something new, right?

Again, huge nope.

When we opened the box, all of us smelled something different. I smelled pine, Jan smelled fresh baked cookies. It was weird but fleeting, and I figured it was mass hysteria.

We design and sell customized corporate gifts. Maybe someone walked through with one? We didn’t know. Perhaps we had just gone crazy with boredom and lack of leadership.

Or maybe we had just opened a pandora’s box of insanity that would try to kill us all.

I should have stuck to my gut.

We the mysterious game up according to some handwritten directions we found inside. Oddly, there was no limit on how many of us could play.

We just had to roll the dice and move little miniatures. I chose…wait for it…a banana. Why was there a banana? Again, I should have listened to the little voice in my head that screamed.

DON’T. DO. IT.

And then it started. Thomas’ silly ass was the first one to roll two dice - double two’s. He moved his miniature of a flying insect, and instantly we heard a buzzing sound.

We looked to the left, to the right, checked out phones, peeked at the corporate gift baskets for clients suspiciously, and finally, my gaze moved upwardly.

Holy hell. There were hundreds of too-large hornets covering every tile on the ceiling. We went to flee, but the doors were locked. Who locked the doors? Everyone was screaming hysterically, so no one heard the question, much less answered it.

The swarm of hornets lit on the display corporate gift baskets and somehow devoured every inch of it - the contents of all of the luxury corporate gift baskets. There was not even dust left.

Somehow the hornets got bigger. They were now the size of a child’s fist. No shit.

Was it the branded baskets that were drawing all of these flying death givers?

Did someone leave windows open but lock the damned doors?

Someone yelled to just effing roll the dice. So, I threw them.

They landed on double fives. Did these dice just roll doubles?

Whoosh. With doors locked and no way to get out, a colossal whitewater body of water slammed against us.

The bathroom is flooding! Nope. Most of us had gone whitewater rafting last summer on an office vacation! You could smell the river water.

I watched the last order of custom branded gifts that we were getting ready to ship across the room before a new type of swarm devoured it within seconds.

The homicidal piranhas went for the last branded gift package before they started coming after us.

Nibble, nibble, bite, and blood. The river was starting to turn a sickly pink.

The water slowly started to drain, and we were all still alive. And, thankfully, no one was bleeding to death.

Someone found the dice, and once again, they were thrown. I could have sworn I heard a DUN DUN before the water was replaced with the greenest greenery you’ve ever seen. I mean rainforest shit.

We didn’t know what time it was. But, we had been fighting indoor weather elements for hours. We were hungry. We were tired. We were freaked the fuck out.

We munched on some American snacks and found bottles of water floating in various puddles or half-buried in mud. We even pretended that some of the vines and wild shrubbery were one of our edible arrangements and did our best to survive the night.

The doors clicked, and it was like we all tilted our heads in unison. I heard Mr. Hughes start screaming about what the hell happened.

He walked in. The doors locked again. The dice were somehow just lying at his feet. So, he picked them, and they slipped back out of his palm.

When they hit the ground, everything stopped. It was not instant but close to it. But, the office went back to almost normal, even if we didn’t. Our scratches, scrapes, and exhaustion were still very real.

Had Mr. Hughes not gambled away half a million dollars and forced us to return, we would still be playing a game we didn’t know existed.

But, we were somehow stronger for it all. A better team, even Harry and David participated in meetings, rather than sit in the back and complain. Our new ideas were fresh and colorful.

Our candy gift baskets were a little bit bigger, and a lot better.

Now, our American themed gifts always have something in them to remind us of that day. It was a nightmare, but we now stop every day and remind ourselves that there is no work without a bit of play.