We’ve been talking about it, and quarantine care package sounds like something you drop into a shopping mall that’s surrounded by Zombies, or your average apocalypse scenario if you’ve started to think they’re boring, and given we’re well into Covid now it doesn’t seem wise to start tempting fate like that anyway, so we’ve gone with a work from home gift basket as our co-worker’s retirement present. Half of us anyway, as there was an office schism over whether we’d be better with that or getting him a work from home gift box actually. It got quite fraught, the basket people and the box people were starting to get at each other’s throats, it was a good job someone mentioned Zombies to break the ice or else there would’ve probably been another duel with the staple guns. Anyway, the fact that our favorite ‘retiree’ is getting a work from home package as his retirement present, two in fact as we agreed we’d just get him a box and a basket as a compromise, has got me to thinking about just how much of a retirement this actually is. He mainly works from his home and we hire him as a contracted freelancer, how do we know he’s not just carrying on freelancing? Some of us are suspicious to say the least, we don’t want to be judgmental and no one minds clubbing together for the gifts, so long as box money goes on the box, and basket money goes on the basket at any rate, but we can’t help but wonder if it’s not a dodge to get cool stuff. He’s also twenty-seven; which seems fairly young to be retiring to be honest, but more than one person asked him about the email where he told us about the retirement and he just says ‘he’s got a special thing’ and then won’t explain further. Weird.

So, our retiree’s ‘leaving the office I don’t actually work inside of’ party approaches, as a means of celebrating his illustrious career as someone who occasionally sends us emails with obvious typos even though we send him an actual, physical work from home corporate gift box AND a basket to celebrate his time with us. He’s announced that he’ll have to attend by Zoom, as he cannot come in that evening, which has got me to thinking we should probably get him a virtual care package for employees instead of a physical one because it might turn out he’s a piece of software or something or some other funny work from home gifts. Well, you never know these days, do you? And you don’t want to seem out of the loop after all. Anyway, I’m not mad at him or anything. He got us all a care package for employees during covid last year which was nice, I’ve still got the self-care package for employees he chose for me personally too; he knew my favorite flavor of Gecko tail and everything! And besides, what’s really that wrong with typos? There’s plenty of IMGUR threads dedicated to them.

This end of an era Zoom party approaches, and the hot office gossip is split between whether it’s a real retirement and all our care package ideas for employees who are going out to pasture on a big farm upstate (where there’s loads of room to run around, apparently) are deserved or if we’re just sending out a work from home care package for employees who are only twenty-seven and clearly are going to carry on working from home but just really want some new stuff. There’s a small breakaway faction of the office still banging on about Zombies too, who think that lockdown care package ideas like a quarantine care package for employees stuck in a shopping mall could include some Zombie repellent spray to ward them off. The rest of us keep telling them that Zombies are rubbish, they’re really slow and it’s always the same and how are they not bored? But they don’t seem to care. Our retiring freelancer spelt ‘typo’ wrong today too, which was funny. He was writing to say that he doesn’t think his emails have ‘typoos’ in them. I’m going to miss that guy.

Got a bit of a shock today, across the whole office certain people all received a massive wellness care package for employees gift box, and in a case of frankly implausible cosmic chance occurring perfectly, exactly the right set of other people received theirs in a basket. We were all sat there wondering who could have got us all such cool stuff, when the retiring typos freelancer messaged to say he’d sent them to us all as a thank you for the work from home box we sent him earlier in the week. He didn’t mention the party at all, which would have been rude given all the organization we’ve put in and the Zoom invite and whatnot, but he’s clearly bested our retirement presents, sent out by us as a care package for employees working from home deal. His gifts were loads bigger than ours, to the extent its given me some work from home care package for employees ideas of my own. Even if he’s not retiring, he deserves something cool just for getting us all such awesome things. The office Zombie fans have gone on strike incidentally, they’ve declared a ‘go slow’ as protest for our genre indifference.

While the people at the end of the office have really taken this Zombie strike thing seriously, to the extent that they just slowly wander round their desks groaning a lot, the rest of us have gotten into a serious gift war with the retiring freelancer typo guy. We tried to sort out a build your own care package for him that we were all going to chip in for. People didn’t even care if it was a care package box or a basket at this point, we just didn’t want to be one-upped on the employee care package ideas after the trouncing we got with the massive parcels full of cool stuff the other day. When we got online though, we found that all of the large sizes were sold out to someone who had a lot of typos on their Amazon personal account page and all they had left were some small care packages for employees instead. We nearly gave up, but then worked out we could build a Minecraft inspired construction out of all the small care packages we could send instead. We’ve come up with a thing called a boxsket that the delivery person promised to construct according to our detailed blueprints.

It was retiring freelancer typo guy’s retirement party today. He’d sent us all another employee care package in the morning, saying thanks for the care package for remote employees that had been skillfully built to our instructions on the lawn outside his flat for when he awoke at dawn, and he was so impressed by the gesture it turned out it gave him some revolutionary office care package ideas of his own. We all received our very heart’s greatest desire. One person was gifted true love for ever, another found they could now fly. Someone even got tickets to see ‘Cirque De Soleil’. Granting people their heart’s desire did turn the strikers into actual Zombies though, which was a bit of a downer. We all picked up at the retirement party though, after we’d boarded ourselves in, first we talked about our new work from home care package ideas and then we found out on freelancer typo’s Zoom call that he hadn’t told us he was retiring after all, he’d written retirement, but ‘meant’ he was ‘retiring’ his bike. We all laughed until it was time for him to go, and then we sat around not able to go home because there were Zombies everywhere.

Freelancer is still sending us a work from home care package most days, they’re always really great but it’s a shame that we have to live in the office since it became surrounded with Zombies. Apart from the hungry for brains thing they’re not that much of an issue, we get our care package for employees which always has nice food and essential supplies to keep us going and we’re all still getting on with work for the main. We just make sure not to stand close to the windows if we can. Freelancer typo guy’s messages are a lot clearer too, it turns out the ‘thing he had’ was a spellchecker that he always forgot to use. While we hole up in here, he’s been sorting loads of covid care kits for employees and gift ideas for employees on a budget 1,600in other parts of the company, where things are a bit less Zombie, and making sure covid packs for employees are readily available for delivery. We’ve told him not to worry about us, because if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that slow Zombies are rubbish. And they never make deadlines either.