Here's a kicker

So I'm sitting at the big quarterly employee banquet. I've got three little tickets in my pocket for the door prize drawing. The way it works is typical - employee prizes for all 3 casino's have already been chosen for things like leadership, innovation, customer service, etc.

Employees who have volunteered at off-site events to support community charities (and we do a ton of them) get a door prize ticket, one for each charity event at which you volunteered. I got three this time, which I think is the wrong count, but there's really no one there with which I can argue. I only accidentally skipped one old folks home, and we do two a month. Plus I volunteered to help set up for some dinner thing in Memphis.

But anyway, nobody else at my table has tickets and I've got three. The girl to my right takes two, keeps one and passes the other to her right. The person to her right happens to be my boss. The ticket in my boss's hand wins and she gets an envelope. Now, she's grinning and walking and I'm thinking, 'How fun. She gets to walk and I get a prize.' uh-no. She opens the envelope and it's one gift certificate to the hotel, 2 each gift certificates to the spa and the steakhouse (2 for $50 for a $100 value). She picks what she likes and passes them out. So I end up with one gift certificate for $50 to the steakhouse.

um- hello?

Now, to be honest, I'm trying to have good vibes in my heart. It's not like I lost anything I had. And I did all of my volunteering on company time anyway. It's not like I spent hours and hours of my personal time. But here's my deal ~ with $100 in the spa, I could get something. With $100 in the steakhouse, I could get something. With $50. . . . uh, not really. And not to sound whiney about my personal life, but I'm sort of a point with my own economics where. . . . $50 is a carefully chosen expense. I'm not interested in giving back $50 of my own money to the employer when I've already chosen to make my money stretch by giving up cable and some other things. With $100, I could have had a nice perk. With $50, it's a certificate in my drawer.

Now, I really really don't think anyone at my table intended to take from me. It was really all over in less than 3 minutes with everyone having fun. But somehow, I feel really jipped.

I think I'm gonna make up for it by taking off early today. Go sit in the sun somewhere.

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At the end of the day, I think it might have gone down differently. I was carrying a bit of bitterness over an issue with a peer manager. A very minor conversation but it hit on a nerve that dealt with some of the volunteer work I've been doing. And there was a sentence where I thought she had a rather snarky voice. I think that a few minutes later, I actually passed the tickets out, trying to spread happiness, fight my own bitterness. Not really dreaming I would win, and win something I would want and not want to share. As I drove home today, I was thinking about the volunteer issue and how it's got me kind of ticked off. I think that may have colored my day some. OK, a lot.

Maybe the sunshine can wash it all away.

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