- My friends at work are not going to be there. Two are out of town on jobs, one now works for another company, and one has an eye appointment this afternoon where his pupils will be dilated (translation: he'll be veeeery out of it). My last friend here at the office isn't going to go if no one else is, so we jointly decided not to go :) We had our going away party on Saturday for that reason - big ol' cookout at Tom's, where I had a chance to hang out with and say good-bye to people I'll actually want to keep in touch with.
- The people who will be there are ones I either (A) don't like, (B) detest, or (C) am so indifferent to, it doesn't matter (we've got a handful of non-entities here in the office) To give you an idea of how well these people know me, my office manager was even laughing that I'd have an excuse if I wanted to "get plastered" tonight and not come in tomorrow. Being very friendly and all, but has the man ever seen me drink a beer? How the heck am I going to get wasted on a beverage I can't stand the taste of?
- I was never asked where I wanted to go. The decision was made for me. Don't think I'm sulking about it - it just means that as a result, we're heading to a bar I don't like. It's not a bad place to go, good assortment of pool tables and games and such, but it's inconvenient for me and it's a microbrew-specialty place. They actually don't have a liquor license, so no 'hard stuff' - nothing but beer and wine. Oh, wait - I don't like beer OR wine. I don't drink much, but the drinks I do like are mostly mixed drinks, shots, and liqueurs.
- I've a bunch of stuff to finish up in the packing line of things. I need to do laundry (I don't want to move more dirty clothes than I have to - would rather pack them clean) and pack up a lot of the stuff I've been using this past week. Mom and Zach visited last weekend and we got most of my stuff packed up, but I still had to leave out a bunch of stuff that I was going to use this week - pots and clothes and bathroom stuff and the like.
- It's not just a going-away party for me. It's also celebrating an office-record-sales month. So, if I don't go, it's not like the 'excuse' for the party is not going to be there. All they need is a reason to get together and drink beer on the company dime - I've given them the excuse, now no need for me to be there.
So, in summary, I think these are good enough reasons to skip out. I have things I'd rather be doing (or simply need to do) than hang out watching people I don't like get drunk.
I think I get so frustrated about this because I don't like feeling guilty for not 'playing the game.' I don't like hanging out with these people, but somehow you can feel like you're not 'part of the team' if you don't go along and do these things. If I had my choice, I'd never see most of these people outside the office EVER. But over the two years here, I've gamely gone to the Christmas parties, the office celebrations, the good-bye parties, and occasional happy hours, like any good little corporate peon. And I've suffered through every minute of it. It's not so much a happy hour for me, as an hour-of-impatiently-watching-my-watch-waiting-til-enough-time-has-been-spent-at-the-bar-for-me-to-leave-gracefully. I just can't stand those things. So, since I don't have to kiss anyone's rear around here any more, I'm not gonna go (not that I ever did much ass-kissing 'round here - more trying to be so low profile, no one notices me). Time to show that I DO have a backbone!
On the other hand, going and getting completely trashed and chewing out every moron working here would be kinda refreshing... Too bad I'm a sleepy drunk and not an angry one. There's probably something nice and cathartic about tearing into idiots you don't have to be polite to anymore....
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