Each year, my company holiday party manages to unveil the “Jackass of the Year” award. The recipient of this award goes to a single jackass, who creates a scene or incident at the annual holiday party that ruins the festivities for holiday parties to come.  

Two years ago, the “Jackass of the Year” award went to “Santa.” That’s right—Santa. The company used to raffle off door prizes to the holiday party goers. And what better person to hand out the prizes than a person dressed like Santa? Point. These were no cheap door prizes either. Rather than Hickory Farms smoked sausage and cheese gift baskets or gallons of assorted flavored popcorn tins that filled Santa’s sack, the door prizes included Xbox’s, iPod Touches, forty-two inch flat panels, and Blu Ray disc players, aka, Sony PS3’s. Everyone was gunning for them! Unfortunately, so was Santa. They picked [Oscar] from facilities to dress up like Santa since he already had the body type. [Oscar’s] cleaning crew cleaned out the gift closet before the DJ could finish off reading the series of numbers on the first winning ticket. As a result for the coming years, no more door prizes. Worst of all, no more Santa. (Bonafide Jackass!)

Last year, the “Jackass of the Year” award went to a temp from the HR department named [Scott]. The company used to splurge on top shelf alcohol and great food. Best of all, it was open bar. Employees were told not to tip the bartenders as they were already being taken care of. Well, [Scott] never left the bar. As a matter of fact, he jumped behind the bar himself, put a glass out for tips to capitalize on the free booze. Good booze! Later on that night, [Scott] was asked to leave. As he stumbled across the dance floor, he managed to trip over an extension cord, falling down a flight of stairs and spraining his wrist. To make matters worse, he puked out the shrimp cocktail he had been scarfing down all night when he landed at the bottom of the steps. The result? Two drinks maximum per employee, controlled by issuing drink tickets upon entry, beer and wine only, and an on-site ambulance. And by the way, temps are no longer allowed to participate unless given written authorization by their placement agency. (Good going [Scott]. Jackass!)

This year was no different, with a slight exception. The “Jackass of the Year” award went to an entire department—IT!

[Rewind to 24 hours ago…]

The last major systems release of the 2009 fiscal year was a massive disaster. All production systems were down for twelve hours straight. All levels of management were on day and night long emergency conference calls, I, included. The decision was made to roll back code to get the systems up and running again. We got this situated by 10:00 a.m. the next morning—the day of the annual holiday party.

[Back to present…]

Based on the events of the previous day, the holiday party was a bit tired. No one was in the mood for mopping up the dance floor. Even still, employees were making the most of their two drink maximum and average finger foods. Meanwhile, the entire IT department was Jai-Ho-Ho-Ho’ing on the dance-floor,without a care in the world, when just a few hours ago, a company memo was issued explaining the potential consequences of the system outage. The twelve hour system outage on the day prior cost the company a significant loss in revenue. A loss in revenue equates to a loss in annual earnings. A loss in annual earnings equates to an impact in annual bonuses. You don’t fuck with someone’s money!  The rest of the company glared at them. At that point, it was very clear who the recipient of this year’s award was.

I gotta’ hand it to them though. They had balls. Big balls. So naturally, I had to join them.