Top fifteen things heard at my office retreat/staff meeting the other day that sound like they should be a joke but, in context, aren't:

  1. "We need a good speaker - something dynamic so they won't fall asleep."

  2. "What if we just tell them attendance is mandatory? They'll fall for that, right?"

  3. "When someone absolutely needs some nipple gongs for their lecture what are you going to do? You gotta get it for them."

  4. "I can't believe you've never heard of nipple gongs!"

  5. "It probably wasn't very nice to leave them all sobbing and in tears and then immediately say, OK, now on to association business, do we have a quorum?"

  6. "Don't you think that the volunteer positions should be paid or does that make it no longer a volunteer position?"

  7. "If this is called a retreat why are we still in the office?"

  8. "We just can't use the word research in the title of the research presentation because no one would come."

  9. "Maybe we should just ask them: Would it piss you off if you were presenting in here? How about here? Here?"

  10. "We should have music for when the winners walk up to the podium. "
    "You mean like the music that was played last year?"
    "There was music?"

  11. "People claimed that there was not enough food outside the hotel last year. So, maybe we can ask next year's city to build more restaurants."

  12. "People seemed to love all the new products."
    "Did they buy them?"
    "Not really."

  13. "They didn't like having the performances in a bar which is odd because there are a lot of lushes in that group and I would have thought that'd be a big hit."

  14. "They need a pep-talk, but we don't want to talk down to them, so let's just give out some awards and call it a ceremony."

  15. "Maybe we should put a sign on the office door to keep people out that says, Staff Use Only... or better yet, it could just say, Men's Room."

And that kind of amusement, ladies and gentlemen, is why I love (and hate) my job.