• If you have read KK’s Korner for any period of time, chances are you’ve learned of my fondness for my current batch of fellow co-workers, or lack thereof. After hearing my constant griping regarding many of these zany characters I deal with in the workplace, you may be surprised to learn that I actually prefer having a cohesive work environment. Seriously, who doesn’t want to enjoy the time where they spend one-third of their workweek? The problem with an office environment is that many times you have no say in who your co-workers are: if you get along with them, that’s great; if you don’t, well, too bad. I thank my lucky stars my office is two floors away from ninety-nine percent of my peers and that my job doesn’t interfere with what they do so my interaction with them is limited. Why do I say all this? Well, just yesterday I learned what one of my co-workers did at last years’ Christmas “grab bag” event.

For those that don’t know a grab bag’s purpose, it is for people who want to be involved with some faux form of workplace unity. If someone wants to be involved in a grab bag extravaganza, all they do is put their name in a hat and someone who organizes the activity selects which co-worker will buy $20 worth of gifts for another co-worker. For everyone participating, they have to write their name on a piece a paper and include a list of three to four items that they would like. (I must mention here that ever since I began working at this place I have never taken part in one of these grab bags. This is because I think the whole idea is stupid and also because there’s no way in hell I’m spending money on someone I loathe, and there are quite a few people at my job that fill this bill.) Well anyway, I found out that one of my co-workers, I’ll call her Sue, was supposed to get something for … let’s call this other person Beth. Now keep in mind Sue is a compulsive gambler, or so I’ve been told, and she ended up buying $20 worth of scratch-and-win instant lottery tickets. I’m assuming Beth wanted lottery tickets for this grab bag thing, but I digress. If Beth did indeed want lottery tickets, then I guess $20 in instant win games seems like a good gift, right? Well, in happy world it would be, but this is kkk’s world. In kkk’s world, Sue scratched off all the tickets before giving them to Beth. The reason? Sue wanted to make sure she gave at least one winning ticket to Beth. Uh-huh. Right. So in effect, Sue’s gift to Beth was 17 or 18 scratch-off tickets that were already played and had no value and two or three tickets that had a $1 or $2 payout. And people say I’m a Jew bastard. I’m surprised Sue didn’t throw in a few losing Powerball tickets from the previous week’s drawing.

I do find it odd that Sue is a person who, when we have an office pool for a $100+ million Powerball drawing, she never joins the rest of us sheep and instead plays on her own. I would assume if she was a degenerative gambler that she would want to be in an office pool where the odds of winning a jackpot would be only one-in-two-hundred-million, rather than playing the lottery by herself where the odds increase to one-in-infinity-plus-one. Then again, what the hell do I know? The only reason I participate in an office lottery pool is that I know if I don’t then my co-workers would win the mega-ultra jackpot, and there’s no way in hell I’m about to let that happen. Not on my watch.