Team Celebration

I was telling CherkyB via IM about our informal team celebration and he said "you should blog about that"... Since I usually take da blog meister's advice, I immediately started this post. Please note that even though this title might be awfully similar to JohnnyB's "Team Building vs. Beer" first post, it is not from the same event. (Greetings to JohnnyB in case he stumbles into this dreck!)

Yesterday we had an impromptu team celebration at this restaurant/bar to take a break from being done with our committed milestone. It seems kind of silly to take a break from being done but oh well.. free food & drinks are always welcome! Hence, even though I was supposed to be alert and on-call in case wife calls about labor, I attempted to round up some people to go for the freebies.

Normally you would think that people would be jumping at the opportunity to be DONE and celebrate. However, I encountered quite a few indifferent people that needed some prodding encouragement to join us. A group of people were standing around and chatting about "going home early!" until I reminded them of the free drinks/food. TG even lamented about feeling bad for taking a break from working on a project that isn't even approved. ARGH! What happened to these people's natural attraction for free food/drinks?! Something must be wrong with us... but let's not dwell on that since free food/drinks were waiting at a restaurant/bar a few miles away...

As TG, SS, and I walked into the 2nd level of the bar where we had reserved most of the space for our celebration, one customer (sitting right in front of the bartender) blurted "What is this? Geeks are us?!" and the other customer replied "Yepp!". That was our "three engineers walked into the bar" story and the beginning of our celebration... (and I didn't even hear them first hand as TG was the one that heard them clearly).

One good thing about impromptu team celebration is that there is not much time to plan for anything but food and drinks by the organizers. We did not have to listen to speeches and we did not have to have team building events where we compete with each other for the sake of making it a great place to work. All we did was to chat, eat and drink about the past 2 years of down-and-upside-down excitements. Oh, and there were a lot of drinks. The waitresses were friendly and helpful as they walked among the geeks. When one asks for a beer, they bring a filled-up glass AND a full pitcher too -- what service! When one declines for beer, they ask if we want shots instead! What a celebration!