Not too Proud to Wear a Silly Hat with Candles on It

I should clarify that statement. We’re not too proud to wear a silly hat with candles on it IF there’s a chance we can win money! (I’ll explain later.)

Each quarter we have employee meetings where departments gather in groups and we cover company info. When I say we cover “company info” we cover everything, which, as an employee, I think is great. It gives us a realistic look at where the company stands on revenue, expenses, manufacturing, sales, and overall growth.

Some companies may not feel comfortable sharing detailed info like that with their employees on a quarterly basis but our fearless leader, head honcho, big man on campus, Papa Smurf, king of the jungle, boss man Dave DeLana has been doing it since 1984. He says, “We’re all in this together! Our employees need to know what equipment we’re buying and they need to understand long-term investments that we make as a company. The meeting brings up great discussion questions and gives employees a better understanding of why we do what we do!”

After each group meets to discuss the company financials we ALL gather together and have a little informal meeting and that’s where the silly hats come in.

We do several things in this meeting. We meet new staff, we recognize employee anniversaries, we usually make fun of someone for something, we laugh, and then we drag out all the birthday folks from that quarter and have them put on their silly birthday hat. All the names are then dropped into a hat and there’s a draw-down.

As names are drawn out of the hat participants are eliminated, all names are drawn until there is one LUCKY birthday participant left! That person win’s an envelope of cash!!!! (I still haven’t heard how much moo-lah is actually in the envelope, but I’ll let you know when I win the next time around. Grin.)

After we’ve humiliated ourselves by wearing silly birthday hats, they feed us!

It’s like feeding angry bears at the Zoo. Small children and the elderly are warned to stay back as the stampede tramples through. The managers are kind enough to put on their hairnets and serve us lunch, which I think is super cool!

Time out, I’m not sure I’ve actually seen them wearing hairnets…and they’re making us wear those silly birthday hats! That is totally unfair…but I guess they do give cash away, and they feed us a good FREE lunch, so I’ll let it slide.