Sheepishly Ducky

A funny thing happened when I was scheduling that vacation week I took a couple weeks ago. I wanted to make sure I didn't schedule myself out the week of Administrative Professionals Day (formerly Secretaries' Day) because my office always does a week-long celebration and I didn't want to miss it. I mentioned that to our admin assistant and told her I was specifically taking the week before off. Well, it turned out I had my dates a bit off--there was actually a week BETWEEN my vacation and the week when Administrative Professionals Day was scheduled (which was today, by the way).

Well, I guess because I'm always so believeable and very rarely wrong, no one thought to check my calculations, because all of the plans to celebrate the occasion LAST week, a week early, were in place before I came back from vacation. Oops! No big deal though--it doesn't really matter WHEN they celebrate "our day," just as long as the bosses take a little time at some point in the year to think about all the stuff we do that helps them do what THEY do.

Our senior partner is an avid duck hunter. And goose hunter. And "anything with wings" hunter. So he came up with a plan to provide ducks and geese to a local Chinese restaurant so they could prepare a wonderful feast for our lunch last Thursday. And with that plan, came the theme of the week: DUCKS!

Our admin assistant is a creative genius, and not even ducks could set her off her stride. The first day, Monday, we came in to find we each had a new DUCK coffee cup with a gift certificate for a half day off. It was very clever--each cup was different and most of them matched our personalities. (Mine was a rubber duck swimming in a broken raw egg and shell. I figured it meant they saw me as cracked, but I was told it was more about the way I think outside the box.) How our admin assistant ever found over 20 different duck cups, I don't know but she's very good with that kind of thing!

The next day, Tuesday, we were treated to a delicious catered breakfast. Yum! There was so much food, we had it for breakfast and lunch for two days!

On Wednesday, we found a plastic "paint can" filled with bath products, and on top of the can was the rubber ducky in the photo above.

Thursday was the "fowl" Chinese lunch--which was much better than it may sound on oh so many levels. The admin assistant had arranged for us to play a duck trivia game too, which some people took much too seriously. We had to fill in the answers to ten or so questions about ducks. Well, since I know next to nothing about ducks, I went for laughs with stuff like "What's a female duck called?" My answer: "A cold duck." Surprisingly, I won a prize (photo below) of a canning jar filled with chocolate eggs and a duck full of bubbles for something like "most entertaining entry," which I suspect is much like the "class clown" designation in high school. But, hey, if it gets me chocolate, I'm not going to complain! Best of all though was that we got the rest of the day off after lunch--woo hoo!

On Friday, we ended the week of pampering with more pampering--a gift card to a local spa!

Yep, my office treats us really well, and I think that's why we don't mind working hard at what we do, and that in turns helps our bosses be successful at what they do. And besides what the office did for us last week, my own boss gave me a beautiful planter with two different orchids and some wonderful bath goodies today. And that reminds me--Rubber Ducky's waiting for me in the bath. Gotta go!