a hundred degrees

Service Award

  My work on the Do Not Contact web application and overdraft spreadsheets inspired a couple of service award nominations. I've been hearing for a while now that I should expect to win a service award. I don't know exactly what the back-channels were that were spreading this information. Perhaps I'll try to discreetly find out.
  Marketing always makes a bit of a silly show for the Sales and Service Award employee meetings. This time they had some employees impersonating various "celebrities" who gave out the awards. For added interest, they handed out numbered tickets at the door and the honoree drew from the bucket of corresponding tickets to select a helper. The m.c. then read some facts about the next celebrity arranged from obscure to obvious and the pair of folks would guess who would come out next. The awardee would be given an envelope with cash, and the helper would get a goofy prize related to the celebrity.
  I received my prize early on. The very next awardee drew my ticket. Thus have I come into posession of Jennifer Lopez' "This is Me ... Then" CD.
  I had to listen to some of it just for the experience. I thought, maybe it's not a style of music I listen to, but it could be good in it's own way. I was wrong. It's just so bad. The lyrics are childish and the music has the complexity of a Casio keyboard accompaniment track.
  Vern pointed out that one of the songs was titled "I've Been Thinkin'" which gave us all a big laugh. I do have to give her points for prophecy, though. At the end of an incredibly sappy song called "Dear Ben" she sings

There's no way I'd leave you
It's just not a reality,
Sometimes I feel like I'm
Living in a fantasy.