tis the season…

on the telly last week they reported that west australians will spend the most on christmas this year with the average spend per person at $1600…considering the amount that Mr B Badger.com and I plan on spending is significantly less than the average, and I feel we may not be alone, there must be some massive cash getting floated on the silly season in this great state of ours to bring that average up to such a ridiculous amount. mind you in years previous we may have come close but this year we have no visitors and it will be a very small affair around our massive tree which doesn’t have a star or an angel because it is too tall and the tree topper would have to be on a 90 degree angle for success. I was wondering if that financial stat on christmas expenditure included corporate spend…we were discussing this on the weekend and out of the four people in the discussion the results by employer were quite varied…a member of the police force gets nothing – not even a bunnings style sausage sizzle and a handshake, an employee of a minerals company will go out for lunch with the boss and a christmas do with the company, an employee of a steel company has the option of going to the zoo on a sunday, but it will probably get cancelled due to lack of interest, and hopefully a christmas hamper but given the way manufacturing is going in australia possibly not and lastly me who used last year as an example because this year I doubt I will be included in the festivities – not because they don’t like me, more likely as I am not there as a contributing member of the team I am not eligible – I work for a global mining giant, talk it up eh?, and last year we had a secret santa amongst the team, a christmas river cruise and they gave everyone a christmas hamper that was chock full of west australian and australian products. I was beside myself. I had only been there about six weeks by the time christmas rolled round so I would have been pretty chuffed with a pat on the back and an early finish on the last day. In my previous job I persuaded the boss to chuck on a barby on the last day and to let the guys off a couple of hours early one year. everyone bitched and moaned that they never got anything for christmas but to be honest everywhere else in the country they were laying off staff every other day from the GFC so I reckon a barby and an early mark followed by a return to work in the new year should have been gift enough. the following year we had some great results despite the hard conditions so I arranged to have some quotes from different staff members printed onto coffee mugs and filled them with lollies and on the last day of work my boss threw on a barby and gave everyone their mug and said thanks. we thought it had gone pretty well until the results from the employee survey came back and several people had complained that they thought receiving nothing would be better than just a coffee mug filled with sweets…so be it. as they say ask and ye shall receive. given that little boss will only be six months old this christmas I cant see us buying anything much for her so we will probably just wrap up what we might have needed to get her during the month and pretend it is for christmas…..ohhhh looooook little boss santa got you some nappies…