Office Shenanigans: The Kudos Board

I want to start out by emphasizing that when reading these posts it helps if you watch The Office.  If you don't, no worries, but certain references will make more sense if you do.  Actually, if you don't watch The Office I'm worried, it's pretty much one of my favorite shows and you're missing out.

Now let's get started... I've caught a lot of grief for yesterday's post being just a preview and not having a story.

Awhile back my office decided to start our own mini-version of the dundies with a kudos boards.  I don't remember when this board originated and it's even less clear the time of its demise, but it was short lived to say the least.  Basically, we had a white board up in the office with everyone's name and space to "anonymously" write kudos about one another.  Then we would share these in department meetings and they would also get emailed to the kudos committee.  The kudos committee was made up of some ladies from another department, who once a month would walk around the office shaking pom poms & other random noisemakers as they passed out goody bags to that month's kudos recipients.  This is not a joke.

While their committee was awesome, the best part of this whole office episode is the types of kudos submitted amongst our team.  They started out genuine and professional, but as people lost interest in giving praise and slackers started feeling left out of the spotlight, the weirdest efforts started being acknowledged.  For example, someone was given a kudos for cleaning and organizing a spare cube.  While this was a nice thing to do- one, it did it not seem kudo-worthy and two, it begged the question of people's workload.  I suppose we've all had days where we take a break from one thing to do something more mindless, but who wants that highlighted?  What make this particular kudo extra awesome is that is was given in the same month we drew randomly from the submissions for a half day off.  Yep, you guessed it, that person's accomplishment was drawn and they got to a paid half day off... for cleaning a cube... out of boredom.

Needless to say, the kudos committee didn't come into our department too much after that.  Honestly, they must have decided that our team's "accomplishments" didn't merit a full bag of candy and a huge applause from their committee.  I'd have to agree, but don't tell anyone.

Oh, and before I forget... Happy Birthday Dani!!!  Sort of random, I know, but it's my sister's birthday and it should be definitely be mentioned on my blog!