Let me tell you about this one time at the Outback Christmas party. The Christmas party that happened about three days before I quit.

My first year working at Outback, when I was a wee 20 years old, the Christmas party was this extravagent dress-up affair. It was held at the Vanderbilt Stadium Club and there was free liquor and beer until it ran out. Everyone got fancy cocktail dresses and smoke and drank and ate and danced and were generally extraordinarily shitfaced. Real fun.

Fast forward to six, long years later, to a party in a single room, crammed with about 100 people. At a local bar. The All-American Sports Bar. Drinks were $5 each and built for you by a seriously pissed off bartender. Who was plainly an idiot. This chick was selling drinks hand over fist to a room full of SERVERS AND BARTENDERS and was being a first class cunt rag. Servers also know full well how not to tip.

Anyway, my manager gave out raffle tickets to employees who brought in Toys for Tots donations. The more toys you brought the more tickets you accumulated. Six big winners were selected after DVDs and ghetto blasters were given away to the people who brought in the most toys in efforts to score mad goods. (It worked.) The big-ass grand prize, for which six lucky people would compete, was hyped by my manager as the most awesome, mindblowing prize one could ever receive. I actually got a little excited when my name was called. I waited in a huddle with the other lucky winners, $5 vodka gimlet in my hand, when he led us all to another room. After a brief countdown he opened the doors and the lucky winners began running in and screaming. I was sort of last in line and not so much screaming.

Once inside, I saw that there was cash. Not much left of it, mind you, but a couple of fives and twenty or so one dollar bills littered the pool table and the chairs and the floor. I scooped up a few bills while holding firmly onto my drink. I got $4 or so when I looked up to see my manager laughing and jumping up and down. For him, this was what Chirstmas parties were all about. Watching his employcrawl on the ground shrieking and groping wildly for a few measley bucks.

I went back to my chair feeling ashamed. What had just happened? Had my manager really just broken down a $100 into small bills and strewn them about for his $2.13/hr. underlings to snatch maniacally? My $4 grand prize was certainly appreciated but the way in which I haev to acquire it embarrassed me.

My manager bragged the following days how fun the grand prize game was. He’d loved it. He couldn’t wait to do it bigger and better next year. Luckily, I didn’t stick around to see if maybe I could scrounge for $5 next Christmas.