I'm not bad, I was just drawn that way

So, I'm the current head of a "let's do fun things" group at The Company. It's fun, albeit a lot of work trying to get things organized.

Now, for a tangent. I've decided to use "The Company" as the pseudonym of where I work just to keep it a little anonymous. Plus, I'm a huge Prison Break fan, so it fits well.

That being said, we're allotted 40 hours of Volunteer Time Off at work. Yes, people, we're allowed to do a FULL work week of things we enjoy that we wouldn't normally get paid for, and still get paid for it by The Company. A win-win situation, methinks!

In order to rally the troops, we send out fun emails in order to encourage participation. Now, you wouldn't expect a fun organization to send out boring emails, would you? So, I didn't. I made it as fun as possible, with a few probing terms to help encourage participation. I guess my problem was when I added the line "Now, I'm not saying that you'll be in trouble if you don't volunteer, but there's always the chance that your performance review could be impacted by the fact you didn't do any volunteer activities!"

Truth be said, volunteer activities are HIGHLY encouraged at The Company. In fact, upper management likes to see it because it impacts them when it comes to metrics. If you help make them look favorable, they'll look more favorable on you. You scratch their back, they'll scratch yours. It's how Corporate America works.

Apparently somebody had a snizzy with it. Which reminds me of the Family Guy line, "Gentlemen, we got 20 calls about the David Hyde-Pierce incident. And as you know, one call equals a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended by this. Needless to say, something must be done."

Of course, I think the snizzy was made under the assumption that our Super Admin Princess Sparklepants wrote the email encouraging participation. There's been this Hatfield and McCoy feud going on between Princess Sparklepants and another member of The Company. Except, it's been more one-sided... kinda like itch you have after getting crabs without "earning them."

I was notified of this "offense" and took offense that there was an offense. Especially since I know there was at least ONE other email that went out in the past that inferred this exact same notion. Not to mention the complaint email was CC'd to management without trying to resolve the perceived issue with Princess Sparklepants first, like any grown up would do.

This childish behavior is beyond me. What's next? I can't keep my Happy Meal toys out because the apparent children I work with will want them for their own?

That being said, what's done is done. The volunteer event should be a success. We already have about 10 people who have verbally committed to going. That's more than 10% of our group at The Company, so I would definitely say that's a success! Offense or not!