office politics

With a deliberately teasing title like that, you're probably expecting some juicy material... gossip like who gets along, who doesn't, and who showed up to work wearing only a bra. (Whoops! Sorry, Billy... I promised I wouldn't mention that, didn't I?)

But no. What I'd like to talk about right now trumps all of that. It's more important than story. More important than script. More important than the casting process, network notes sessions, and even more important than rewriting. Yes, I'm talking about:

Coffee creamer.

Don't laugh. You can't possibly underestimate the importance of a nice strong cup of enjoyable coffee with which to begin your 12-14 hour day. If you don't believe me, just ask my friend Di, an attorney who spends entire days with her leg shackled to her computer and five cups of coffee within easy reach... But this isn't her blog, it's mine, so let's get back to me: And without my drug of choice, I would probably be wandering around the office drooling on my shirt with my eyes at half-mast mumbling about how pretty they painted the walls in this building (purple...red...a hodge-podge of rainbow-rific colors). And since I don't drink my coffee black, "enjoyable" to me equals having creamer. And how does my need for coffee creamer play into office politics, you may ask? Why is this blog not about the need for coffee alone? Allow me to address that...

You see, here in the halls of Viacom/MTV/VH1/LOGO, the Powers-That-Be must expect that some folks will burn the midnight (and the early morning) oils, and so there are kitchen areas on every floor of all three buildings, and each kitchen is stocked with plenty of coffee-making supplies. But the week before last, the vanilla creamer in our kitchen began to get low... I asked Joe (our production associate) to sound the alarm, which he did... to no avail. The creamer got lower. And lower. And then, there was none.

Just when I was about to commit hari kari on the front lawn, our asst. production coordinator Jessica (a merciful soul) presented me with the greatest gift I've ever received: a two-days' supply of single-serving vanilla flavored creamer packages that she'd stolen from another kitchen in another building. HALLELUJAH! But wait! That means that other buildings have creamer... and yet we have none! And that's where the office politics come in. Apparently, we here in the building with the rainbow-rific hodge-podge of red and purple walls aren't good enough to get a new supply of creamer. Nooooo.... That's saved for the people in the other two buildings who have more reasonably colored walls. The Powers-That-Be apparently like people who work within reasonably colored walls better than those who work within unreasonably colored walls. Jealousy, perhaps?

Whatever the cause, the result of such blatant office-politics-gone-awry is that we have no creamer at all in either kitchen of this building... except for the powdered kind that (I think) could be used as an alternative chemical compound in the embalming process. But I haven't let the Corporate Man get me down! No way! I have my sources... and my resources... and I will NOT let office politics ruin the start or end of any of my days here! And so today, when the intrepid Joe (or, Mister Joe, as he prefers to be called) was out doing a supply run, he bought our production its own stash of vanilla flavored creamer. When he came back into the office and delivered the news, I nearly wept... and then I used some in my coffee... and now I am fully caffeinated... and that is, in part, why today's missive is more of a tome.