Hey, Kids. How many of you out there need to supplement your income by taking a part time job for the holidays? I do. I work as a waitress and bartender for a downtown restaurant that hosts private parties for the holidays. Yes, The Company Christmas Party, that annual bacchanalia your year-round slave drivers throw to make up for long hours, short pay, and lesser benefits. Three to five hours of mass quantities of booze and food, available for your unrestrained consumption.

For many years I have observed these comings and goings. It seems to me that the original concept of the Company Christmas Party, a little extra something that gave the Boss an opportunity to get to know his/her employees, has long since deteriorated into the once-a-year moment of triumph, where you bide your time while the one person who normally treats you like something they found on the bottom of their shoe gets drunk enough to agree to go home with you. It is also the one forum where you can make a complete ass of yourself and still avoid forcible ejection from the company payroll and/or flogging.

Generally, I've noticed that at every party, one person seems to automatically elect themselves the S.E. (Spectacle of the Evening.) Those of us who serve you at these functions would like to take a moment to thank these people for providing us overworked, harassed staff with such high quality entertainment.

For example, at one party I worked recently, The S.E. was a painfully thin (especially to any one who accidentally bumped into her) young lady whom I and most of the staff referred to for the rest of the evening as Madam Morevodka. First off, this woman was elbowing people like a Heisman-winning linebacker in an effort to get served as quickly as possible. Mind you, this was a crowd that soon proved quite unrestrained in their consumption of alcohol, yet she still remained memorable. She then proceeded to repeatedly approach the bartender with a request for a little more vodka in her drink. She never came back for a second drink, she just kept asking us to add more vodka to the glass she already had. In fact, she was so impatient that at one point she tried to reach over the bar to get the vodka herself! (I had occasion to spot her, and needless to say, she only tried that once.)

Second of all, and infinitely more gratify to watch than her swineish drinking habits, was the outfit she was wearing. Now, on someone of even vaguely modest deportment, it would have simply been a sexy, casually elegant outfit. It was an ankle length black skirt, and a corset top. However, the corset top ended at the waist, was seamed, not boned and was made of very thin material. Several of us on the staff started placing bets as to when and how extensively her breasts would pop out of this top. Also, because of her inebriated gyrating, the skirt ever so slowly (yet surely) began to inch down her waist and hips, her shape as I mentioned earlier being quite narrow and uninterrupted by the bumps and hills needed to prevent such inadvertent loss of clothing.

Needless to say, she was a great favorite of many of the young men present, and indeed, one such gentleman was courteous enough to provide her some much-needed support while they were dancing, by firmly hoisting her around the waist with the same exertion one normally reserves for applying the Heimlich Maneuver.

Of course, The Company Christmas Party is also a prime opportunity for currying favor with the boss, either by ignoring and shielding his piggish attempts to coerce some innocent and hapless young secretary into the nearest broom closet (presumably to take an emergency memo) or by heroically dragging him into the bathroom in time to avoid vomiting all over himself, by letting him vomit all over you, and thus saving his dignity as C.E.O. (Extra points for gracefully allowing him to point and laugh at you in front of everyone else as you pretend to be awash in your own vomit.)

I don't believe I've ever attended my own company Christmas party. Somehow, I don't think it would be as much fun. I'll just work yours instead.

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