Working With Animals

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Normally, when one hears the words "staff retreat" together, it might bring to mind a day of painful ice breakers (Find someone in the room who plays a musical instrument!) and boring keynote speakers. I thought this until yesterday! Our retreat was at the ZOO and it was freaking awesome.

A few highlights:

- A scavenger hunt where my team ran around like fools, knocking strollers and old people in wheelchairs out of the way, cursing in front of small children and their parents, and not seeing a single animal the entire time.  Umm, and not to brag or anything, but we tied for second-to-last place.

- A Project Runway spirit challenge wherein we were presented with, among other things, pink tissue flowers, feathers and lots of sparkly glitter things; this is how Ben "Fabulous" Franklin was born.

- Two 100 year-old giant tortoises going at it in front of curious children and horrified parents. That's 200 years of sexual wisdom!

But by far my favorite portion of the day involved everyone on our staff telling a funny story about working where we do. The most intriguing: a colleague speaking about taking cash at the door of an event, and one of the dollars received was wadded up and contained more than just a slight residue of a powdery white substance. My question to this particular party boy: are you being ironic, or do you actually think snorting coke through a $1 bill give you any street cred?