Greetings once again, my esteemed readers!  It has certainly been a while, but The Corporate Ninja is back with another exciting and motivational tale of workplace harmony, chi, and other such zen-related things.

As you know, last month was the time for companies throughout the world to honor their employees' diverse cultural and religious differences by throwing non-denominational motivational office Christmas parties.  Christmas is the perfect time to throw such parties, since the company doesn't lose out on a whole lot because it has been statistically proven that office employees don't do any work in the period between December 15th and January 15th.  They mostly just sit at their desks buying useless crap on Amazon for their stupid relatives or sending ridiculous borderline-offensive religious-themed "All Office" holiday emails and filling up other employees' inboxes with non-work related distractions.  However, as I reached the murder quota set forth in my contract for this year, I am told that I must respect the company's decision not to fire the troublemakers or even chop them into tiny pieces and mail their parts to various remote locations or foreign countries.

As it is halfway through January and Amazing Ben finally decided to allow me to write another update for his bullshit website, I feel that this is a good time to share my holiday party experiences with you, my esteemed colleagues, so that you may take this information and use it in the future to improve productivity and morale in any employees you may find yourselves one day managing.

I arrived at our office party at the scheduled time, bearing a homemade Greek salad and a bottle of inexpensive wine to share with the commoners I work with.  Everyone was excited about my arrival and not at all frightened for their security, and when I stepped into the company function room with my festive red hat on the room became completely silent and obviously full of morale.

I don't understand why everyone always looks so uneasy around me.

The party went well at first.  Everyone seemed to be mingling OK with the exception of Dominick in Purchasing, who is an anti-social bastard and who will probably the first person I put to the sword when the New Year starts and the Executive Vice President of Personnel and Corporate Ninjas allows me to continue my hands-on office approach to management.  However, as the event dragged excruciatingly on and on I became more and more tired of the boring unproductive small talk and quietly longed for an office full of people working diligently and fearing for their lives.

About an hour in, I was really getting sick of the fucking Christmas music.  That bitch Kirk in marketing had brought about eight thousand hours of "some jerk sings Christmas bullshit" and after hearing "White Christmas" no less than five times in a half hour I was ready to sever all of his appendages and craft an exquisite pair of nunchucks from his bones.  I politely asked him if he had any non-denominational non-winter-or-Christmas-themed music because all this Jesus crap was giving me a motherfucking headache the size of Mt. Fuji and he told me he didn't think he had brought any and that since this was a holiday party it made sense for us to listen to holiday music.  I cursed his mother's name under my breath, quietly backed away and hid behind a plastic plant, waiting for the perfect opportunity to exact my vengeance for his flippant denial of my well-mannered and reasonable request.

A few minutes later, one of the other employees in marketing came up and started talking to Kirk about something that was certainly not work-related.  I pounced.  With a battle-cry of, "Religion breeds inefficiency!" I deftly yanked the boom box CD player from the wall, leapt into the air and issued a near-fatal deathblow into the back of Kirk's head.  As he fell in a heap I taunted him, yelling something to the effect of, "looks like a red Christmas now, bitch" and reminding him how lucky he is that I'd already slain fifty employees this fiscal year.  Such is the price of insolence to one's superiors.

As Kirk lay there twitching, the mood of the office party quickly shifted from "uncomfortable small talk" to "ultimate ninja-induced obedience".  Since we were already on the subject of exterminating workplace cancers, I decided that this would be the perfect opportunity for me to issue the end-of-year layoff notices.  According to many business management seminars I have attended, it's good to give that sort of thing out when the employees are relaxed and not likely to retaliate against the company in any way, and if my vicious assault on Kirk had demonstrated anything at all, it's that any sort of retaliation attempts against me would be incredibly foolish and ill-advised.

Since I like to get creative about this sort of thing I decided that this year the best way to inform people of their lay-offs was to stick their pink slips to my shuriken ninja stars and throw them at the soon-to-be-terminated employees.  This softens the blow a little bit, and makes the painful leg wound their primary concern, relegating their unemployedness a secondary issue.  Take note of this for when you become managers one day, as it is truly a humane way to break such difficult news to your employees at a delicate time such as the holidays.

That about sums up my holiday party experiences for 2005.  Hopefully 2006 will be filled with more excitement, motivation and profit as my boss has allowed me to exchange my pay raise for an increase in my extermination quota.  Also, I will try to stop being so lazy and write more updates so you don't have to go a year and a half between stories from me.