Shh......Super Secret Ninja Friday

A couple of years ago, a lovely young lady...we’ll call her M... started working in my office. Who knew that when we hired her she was a little crazy (by that I mean fun crazy). Interestingly enough, her “fun craziness” didn’t start manifesting itself until after she had her baby last summer.

M is responsible for updating the staff biweekly calendar (a 3’ by 4’ white board). I think her creative ideas started one week when there was nothing on the board. She commented that the board was “totally boring” and that we needed to come up with fun things to fill the board.

A couple of weeks ago we had “Super Secret Ninja Friday”. We all had “Super Secret Ninja Names”; everyone was supposed to dress in all black and act like a ninja . The outside sales team didn’t dress like a ninja (they had to call on customers), but every time someone paged them over the intercom, we had to use their secret name. They were good sports about it. “K” brought in a chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate Super Secret Ninja Pie for everyone. Just saying “Super Secret Ninja Friday” all day long was half the fun.

I’m sure some of you are thinking “what kind of an office manager are you to allow such nonsense to go on in the office. First of all, if you really know me, you realize that I don’t care to act my age. Secondly, I’ve discovered these events have been amazing team building activities. And finally, we have very few visitors to the office, so what does it matter.

We have the best inside sales team ever. I also think we currently have the best working relationship between the inside and outside sales teams. And I attribute this in large part to M’s crazy ideas.

Some of our other “Office Events” have been:

• Halloween coloring contest
• Costumes on Halloween
• PJ party and Pancake breakfast the day before Thanksgiving
• Luau Tuesday
• Ugly Christmas Sweater Day
• Wearing running clothes to support our co-worker on her attempt to run a half marathon in Phoenix

Stay tuned, I’m sure there will be more upcoming events. Personally, I can’t wait for “Talk Like a Pirate Day”.