ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

My roommate and I were invited by a big company manager to go to a company party at the Cheesecake Factory Saturday night, to celebrate our recent profits, and the fact that her store finally hit its goal of 800 loans. The regional manager paid for this gathering out of pocket and encouraged everyone to get exactly what we wanted. “It’s not a good night out until we’ve spent a thousand dollars!!” is how he put it. I still felt a little weird about that so I didn’t go overboard or anything.

It was a pretty unique experience for me, because it was the first time in my whole life where I’d been encouraged to be completely 100% extravagant at someone else’s expense, guilt free. What’s even weirder is that I didn’t, at all. I only had one drink at the beginning of the evening, because I was the DD for me and my roommate, even though we were allowed to run up as big a bar tab as we wanted, and even though the regional manager offered to call us a cab at the end of the night. I had a regular type of meal and I got a piece of cheesecake to go. By the way, mixed drinks at the Cheesecake Factory taste very, very good. And I’m planning to learn how to make very good cheesecake, because it is my favorite dessert and buying fine cheesecake is far too hard on the pocketbook based on how expensive it was on the menu.

My roommate and I went back to my boyfriend’s house to hang out with those guys after dinner, but about half the rest of the party went to Johnny’s Tavern and spent a couple hundred more on Jager shots and similar items, according to what my manager told me this morning. This company really does have a party culture. I had felt a little nervous about going out with people who a) are with my company and b) mostly outrank me by a lot, but they made me feel really welcome and I had a really good time. I’m feeling a lot better about my company these days. It’s nice to feel included even if you aren’t a high-ranking employee. Also I can tell that my status has improved a little because the regional called me “sunshine” this morning when he called for my store manager, and everybody knows he only does that when he likes someone.