HR Responds to Your Inappropriate {Self-Portrait} During Corporate Sip & Paint Night

[Subject: Corporate Bonding Sip & Paint Night]
[From: Linda Walsh <hr@reflixios.com>]
[To: Jeremy Burden <jburden@reflixios.com>]

Jeremy,

As you may have guessed, this email is with regard to your behavior during last night’s Corporate Bonding Sip & Paint Night.

At Reflixios, our core values are Openness, Industriousness, and Creativity.

So we would never dream of censoring any of our employees—far from it! This being said, the office is not the place for the type of experimental art you “created” last night. Even if you insist that it’s a “self-portrait,” scrawling “THE BEAST IN THE MIRROR WEARS MY SKIN AND WON’T LET ME SLEEP HE WATCHES HE WAITS HE KNOWS WHERE YOU LIVE” on pieces of a cow carcass with your tongue is not in the spirit of Corporate Bonding Sip & Paint Night.

The Goal of Sip & Paint Night

In passing out mirrors along with the brushes, canvases, and drinks, our goal was for each employee to create a sincere self-portrait, which we could then discuss to better understand how to mesh our personal goals with company goals during the closure session. After all, Joe’s intent in choosing “Sip & Paint Night” as our monthly Corporate Bonding Event was to put the entire company on equal footing, both in terms of skill levels and supplies. In the future, please be sure to stick to the supplies we provide during these events, and refrain from bringing your own art supplies or rotting organs without prior written permission from management.

Your Self-Portrait Crossed the Line

Stapling a cow’s heart to a photo of your boss’s head might be considered a great self-portrait in the art gallery down the street, but it does not suit the clean and friendly work environment we painstakingly cultivate here at Reflexios. For more information on what is and is not considered appropriate art, turn to page 76 of your employee handbook and familiarize yourself with the section entitled “Taking the ‘Counter’ Back Out of Counter-Culture.”

Alcohol Abuse Is a Serious Matter

I also received numerous complaints in my inbox this morning about the presence of hard alcohol. With plenty of wine available to you, it was inappropriate to drink from your own hip flask all night, even if the flask was filled with “an elixir to keep the beast at bay.” Due to the presence of food allergies in our office, this raised major sanitation concerns, and made some people (not naming names that start with “J” and end in “anice”) “totally fucking uncomfortable coming back to work.”

We all get stressed at work—why, I personally fantasize about putting Joe’s stupid tie through the paper shredder and watching him struggle as the knot grows tighter and tighter and his face gets closer and closer to the whirring blades—but it’s important to make sure that your employer NEVER knows how you really feel.
Individualism and emotional honesty are great, as long as they’re the individuals and emotions that you can find on page 54 of your employee handbook.

Past that, consider joining in on our Corporate Bonding Yoga Sweat Nights, or if that doesn’t help you with your emotional outbursts, a cult. Since this is your first offense, we’re letting you off with a warning, as long as you can make sure to mask how you really feel for 40 hours a week in the future.

Best,
Linda Walsh