What is it about the Accounting Department that makes them want to drink?

Maybe it's the fact that they deal with the dirty cold facts that underlie this place, that we are poor, and will perpetually be poor. Maybe it's the way they all secretly seem to hate each other. Maybe they are all so overworked that they have no friends to go out with in real life. But our accountants here tend to be BIG fans of the happy hour, and beyond. And Monday night, we went out to celebrate 10 years of service from our resident groupie, Susie.

Susie is crazy. She is the type of obsessive energy type person I talked about earlier in the Harry Potter post, except for minus the anime. Instead, add in Buffy, anything Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and soooo much more. She gets 6 weeks of vacation for her time served, and I think that almost every second of it is spent at some convention. Unfortunately, she missed Comi-Con this year, and will also take a miss on Dragon Con as well. But she has at least three more planned for the year. But what really makes her crazy is the fact she has been here for 10 years.

Never mind the fact that we have treated her horribly as an institution, and shuffled her around like some sort of rummy cube tile. She's here for the vacation.

Monday we went to a bar that has table that they must have pillaged from a massive garage sale of round end tables. They are all about the size of a postage stamp. Not designed for group visits. It is also dark and noisy, but plays sports of three tvs, which redeems is slightly. Since I don't drink, I often get bored and watch the tvs, since they are slightly less embarrassing than watching coworkers work on drinking themselves into the ground.

Since Accounting/ Finance is one of the largest admin. departments, I thought for sure there would be more people showing up. Battleaxe's low turnout numbers from that department would have been due to the fact she was an absolute witch (although she did once buy me a scone). I mean, 10 years is something.

Something to ignore, apparently. From what I hear, a total of 8 people showed, including myself and Susie. Henry was there, and it was clear he still had a thing for my coworker, so maybe it is not so tragic that he is leaving. It was a modified open tab, where you had a settling up at the start of each round. Pre-pay tab. I left early, so I can't comment on the success of this strategy, but I don't think that we ended up $120 in the hole.

So where were the absentee accountants? One had a legit excuse: planning for a wedding. He would have never heard the end of it if he had not reported for duty. The rest? MIA. Can't they even come and fake it through a single round? Friends don't let friends celebrate in a dismally attended affair.