Your Staff: Such A Genteel Group

"On the Lighter Side" will include incidents of office humor and encouragement, with the hope of bringing a smile to your day.

As most Faith Church attendees know, the staff meets in the conference room every Tuesday to eat lunch together. One Tuesday each month, we go out to a restaurant. What you may not know about is the process by which those restaurants are chosen.

Around this time each year, we engage in the annual restaurant rodeo, during which our favorite eateries are lassoed in with about the same degree of cheering, groaning and chaos as in a steer rodeo.

Speaking of steer, several steak and/or burger places were nominated as candidates. Pastor Steve shouted out his idea of visiting Five Guys. Bryan Bell also cast a vote for Five Guys "because," he explained, "my job review is coming up soon."

Carol Daubenmire agreed to head up the process this time. She allowed everyone to call out names of restaurants while she wrote them on the whiteboard. It was no time at all before someone discreetly closed the door because of the screeching and reprimands.

"_____ ______! Why would you say THAT place?!"
"They have good food!"
"Gag! I hate that place!"

Carol worked to restore order, then explained that each person would have four votes. We made our way up to the whiteboard, several at a time, and drew bold colored dots beside our four choices.

It was totally unplanned for this event to fall on our national election day. But it surely was appropriate. There were cries of disenfranchisement. Warnings to spell that write-in correctly. Some wanted a re-vote, especially when a certain pastor placed all his dots beside BDubs. However, in our system, this is legal. Someone was discovered adding extra dots to the board (initials PH). She insisted she was just recording the next person's votes for them. Strictly being helpful. Right!

A number of incumbents fell by the wayside. New candidates took their place, promoted by compelling grassroots efforts. Strong partisan opinions were expressed, but thankfully, stopped short of mudslinging.

Jacob Addison and Brian Smith were the last to vote. They stood there evaluating how things stood, trying to decide how to use their votes most strategically. Finally, others began to warn them to hurry up, but Jacob declared he had until 7:30 in Ohio! When he sat down, he sighed, "Now I'm too tired to really vote."

After half an hour of working to keep fights from breaking out, seeing that the process was not hijacked, and shouting to be heard above the din, Carol finally tallied the votes. The eating-out schedule for the next 12 months is complete. Carol collapsed into her chair and whimpered, "I'll never do this again. It was like herding cats!"