We love celebrating holidays at work. If it's a major government-recognized holiday, we get a day off. As an added bonus, on the first work day after a big holiday, there's usually some holiday leftovers in the lunchroom for all to share. There's another holiday we celebrate here at ZCO - in fact, we celebrate it once every 3 months: Refrigerator Day.
For those of you unfamiliar with Refrigerator Day, let me explain. It's celebrated four times a year - in February, May, August, and November - during the middle of the month. Refrigerator Day is the day we get our quarterly retirement fund statements. The name was given to this event years ago when a manager who was handing out the statements to their employees said "you can hang hang this on your refrigerator door." To quote a co-worker this morning, "It's too depressing to put it up where I can see it everyday. I usually throw it in a file foler in my closet. Retirement is so far away for me, that the numbers don't mean anything." Well put.
The way the stock market has been post 9/11, it truly has been depressing to look at our statements and think "Wow - this is my future?" But with the recent revival, the quarterly report we received yesterday was the first one in a few years that didn't turn our stomachs. Our retirement fund gained almost as much in just the fourth quarter last year than it did for the entire year of 2004. While we were happy with the figures, there was a downside - when the statements are passed out, we have to endure an unpleasantry: anyone within 10 years of retirement has to let you know that they're "close" to retiring. It was one afternoon you didn't want to go to the lunchroom for the afternoon break; alot of people just kept to themselves when they got their statement.
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