I was at this ceremony thing today where people who have been with the university a while were being recognized and their bosses were saying nice things about them. It's the kind of thing where you dress up, listen quietly, and then applaud.
Anyway, for the recognition of 5 years at the university, it has always been that people get a nice mug with a lid. This year the boxes were way too small for that to be the case, so I leaned over and asked the woman next to me who'd gotten the 5 year gift (I've been there 10; I got my mug 5 years ago) to open hers and see what it is. She opened it, and we just stared at it, nonplussed. My boss leaned over and whispered "it's... an ashtray?"
It totally was. An ashtray. In 2012. I about lost it, because of course, you're not supposed to be laughing at this sort of thing, which only makes everything about a billion times more hilarious, and I felt like I did in grade school when we had to go to church.
I remember one particular time the nuns gave directions for only the middle school aged boys to sing, since they hadn't been singing loudly enough at previous masses, and they belted it out like a flock of sick geese. I couldn't stay silent, so I tried to masquerade my honk of laughter as some sort of nose blow, but when I hurriedly tried to pull a tissue out of my pocket to cover my nose and make it look legit, I accidentally pulled out the bag of chips I'd smuggled in and put that to my face instead. And then the fact that I was fake-blowing my nose into a bag of chips sent me into even more hysterics.
