Tip #6: How to Survive/Win an Office Holiday Decorating Contest

If you work in the corporate environment, you’ve been forced to participate in some form of holiday activity whether it was a party, luncheon, Secret Santa gift exchange, or decorating contest. Prior to forming Mako Services, Inc., the CEO’s suffered from having plenty of experience in each of these arenas, all at the hands of the same office. You actually have to wonder how anyone managed to complete their work with all of this holiday hoopla going around. On many occasions, the brunt of the activity planning and executing fell to us. You get abused in this aspect often enough and you start developing a rebellious nature. You start completing these tasks because if you don’t, you’ll be penalized, but you do so with flair of your own style, taste, and passion. You need this kind of attitude in order to survive or else you’ll wind up a miserable minion. In fact, even though you may meet resistance at first, you’ll find that your cohorts will catch your fresh and new energies like pink eye and submit to it. This resurgence among your teammates of joy and excitement over the unknown will prompt them to follow you anywhere, even through the mists of Avalon or fiery pits of Mordor. Bearing this in mind, listen to our advice and you will conquer not just the decorating contest, but the entire office as well.

1. It helps if you have some sort of creative artist-type working on your decorating team. Hopefully, you’re that person so that you can control the entire operation and simply dictate the tasks and responsibilities of each person. A creative artist-type person has a very different mind than a technical person. They have vision and know exactly what to do and how to do it in order to see this vision come to fruition. If you’ve got an entire team of technical people working together without any sort of imagination, you’re doomed to a theme of well-executed boredom. At the pinnacle of our power held at this office, we chose “A Hogwarts Holiday.” A Hogwarts Holiday could encompass all holidays since it’s generic (even though the books and movies only dealt with Christmas), making us the only politically correct team in the entire department.
2. Once you’ve got an innovative and reasonable (meaning that in the time allotted and with the supplies and resources available, you’re actually able to believably accomplish it) theme, you must commit to it like you’d commit to a lover. Hold it, nurture it, caress it, support it, be one with it. Think about how you can transform your assigned space, literally every nook, bookshelf, column, and doorway, into becoming your theme. We divided our blocks of cubicles into the Hogwarts’ Houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw) and designated each office a Hogwarts Professor. It was up to the cubicle and office inhabitants to do what they needed to in order to embrace their house/persona. The Hufflepuff crew all wore paper yellow and black neckties adorned with the house crest. Dolores Umbridge’s office was papered with all of her Educational Decrees. These are the types of things you need to think about.
3. Once the base of your canvas is complete, it’s time to add the details. Looking around the space, one could clearly see that they were standing in Hogwarts simply by looking at the house banners and professors’ offices, but what made it special? We researched the different kinds of textbooks that students at Hogwarts might have been forced to use, created book covers with these titles, wrapped already existing books in these covers, and left them scattered around the multiple filing cabinets in the office. Additionally, we covered the entrance door in brick paper and hung a sign that said, “Hogwarts Express 9 ¾.” On the other side of the door, we posted a hand drawn picture of the Hogwarts Express, the train that transports the students to Hogwarts each year.
4. Make it fun for your judges to “judge” your space. Observing the decorations is one thing, but participating in it brings the experience to a whole new level. If you’re having an Irish Christmas, why not serve Irish Soda Bread and Bailey’s (trust us, a little booze won’t get you in trouble and it’ll be much appreciated)? We instigated a little competition among the judges and declared that whoever found the most hidden Dobby’s would win the Goblet of Fire. Unfortunately, this prompted a few of the mentally handicapped judges to ask what was in the Goblet of Fire, but you get the picture…   
5. Finally, if you’re still not feeling confident about victory, wait until everyone goes home the evening before judging and ransack the other sections’ decorations. It’s important not to just destroy the decorations, but to remove them entirely as if they’d never been there to begin with. Besides, if you put as much energy into your theme as we did, there’s no way you can lose so if you actually do lose, it’s obviously a rigged competition. If that’s the case, what’s the harm in vanquishing your lying, cheating enemies via destruction?

In the rare circumstance in which the contest is fixed or another team legitimately outdoes you, know that if you adhered to our policy, you’ll be congratulated on your originality and dedication. We’re obliged to forewarn you that you should in no way assume that this guarantees that you’ll get a pay raise. At least rest assured that when you walk the halls of your office, you’ll now be looked at with an awe that stems from the knowledge that lying beneath your peaceful corporate exterior is a dormant artistic storm that is not to be trifled with. In our case, we have wands and absolutely no problem “Expecto Patronum-ing” your ass into another universe. How does the Bog of Eternal Stench sound to you?