Courage Under Fire

So, yesterday I got a work email titled "Staff Presentation". I really like being able to come into work in jeans and a t-shirt when I don't have a meeting lined up with a client. "Oh no, we're all going to get told we're dressing too casually for work", I thought. Then I realised that this was a calendar event scheduled for that afternoon. Phew. Next thought was that someone was giving a presentation on something. I then remembered that we'd all been getting a fair amount of praise for various things and that this was probably to present certain members of staff with a little reward. I thought about a few things that I'd been doing well that had received a good response and thought I might be up for something. Of course, it'll probably be a bottle of red, which I don't drink anymore, so I'll pass it on to someone else.

The presentation came around and I was the first one called up. "Suzanne. For Courage Under Fire on the _client_name_ project." "No kidding!" I laughed. This was one of those projects fraught with inexperience and political issues on the client side and language and cultural barriers between us. I was then handed a nice, new, shiny, black iPod Nano. Wow. I was completely shocked, given that during the entire seven years I've been with the company, it has only ever handed out wine. They also had it engraved with my name, the company logo and the year, which was an extra bother they didn't have to go to, so it was nice.

So I'm not in fear of losing my job anytime soon.