//OFFC/ The Day I Bought a Horse to the Office

This December we had nice idea to cheer up every Monday with a delicious cookies, cakes or anything else, done by me and my fellow colleagues, tirelessly contributing their free time for free to the greater good of the company.
First week's team managed to find one escape goat, who spend whole 6 hours of her weekend baking muffins, they were delicious. Call me scrooge, unmotivated or rebel but I don't see the point of wasting 6 hours for something you get no pay.
So, It turned out the time for my team (7 men and 2 ladies) to spend last bits of week's free time on baking. I can bake and I enjoy baking, but it seemed fundamentally wrong for me, so I passed, remaining 6 fellas were familiar with baking as much as our ladies familiar with oil change in the car, so it left only for our ladies. To be honest, both of them are manipulating, both of them try to get as much recognition and I was ready to continue by betting broker hobby...
For coincidence, that was the same weekend we had christmas party in our corporate, so we came up with conclusion, that we can pretend that we baked the cakes, under painful hangovers while we simply raise the money and run to the shop one hour before the great moment of sweetening of Monday.
So we did, and even thou nobody believed our story, we even managed to thriftily save about 60 Litas (app. 25 USD). And then the fun began...
So 9 wise men and women began firing the neutrons in their brains storming our teams Lync with solution to painful problem of having money, nobody could spend for themselves.
One wise man suggested getting bear in the pub, after work, but he was shamefully booed after public's finding its monday. Then came the bright young lady with proposition to buy some office decorations, and, because she was so convinced, she even came up with illustrations.
I dont have the picture, she actually send, but as far as my marketing knowledge goes, the search engine worked really bad that day, because all he came were the exactly same results for search phrase: "Worst office decorations"

It comes after keyword "Worst office decorations"

In Lithuania, we have a "thing", very popular in 80s-early 90s it's called "Lietutis" (rain). She put some pictures of that retro thing, and another sweet lady agreed to her brilliant idea. Because second lady, which was agreeing to idea of spending 20 bucks on useless and tasteless (see illustration) decoration, bought in huge quantities, your fellow blogger, decided it's time to save the day.
Because our company is obsessed with charity, donations, slaveounteering and other public relation things, I thought that for once, it could come from my side. So I proposed, that since 2014 is year of the horse, we should buy a wooden horse, keep it as our team's decoration until snow melts away and then donate it to the poor children. The crowd lifted me up and took to the streets, shouting, that new Genius was born twenty four years ago, and it looked like nothing is going to stop me from becoming CEO, or at least marketing manager.

Classic design, natural matereals,
quality build.

Uncanny waley product,
vulgar, low quality and
synthetic materials

However, all turned out completely different. Our manager (the second lady) got inspired by me, and she decided, that we don't need simple, retro-styled wooden horse (on the left), she wanted to do charity in style, by choosing much more expensive Chinese horse, full of synthetic materials, questionable quality and...sounds, coming out, when you press the ears of the horse, oh, and twice expensive (horse on the right).
I lost the battle of finding the perfect horse, and I was delegated to go and buy it, because store was close to my home.
I felt like an old racing horse gambler in the stables, carefully checking all the properties of the horse: strength of legs, symmetry of head, condition of hair and even examined the nuts and bolts, holding it. I said i'll take one, and they offered me to wait for 20 minutes for box to come from the warehouse. I patently waited, examining the trends in toys market, then the horse arrived, it was ugly as hell, one eye was clearly way more upper than another, so then I ordered to bring another one. Another one had neck, looking like a Loch Ness monster's, so I said, that enough is enough and I need to go to their breeding grounds and select it myself. They didn't allowed me in, but they brought whole pallet of them, after opening more than 10 boxes, I finally found the right one, then I found the mint-condition box and I honestly said thank you for the guys working in that store. Because I was working in the same store (something like Best Buy) for a whole summer, and I know how annoying it is, when customer like me comes in. They smiled and said it's ok. Perhaps because I was with my girlfriend and it might look like two young and struggling parents are doing their best to find a gift for their child.
While it turned out quite different from my idea, it was first time in three months at the new job, when I was feeling doing the job I like.