Jenna's House of Idiosyncrasies Version 10.0 [Focus.]

When I was a kid, I loved October for the sophisticated reason that my birthday was in the middle of the month, and just when I was coming down from the presents and cake, two weeks later came the sugar-coma-inducing, best-holiday-EVER, Halloween.

Over the years, however, October lost its charm with me. Birthday celebrations in offices were pathetic disappointments compared to elementary school birthday parties, where instead of distributing cupcakes with sprinkles to all of your eager classmates, you get to eat cake at a staff meeting on a random day of the month co-celebrating your birthday with three other schlubby Libras.

(Wood at Sweet Juniper)

Back when I worked in an office, all of the birthdays for a month would be celebrated with a single cake, and everyone born in that month would have to discuss the type of cake to get over a long, slightly jokey email chain. I rarely ate the office birthday cakes, even when I had skipped lunch, because white sheet cake or ice cream cake or cookie cake are all rather unexciting, and I was usually caught up in actual work.

The man who would eventually become my manager shared my birthday month. All I wanted was to get carrot cake, a cake that was exciting enough to eat, and each year this man vetoed my humble suggestion, so we'd have to get another boring sheet cake that I would not eat. I understand that my lack of carrot cake was more or less in the spirit or compromise, but in the context of all the other crap I had to put up with, it usually just felt like he was pulling rank, that I had to compromise even when he didn't, ever.

I know I sound bitter, and that's mostly because I am. I will never get back the time of my life that I spent fighting these petty corporate office politics. My only regret is that I didn't leave sooner.