Magic, Teamwork, and Creativity

Every year, my co-workers and I plan a fun outing with some of our boss' discretionary entertainment budget. In the past, we've done plays, fancy dinners, and everything in between. This year, my buddy Tammy Good (in the colorblock dress in the center of the photo below) was responsible for planning the merriment, and she did a fantastic job! Since all fun in the Progressive universe includes food, we started the night at Yamashiro in Hollywood .

http://www.yamashirorestaurant.com/index.html



It's a bit of an adventure driving around the Hollywood Hills to find it, but the views are awesome, and we had a waiter with a healthy sense of humor who also recommended terrific food and drink options from the more-than-pleasing menu. And the valets were patient with our requests for a group photo after dinner.

The second part of Tammy master plan was a visit to the Magic Castle. The castle is a private club for magicians and magic enthusiasts, basically LA's version of Hogwarts, but with hard alcohol! Normally, a member has to sponsor you or your group to get a reservation, but Tammy managed to talk them into giving her a temporary membership so we could get everyone in. Work it, girl!! There is no velvet rope she can't navigate!

http://www.magiccastle.com/

There are scheduled performances during the night in various rooms of what used to be an enormous Victorian-style private residence, or you can just walk around and see magicians talking about and practicing their craft in the various bars and common areas. Our performers included a very interesting guy name Jheff ( yes, that's Jeff with an "H", and he made us spell it back to him several times during the show... ) who managed to get almost every member of our group involved in his show. We were easy targets because we were sitting in the front row!





After a lot of fun Wednesday night, today was our actual planning meeting. Since Progressive paid for all our fun, we figured we owed it to the company to get some actual work done. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned in at least one blog before that I have a terrific boss, and one of the items on her agenda was "celebrating" our accomplishments for 2008.

Deb is one of the most creative people I know, and she managed to recognize each one of us individually and present us with a gift representing our accomplishment. My gift was a set of floor mats. Don't worry, these are not going in my new car. I've already turned one into a piece of wall art for my office/cubicle.



This probably seems like an odd gift, so there's a back story I need to share here for this to make sense.

One of the classes I handle a lot is Total Loss, and a portion of the material involves practice around identifying options and condition on a vehicle to get the most accurate market value. We can't always practice on a live vehicle, so for years we had been using photos of my '97 Chrysler Sebring as the mock "total loss" vehicle. It had plenty of things wrong with it, including filthy carpet that numerous details could not clean up. So one day at the car wash, I was looking for some interesting floor mats to cover up the dirt, and found these.

Yes, it's tiger print, which is totally me...obnoxious and unforgettable at the same time :) My students would always comment on these, and it was a great way to inject some humor into the class. Since I lost my floor mats when I traded in the Sebring, I guess Deb thought the new car needed some personality. Like I said, she's creative!

So now you have an idea why I still love coming to work at Progressive after 14 years! Work is work, but we all still know how to have fun. Thanks for a great meeting, everyone!