With every drink, every bite of food, and every alien slaughtered, one thing was on my mind: REPARATIONS, bitch.

Some background.

I make a point to go to at least one company holiday party every year. As I’ve mentioned before, all the companies I work for are owned by white men. (Side Note: This just changed in the past month. One is now owned by a woman; progress.)

This year, one party was planned for the end of January after the big push of gigs for the inaugural season. At this party, there is always free food and free booze. However, the venue was a Dave & Busters. I was not going to miss out.

To hedge my bet on having fun, I asked a black female friend to be my plus one. I am already surrounded by A LOT of white people for work. Being social with them was going to be a bit much. I chose correctly. When we arrived, we doubled the number of black people in the room.

Food was buffet style and okay. We got drink tickets we could use for our own private bartender for the party. It was on. Two hours into the four hour party, we smoothly asked the office manager for more drink tickets. She still had a large stake and we were not going to miss out.

Venturing onto the gaming floor, we found a cornucopia of shooter games. There was also skee ball and movie themed fun. There is just something so empowering about walking around with a drink in one hand and loud noises and bright lights inviting you in.

Last call was fifteen minutes before the end of the party. There was a long line of folks trying to cash in the last of their drink tickets. With mine, I received four kamikaze shots and was on my way. Back in the dining area, we discovered there were to-go boxes. I loaded up on bread and meat. Then the wait staff kindly pushed us out. They had yet another party to setup for.

Next there was more games and a trip to the ticket redemption room. I opted to keep my tickets for next time. They had run out of Minion dolls.

All told, our collective company tab was high and we ate well.

I will take whatever free things I can from the white man. These parties may be my only chance to claw back just a little bit for the ancestors.

Categorised as: Work

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