CouchCoach
Staff member
- Messages
- 41,122
- Reaction score
- 74,963
Anyone doing anything special for sending this year out?
Let me share something I did back in the early 90's. We had moved to Idaho and that particular year had been a really rough one for some of my employees. One had lost her Mom, another went through one of the worst divorces I've seen, another one had her husband file bankruptcy on his business and we had just gone through the worst year with our younger son and drugs.
One night as my wife and I are commiserating about what a horrible year it's been, she said "I'd like to set fire to it and burn it down". That set the wheels in motion.
I announced a New Year's Eve Party behind our stations by a stream that flowed behind the stations after calling the fire department and explaining what I wanted to do. Set up a 55 gallon drum with a fire in it where we could burn whatever we wanted to be rid of in 1994. They issued me a permit after I secured all of the safety measures and the chief of that station asked me not to share what we were doing on the stations because it sounded like too good of an idea and he didn't want to have to deal with citizens of the ask forgiveness instead of permission mindset.
At 7 sharp, we fired that up and to my surprise almost every employee was there with their significant others and we had a crowd of about 80 out back and people could either share what they were burning or just let that be a secret symbolic gesture but there were some wet eyes as they tossed that into the barrel. There were a lot of hugs shared that night.
It later turned into a party for those without plans, including my wife and I and she was the Marketing/Promotions Director for the stations so she knew the inside skinny.
The following Monday at our weekly brainstorming ideas lunch, the entire staff was glad we'd done that and some spoke about how cathartic that had been to letting that part of 1994 go.
I believe in symbolic gestures to clear the mind and soul of whatever troubles us and 2020 has been a year like no other for almost everybody.
So, are you doing anything special to send 2020 into the void?
Let me share something I did back in the early 90's. We had moved to Idaho and that particular year had been a really rough one for some of my employees. One had lost her Mom, another went through one of the worst divorces I've seen, another one had her husband file bankruptcy on his business and we had just gone through the worst year with our younger son and drugs.
One night as my wife and I are commiserating about what a horrible year it's been, she said "I'd like to set fire to it and burn it down". That set the wheels in motion.
I announced a New Year's Eve Party behind our stations by a stream that flowed behind the stations after calling the fire department and explaining what I wanted to do. Set up a 55 gallon drum with a fire in it where we could burn whatever we wanted to be rid of in 1994. They issued me a permit after I secured all of the safety measures and the chief of that station asked me not to share what we were doing on the stations because it sounded like too good of an idea and he didn't want to have to deal with citizens of the ask forgiveness instead of permission mindset.
At 7 sharp, we fired that up and to my surprise almost every employee was there with their significant others and we had a crowd of about 80 out back and people could either share what they were burning or just let that be a secret symbolic gesture but there were some wet eyes as they tossed that into the barrel. There were a lot of hugs shared that night.
It later turned into a party for those without plans, including my wife and I and she was the Marketing/Promotions Director for the stations so she knew the inside skinny.
The following Monday at our weekly brainstorming ideas lunch, the entire staff was glad we'd done that and some spoke about how cathartic that had been to letting that part of 1994 go.
I believe in symbolic gestures to clear the mind and soul of whatever troubles us and 2020 has been a year like no other for almost everybody.
So, are you doing anything special to send 2020 into the void?
