Sweet Sweet Irony

The District Attorney's Office is broken down into what are referred to as "zones". I work in the red zone. There are 5 colored zones: red, blue, gray, green, and orange. The colors correspond to the different precincts within the county that that zone is specifically responsible for. There are also specialized zones; a zone for gang related crimes, homicides, domestic violence, etc. that transcend strict geography and take their pick of any case that falls within the scope of their zone.

The only reason that I'm writing this is so that you understand some of the compartmentalization that the office, as a whole, has. Around the holidays, I'm told, most of the zones throw some sort of holiday party and open it up to the rest of the office to come share their holiday spirit. They all pick different days so over a 2 work week period, most days there is some sort of fiesta going on somewhere in the office.

(As an aside, the red zone, where I work, is also having a party, but we are throwing it outside the office, and not letting other people come. I shall endeavour to explain the main reason in a later post, it's an interesting story.)

Being relatively new, and not really having much of any contact at all with people in other zones, I have largely been staying away from these parties. I'm sure I could go and mingle and meet people and everything would be fine, but the other people from my zone are largely not going to any of them, which leads me to believe there might be a reason. Although what little I've heard did make them sound kinda enticing. Everyone says that the zone basically just gets some beer, some liquor, and some wine, covers the lights with some sort of opaque fancy-colored paper, and someone brings big speakers and an ipod and they have a mini-party. Nothing fancy, but could be fun.

The party season seemed to be winding down and I had not really gone to any of them so recently I heard that DTAP zone was having a party. I asked one of the other paralegals here (who seems to know everyone and had been to a couple of the parties around the office) if he wanted to go. He kinda seemed unsure, but I persuaded him by telling him I hadn't been to any of these shindigs and felt I should at least go to one and try to meet some other people in the office. He reluctantly agreed but seemed surprisingly apathetic about the idea.

It did not take me more than 10 seconds to figure out why after we got there. In my haste to go to a holiday party I hadn't thought to ask what DTAP stood for. DTAP is Drug Treatment and Alcohol Prevention. There was almost no booze. Only awkward government employees who were apparently expecting a lot of people to come to their party (which did have lovely hors d'oeuvres by the way), but with barely any alcohol I guess a lot of the draw was gone because my co-worker and I were the only people who showed up. Apparently they see getting buzzed as step 1 towards a nasty spiral downward into a world of heroine binges and spousal abuse. So there was really only enough wine and 6 oz beers (no liquor whatsoever) for everyone to have 1 basically. Apparently, they didn't get the memo that holidays parties are about alcohol and strategically placed mistletoe...ESPECIALLY when it's a government employee party, most of these people need all the help they can get when it comes into assimilating into mainstream society. Without any booze, it's nearly hopeless.

The worst part was the look on their faces when I went to go get myself a second Dixie cup of wine. It was sheer contempt. They did everything to dissuade me from having it except hold my hands down. I gotta say though, if those were their counselors than the future of this urban center is a boozed-up Utopia, because they didn't even make me second guess my decision. In fact their inability to carry on a conversation without appearing to have Aspergers drove me into booze's warm and loving arms like the prodigal son returning home to his father's embrace.

So I learned to be cautious about DA holiday parties, and get the whole story before I go leaping. This is reason #2 of 2 why we kinda section our zone off and have our own holiday party.

I'll explore reason 1 at a later date.