Work Dinner Date!

Express Cincinnati East
Cori. Deb. Chris. Brandi. Jess

In celebration of my amazing but interrupted run at Express, my work treated me to dinner at El Coyote in Anderson. I hadn’t been, but it was certainly a good pick.

I read a poll once [back when I worked at ….. the ‘radio station’] that 89% of middle working class Americans did not like their jobs. At that time, I was relatively confident that I comprised at least 25% of that number. My empathy goes out to any commissioned sales reps who maintained employment survival between 2007 and 2010. I was asking for money people didn’t have, for air time they didn’t really need, for bosses who didn’t really care. Awesome.

In March 2010, I found Express: A global, Christian-founded company with small, local franchises. By small, I mean offices of 2-10ish people. I decided to go for it, and I will never regret that.

Fast forward 1+ year. Our owners rewarded their success by upgrading our office to a building with the space and storage to satisfy everybody.  We no longer communicated with the entire office just by raising our voices, and we added a wall-size logo inside on the main entry wall. Small, but rewarding touches.

When Joe & I found out his base assignment for the next 3+ years was Scott AFB, IL, I was thoroughly disappointed that I would be leaving. I didn’t expect the kind of going-away that I got from my work.

This is what they presented me at dinner:

 Here’s what my Express & Cincinnati Basket contained:

- Collapsible picnic basket

- Framed 8x10 of our office

- Montgomery Inn BBQ sauce

- La Rosa’s pasta sauce

- Can of Skyline chili + box of spaghetti [<3 Cinci!]

- Busken Bakery smilies

- 6pack of Mt. Carmel

- STAT drug test [I actually laughed audibly at this]

- Express bobble head pen

- Graeter’s buckeyes

- Jelly Bellies

- Cincinnati Reds shirt for Sydni

- $100 Best Buy gift card

- Card w/awesome well wishes J

- Reference letter created by and signed by both owners

I definitely didn’t see that coming, and I was blown away by their combined generosity. That’s by far the best going-away bundle I’ve ever received. I left the restaurant even more bummed out that I would be parting from both my coworkers and all of Cincinnati’s prized favorite stops.

I got home to find that Joe was already back from IL J It’s good to have him home. Our crazy weekend is about to commence!

xo | cmd