Allow us to take you back to the 1980's.
Carrie's mom worked in retail. More specifically, she worked in Display at J.C. Penney. She decorated for the holidays, set up window displays, dressed mannequins, and generally arranged merchandise in an aesthetically pleasing manner.
But all was not well. The management was horrendous, and the boss was, allegedly, a power-tripping crank, heaping work on everyone below him. Unbeknownst to a mere handful of well-meaning employees, including Carrie's mum, a majority of the more jaded employees conspired to quit, leaving the work to the underdogs. Not only did they have to shoulder the entire load, but the boss got worse: narrow-minded, chauvinistic and unforgiving.
However, they managed to continuously prove him wrong, "thinking outside the box" and using ingenuity to attract more customers than ever.
One day, whilst rummaging through old display props, they found a turkey. One of the gloriously idiotic plastic things that would sit in the refrigerators in the appliance department, so that when a customer opened the door, they'd find "food", looking about as genuine as astro-turf.
They painted it gold, perhaps for use in some holiday decorating scheme. But when it came time to pack the thing away, someone, fed up with all of the stupid things the bosses did every day, got the bright idea to place it on boss's desk. It stayed there all week, like the Fickle Finger of Fate: a symbol of shame, yet, at the same time, kind of amusing. And so it continued. When someone pulled something grandly stupid, they were awarded the Golden Turkey Award for a week, forced to keep it on their desk as a reminder.
Ever heard the story about prison jokes? In prison, they tell the same jokes over and over, until the jokes are simply designated numbers, and all one has to do is walk in and yell, "17!" and everyone bursts out laughing? Well, the Golden Turkey soon had the same effect. One glimpse of the hideous thing brought chuckles on sight.
The Golden Turkey has been resurrected. |
