You just never know...

...what will get people excited.

Last week I worked to get people excited about the May 1 kick-off for the Relay for Life. All over town the committee was working to get streets and offices decorated in purple. I was doing the same at work. I managed to get people in a couple of offices to decorate. We also had a bake sale and although we raised about $4oo and had lots of people bringing things, it was mostly the same people who always help out and very few people helped with the decorations.

But this week we are having Penny Wars and they have gone completely out of control! Here is how they work. An office or department gets a container and let's everyone know they are playing. For two weeks they will try to collect pennies because pennies are positive points and the office with the most points wins. Here's the fun part...silver money and paper money count as negative points! So not only can you help your own group with pennies, you can sabotage other groups with silver and paper.

All day today there was email going back and forth about who was cheating, who was giving away chocolate in return for pennies, who had hid their penny jar from visitors, who had made the slot in their jar too small for quarters, trash talk between departments, pleas for pennies, etc. Also there were more and more groups announcing that they were playing. You have to realize that all of this is going on in the middle of a REALLY BAD spam storm. I must have over 120 emails a day about penis enlargement or acai berry diets. We are getting it fixed next week, but meanwhile people are still emailing about pennies! I wouldn't have expected this in a million years! They are really having fun with this. Despite the fact that we are all swamped with email junk, people are doing mass emails to the whole place about penny wars!

I guess you just have to keep trying things to find one that works to get everyone excited. This one is a keeper! Now I just have to think up a really good idea for prizes for the winning offices. (And find people to help me count coins to find the winners!)