That pretty much sums up what has been going on here at Pollstar.com. We’ve been a bit stressed lately from trying to keep up with the changes for 2 Skinnee J’s, the new dates for Sam Phillips and the additional shows for Nashville Pussy, so management hired a “corporate morale officer,” who’s goal was to return the smiley faces to each and every employee.

“It will be just like the TV show,” claimed the morale officer, Mr. Simon L Gree. “As a group, you’ll be assigned certain tasks, and depending on who survives those tasks, will decide the outcome of the game. Ready?”

The first task was to nimbly cross the alligator pit in the parking lot while entering new dates for Morbid Angel and Lee Rocker into our PDAs. Surprisingly, most of our workforce successfully completed the task with nary a loss of limb. Result? 212 employees were eliminated during that first round and several gators had to be taken to the vet and treated for gastro-reflex syndrome.

The second task involved successfully swinging on a rope across the font tanks located on Pollstar.com’s south campus. Yes, we manufacture our own display fonts, ensuring that each date for John Berry and Dave Matthews appears fresh and crisp on your monitor. Of course, the chemicals used for font manufacturing are quite toxic, and more than a few of us succumbed to the fumes while doing our best Tarzan imitations. Result? 310 employees were cut from the game but each eliminated worker was given a year’s supply of Rogaine as a consolation gift.

Then there were other challenges resulting in more workers being eliminated. 412 employees were cut from the Ted Nugent moving target competition, 392 from the Boy Hits Car chicken runs and 271 of our comrades lost out while trying to negotiate online music licenses in the RIAA simulator. However, kudos go out to our sales staff, where each and every account exec successfully managed to complete the Britney Spears dress alike contest in under 60 seconds. Way to go, boys!

Eventually we narrowed down the participants to six surviving employees who were instructed to vote on the final outcome. Unfortunately, tragedy struck just as Mr. Gree was about to announce the final winner. Since the morale officer was new to our company, he was unfamiliar with our weekly schedule and was completely oblivious to the fact that Thursdays are when we hold our meetings with high-profile public relations specialists. As fate would have it, while Mr. Gree was opening the final ballot that would decide the winner, he failed to notice that he was standing behind a certain publicist’s SUV. Gosh, we’ll miss him.

The game is over now, and we’re back on the job, entering dates for Jason McCoy and John Hiatt. We have to admit, that while we’ll probably never know the results of the competition, our morale has never been higher. And as we watched that SUV drive off into the sunset, with Mr. Gree plastered on that back bumper between the “I Brake For Celebrities” and “Privileged Person On Board” stickers, we realized that the morale officer wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t just like the TV show.

It was better.