We used to celebrate employee birthdays at Pollstar.com. You folks who work at large, multinational corporations such as ours know the routine – someone sticks a candle in a Hostess Cupcake while the rest of the crew sings “Happy Birthday To You” to the lucky employee. Then it’s out to the parking lot for the traditional birthday spanking followed by consuming massive amounts of Jose Cuervo.

However, when you have over 3,500 workers who are busy entering dates for Damien Rice, researching new shows for Galactic and filleting the new shows for Leftover Salmon, all those birthday celebrations tend to distract everyone from their daily duties. On the other hand, morale is important in the workplace, and telling our workers that they can’t have their birthday parties and their parking lot tequila blowouts is tantamount to telling Britney Spears that she has to cover up her navel and start using words that are three syllables or longer. That is, unless you offer them a viable alternative.

So we came to a decision. In place of celebrating someone’s birthday, we decided that we’d celebrate an employee’s anniversary with the company. And instead of doing the cupcake routine followed by the tequila bender in the parking lot, we decided that everyone would sign a greeting card, kick in a buck, and then we’d give the lucky person the card filled with money at the end of the day. That way, all the dates, like the schedules for cKy and Hank III would be processed in a timely matter, and the anniversary person could buy as much tequila as he or she wanted, and still have enough cash left over for a good, professional spanking. So far, so good.

But it didn’t stop with employment anniversaries because pretty soon we were celebrating wedding anniversaries, engagement anniversaries and rehab anniversaries. We signed cards for divorce anniversaries, and collected money for paternity suit anniversaries. And while we were celebrating all those anniversaries we began to fall behind on processing the incoming tour data, making us late to add dates for Norah Jones or Opeth.

Take today, for example. Already we’ve signed greeting cards commemorating a vasectomy anniversary, an adoption anniversary, a reverse-vasectomy anniversary and a malpractice anniversary. Plus, we’ve kicked in a buck for a dialysis anniversary, a colonoscopy anniversary and a liposuction anniversary.

Yes, we’ve signed so many cards and donated so many dollars that we’ve developed permanent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and we’re flat broke through the first payday in January. Plus, we’re going be up all night working on the schedules for Sting, Shania Twain and Noe Venable in order to make up for all that time spent on signing cards and flinging dollars. And while were burning the midnight oil, there’s only going to be one thing everyone’s mind. A question that we’d really like answered, before our wrists wither away and we all have to file personal bankruptcy. After all, we’ve signed all the cards and given away all our money, so we deserve an answer.

Just how many anniversaries can our boss have, anyway?