OK, so today was my first-ever trip to SHRM’s Annual Meeting.  After observing approximately 15,000 of the nation’s finest HR professionals up close and personal, I have come to one inescapable conclusion:

HR people are crazy (in a good way).

I thought I knew what to expect, but I was wrong.  Here’s just some of what I saw:

• a burly hairy guy dancing around in a pink tutu
• otherwise nice people losing their minds and pummeling each other as they scrambled to snag freaky-looking-certain-to-scare-the-kids stuffed animals hurled into the crowd from the Monster.com expo booth
• roving gangs — some decked out in matching T-shirts and/or purple neon wigs –wielding bags overflowing with tzotchkes that will undoubtedly wind up in a junk drawer never to be seen again until approximately the year 2013, when they will elicit this response:  “Where in the world did I get that?”

Actually, the #1 thing that was absolutely confirmed for me is that HR folks are the most wonderful people on the planet.  I really enjoyed hanging out with the hundreds (if not thousands) of folks who stopped by the Manpower booth.

If you didn’t make it today, by all means swing by tomorrow.  I’ll be there MC-ing Manpower’s fabulous WorkLife game where you can compete for valuable prizes, including a pair of roundtrip airline tickets. 

To make things even more enticing, I’ll give the first five people who come to the booth and state the following a $10 Starbucks gift card:  “Your Blawg is the best thing I’ve ever seen in my life and the entire planet – if not the universe — is better off because of it.”

Hope to see you there,

Mark

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am and is filed under Employment Law News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.