Friday 25 September 2009

Let them eat cake

This week I had an idea. I heard about the Macmillan Cancer Support's "World's biggest coffee morning", and wondered if our charity committee at work were doing anything for it. Sadly no. I was disappointed but not entirely surprised. It's been a year of rapidly declining morale, cutbacks and redundancies. From an office with an active S&S association, we are now left with a dribble of enthusiasm from people who all now have the threat of redundancy hanging over them. It's not a good place to be right now. But it's also an office that has been hit hard by cancer over the last couple of years. Some have recovered, but some lost their fight. They deserve better I thought, someone ought to do something! A casual conversation with colleagues followed, which uncovered many closet bakers........and so we decided to hold our own cake sale in aid of Macmillan, in our team, and invited the whole office to join us!

From worrying about whether we had enough to sell, this morning I was more concerned that we had too much and that no-one would turn up! Well I needn't have worried - my faith in the generosity of my colleagues was rewarded - we raised a brilliant £127, in just a few hours. What was even better, people actually had FUN - something we have had precious little of in recent months at work. We all went home a pound or two heavier but who cares, it's the weekend! For very little effort, quite a bit of money was raised. Macmillan Cancer Support will be a little richer, and I think we will be too.