The annual company picnic is a great way for you to get to know your coworkers on a personal level in a friendly, social environment, whereupon you’ll find that — despite your petty workplace disagreements — you hate them even more.

This falls in line with my theory that working with people in an office would be great if it weren’t for the people.

Think about it. You’d be productive and happy at your job if it were just you, your dying plant and some office machines. Working without humans would be ideal, because office machines typically don’t gossip about you or force you to buy $50 worth of junk for their kid’s school fundraiser. They also don’t try to backstab you. There are the occasional rare exceptions, but after you unleashed that hard karate chop upon the fax machine, word got around to the electronic community that you weren’t to be messed with.

Unfortunately, you aren’t allowed to sucker punch coworkers. Not only that, you even have to make an effort to get along with them. This means you’ll have to attend the company picnic, even though you really don’t want to because, let’s face it, your coworkers are nuts.

You’ve witnessed some of them have an emotional breakdown simply because the vending machine was out of Diet 7-Up. You’ve had to attach written warnings on your food so that the people who steal out of the office fridge (commonly known as “Refriger-raiders”) won’t eat your leftovers. And you’ve seen some of your coworkers physically assault a copy machine.

What I’m trying to say here is that your coworkers are (and I don’t want to name call here) dangerous psychopaths. Yet still you have to put in an appearance at the potluck, where those with a last name starting with “A-D” have to bring a main dish, the “E-H” folks have to bring a salad, the “I-M” crowd has to bring Caspian Sea Beluga Caviar with a Saffron-enhanced French bouillabaisse, etc.

Once you’re actually at the potluck, I’d recommend that you don’t eat anything made by a fellow employee. Why would you? Extreme incompetence is not solely the domain of the workplace. Last Wednesday, you saw Sara accidently staple the Martinez file to her blouse. Are you going to trust her with a tuna casserole?

Besides, the potato salad Susan brought has already been sitting in the sun for four hours, so most people are probably going to get food poisoning anyway. This, of course, is horrible news in that many of your coworkers will have to call in sick on Monday. This means you’re going to have to cover for them and do all their work. In other words, it will be a typical Monday.

One benefit of food-borne illness is that it will keep you from having to listen to boring conversations. You aren’t a mean person and you certainly wouldn’t wish vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramping on anyone. But you also wouldn’t wish 20 minutes of Michelle in Sales bragging about her fantastic second quarter on anyone either.

And although I’m usually a big fan of free and unlimited beer, I’m strongly opposed to company-provided alcohol. There’s always some guy like Carl in Accounting who will get sloppy drunk and make a loud announcement where he’ll start complaining about how “all you lazy s.o.b’s” never refill the stapler and how it’s really ticking him off and how (pause as he takes another gulp of beer) if he has to replace the toner cartridge ONE MORE TIME there is going to be hell to pay.

So you’ll have to pull Carl aside and calm him down before he gets fired. And he’ll get teary and hug you and tell you he loves you in a brotherly sort of way, after which he’ll stagger off and hit on that new receptionist with the facial hair.

After awhile, you can make a graceful exit and rush home to get on your knees and thank your personal god that you are not related to any of those people. When Monday morning rolls around and you find yourself alone in the office because everyone else is at St. Mary’s having their stomachs pumped, you can take satisfaction in knowing it will be another year until the next company picnic. Plus, you’ll have a whole morning to get important things done, like change the toner in the copier. Because Carl was right.

None of those lazy s.o.b’s ever do it.

Steve can be reached at beauregardsteve@hotmail.com.