Let me start by saying my dream job has always been to work somewhere that I could bring my dog to work. Studies have shown that employees who are allowed to bring their pets to work are happier and much more productive. I am an avid pet lover, so you can imagine my excitement when company pets began to show up here at smokingpipes.com.

Here comes the disappointing part: they are all aquatic. That said, I am hoping this is beginning of something really big. Bobby, our resident photographer, has setup an aquarium in his office, across in our other building. We are not talking regular fish, but coral, banded coral shrimp, hermit crabs, and snails. This I knew about, but one day I walked into Susan and Alyson’s office and saw a small aquarium with 2 small fish. My immediate response was, "does Sykes know about these?" (this being my usual reaction when we get new employees). I was told no company pets...anytime I have mentioned to Sykes that we need an office pet, I get a look that speaks volumes (roughly translated): Lisa, don’t even go there. Do you know what kind of damage a pet could do to all these pipes? In a way I can relate: pipes are like Sykes’ children and pets are like my children. We do have a few stray cats that roam around the parking lot and live under our building that Alyson and I feed.

I’ll keep you posted, at least the fish food isn’t going to kill our monthly food budget and as of now they are not on the company health plan. We’ll wait and see if they are alive after the 90-day new employee probationary period.