Office Etiquette: Halloween

As we reach the end of October things are starting to get spooky. Halloween is approaching and many of your coworkers may be ready to get into the holiday spirit. Halloween in the workplace can get a bit frightening if you’re not sure of Halloween office etiquette. Whether your workplace has an official Halloween celebration, or you like to bring the celebration to your own workspace, you should probably switch out your sexy pizza costume, for a more work appropriate peanut butter and jelly costume this year.

Halloween costumes for work

Since sexy costumes are out of the question, you may be asking yourself if it’s okay to put together something scarier. Experts suggest that a good rule of thumb is to skip the mask, excessive fake blood, or anything exceptionally gory in the workplace. This is mainly for safety purposes. It is best for the working environment if your coworkers can see your face, and know that you aren’t really hurt or in danger at work.

So you want to try out a new recipe you saw on Pinterest and bring some creepy treats into the office this year? Keep in mind regular office etiquette when it comes to bringing food into your workplace. Do you have a place to store the food safely? Also, try to be considerate of those with allergies by either avoiding the reaction causing ingredients or, at least, by adding a warning to your dish so that they can avoid it if necessary.

Most importantly, remember that you are at work! Unfortunately, a celebration isn’t a reason to avoid your work for the day. Don’t ignore your phone, e-mail, or other responsibilities just because you’re feeling spirited. You’re boss will still know which witch, ghost, or werewolf was responsible for your work, and why it didn’t get done. This could jeopardize future holiday celebrations for everyone!

 

Does your workplace have a Halloween party? Do you have a costume chosen for this year? Let us know in the comments!

Tricks, Treats, Frights & Freaks: Happy Halloween from ABG!

Happy Halloween! We have a quick post for you today to show you how we put our creative minds together to come up with funny, scary, interesting, and downright odd costumes for our annual office Halloween party. And yes, we took our own advice from last week and made sure that all of these costumes were safe for work—it’s Friday, almost a holiday weekend, and none of us is trying to have a meeting with HR today!

ABG Capital I Halloween Group

Continue reading

Halloween Costumes: How to Avoid Being NSFW

If you’ve been following along, you know by now that here at ABG Capital, we love ourselves a party! If you’re new here, stick around because we are a fun crew offering up helpful work/life tips! Halloween is approaching and, keeping with our party-loving atmosphere, we are once again holding our annual pot-luck luncheon and Halloween Costume Contest. Our handy tip, to wrap up your week, deals with avoiding any work-related controversy when it comes to what you wear to the office costume party. Continue reading

Just another Friday at ABG

Since we didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday, Happy Halloween! Of course we celebrated the holiday in the office yesterday by throwing a Halloween Party complete with a Pot Luck lunch and costume contests. Right now, I’d like to announce our winners for these five costume contest categories:

  • Best Woman: Denise Breide as a witch
  • Best Man: Nick Jenkner as Ezio Auditore da Firenze from Assassins Creed
  • Scariest: Tom Cavey as Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars
  • Most Original: Steve Korbett as Gary King from The World’s End
  • Funniest: Joe Aponick as Jed Blazanin another ABG Capital employee

If you want to see some more great pictures of everyone in their costumes, visit our Facebook page!

IMG_2273small IMG_2262small IMG_2264small

In other news from this week, Brian Barnebei started on Monday as our new Legal Counsel. We mentioned last week that we gave him a warm welcome by giving him some decorations for his office. Unfortunately, he didn’t like all the Pitt Panthers memorabilia we filled his office with. He retaliated by dressing up as a Mountaineer (since his REAL favorite team is WVU Mountaineers) for Halloween. He was a great sport about the whole thing which is why he’ll fit right back in here at ABG Capital.

Our Executive Team has also arrived back from their Gazelles, Inc. Fortune Growth Summit in Las Vegas. Our CEO, Jeff Tapolci, had this to say about his time there, “As usual, the Fortune Summits validates a lot of what we are doing right, but also gives us a lot more to think about that we can be doing as a company. This particular event validated that we are doing the right things by focusing on our culture.” It’s always nice to be reassured that you’re on the right track to making your company as good as it can be.

Before we close out this week, we’ll be joined by our family, friends, clients, and associates for an Open House to show off our new office. We’ll enjoy a great evening filled with great company, light hors d’ oeuvres and refreshments.

On that note, have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

It looks like October is starting to come to a close and we’re finishing out the month with a bang here at ABG Capital! All week our Executive Team has been in Las Vegas at the Gazelles, Inc. Growth Summit working on their leadership and strategic planning skills. They’ve attended these summits twice a year for the past eight years, and they always bring new information that will help our people and our organization prosper. If you’re interested in how the first summit this year went, check out this blog post! We’ve also posted some great pictures of the speakers so make sure you visit (and “Like”) our Facebook page.

While our Executive Team was off learning tools and techniques to bring back to the organization, the rest of the ABG Capital employees were learning some new skills of their own. Maria Gross Gray, our Health and Safety Specialist from Cintas, spent the day teaching our staff about CPR, First Aid and Safety. If you want to see some more pictures, CLICK HERE!

I have make a quick announcement about the FANTASTIC lunch that our October Lunch Committee put together. They went with a soup and salad bar and it’s safe to say that it was a hit around the office. Especially since we were seeing snow this morning!

IMG_2202small

Now that we filled you in on what went on all week at ABG Capital, let’s share some exciting things that we have going on next week. To start, we’ll be welcoming Brian Barnabei as our Legal Counsel. Although it is Brian’s first day, he isn’t a new employee. Brian used to work for us from 2007 to 2011 and now we’re excited to have him back in the office! We thought we’d give him a warm welcome by filling his office with a few decorations that remind him of his favorite sports team.

Brian is actually a a WVU fan...

Brian is actually a huge WVU fan…

Also next week we will be having our annual Halloween Party and Pot Luck lunch. Everyone is encouraged to wear their best costume and compete in our costume contest. Of course we’ll be taking pictures all day so make sure to keep up with us by following our social media sites.

As most of you know, over the past few months we’ve been working on an office expansion project. ABG Capital is growing and our office is growing with us. Next Friday we’ll be holding an Open House to show our brand new office space to our family, friends, clients, and associates. If you’re interested in finding out more about our upcoming events, please contact to our Office Administrator, Sara Warhold.

That wraps up this week’s Just another Friday at ABG Capital, so make sure to follow us on all of our social media sites as well as subscribe to our blog so you never miss a post.

Have a great weekend!

Just another Friday at ABG

It’s safe to say that our office will be receiving a face-lift very soon. We’ve been mentioning that we put together an office decoration committee and we’re happy to announce the materials for phase one of the whole office redecoration project have been sent off to the printer. We’ve gone through tons of ideas and edits and then more edits on top of that. The next step is to get the materials from the printer and start placing them on the walls. We are going to have three huge pieces and then some smaller things ready to go for our open house on November 1st. Since that dates getting close, we can give you an idea of what these three huge pieces are going to be. One is going to be a giant clock that represents the 12 Chimes of Life. The second one is a giant tree that will highlight employees and other things that matter at ABG Capital. The last, and probably the most exiting piece included in phase one, is a giant (26ft long) timeline that walks you through the lifetime of ABG Capital. These things are going to look amazing in our office and we can’t wait for them to be finished.

This week we also had a visit from Robin at Sunnybridge Natural Foods. She gave a great presentation on how health and wellness can be achieved through nutrition. The session was topped off with lunch and Sunnybridge gluten-free bakery treats, which everyone said were yummy!

TrichellesmallOn Monday we welcomed a new employee, Trichelle Barish, to the ABG Capital community. Trichelle was hired as the new Provisioning Representative for VoIP Innovations. Everyone help us in welcoming Trichelle!

The next piece of news that we have to share is about Halloween. We’re looking forward to the costumes and candy that are going to fill the office on our Halloween Party! Not only are we going to have a Pot Luck lunch, but we’re holding costume contests. There will be a prize for the best woman, best man, scariest and funniest costumes. There will definitely be pictures of the winners along with all of the other festivities that we’ll have going on.

If you remember from last week we were cheering on our Pittsburgh Pirates as they were making their way through the series against the cardinals. Unfortunately, our excitement didn’t last much longer because last night’s game proved to be the end of truly great season. It was a sad night in Pittsburgh, but it’s safe to say that this season was legendary. See you next year Buccos!

IMG_1459small

Just another Friday at ABG

Happy Friday! October is right around the corner and that means that we have some announcements to make from our Month End ABG Capital Meeting that was held today. We first want to congratulate Jake Crisman on being voted the Employee of the Month for August. Here’s what the team had to say about Jake:

Jake from ABG CapitalWhen you hire a new employee the biggest issue you have upfront is how long is it before that employee can start to contribute. Well when Jacob Crisman, started he “hit the ground running” and never looked back. He started to contribute from day one and continues to both please and amaze us. Early in his start here, he helped the IT Services with our implementation of the Office 365 deployment.  He has been well received by both staff and management and has greatly helped Steve with the day to day IT tasks.

In our meeting today we also discussed some of the exciting training sessions we have coming to the office this fall. Here’s the list of things we have to look forward to:

  • Sunny Bridge Natural Foods will be coming to do a workshop on health and wellness.
  • We’ll be having CPR training for people who need re-certified and also for those who want to become certified.
  • Halloween is coming up so that means we need to think of costume ideas for our costume contest and pot-luck lunch.
  • We’re getting ready to plan our annual Turkey Bowl Flag Football Game in November.

The build-out project is getting to close to complete and our office decoration committee is working hard to come up with ideas to make our office reflect our culture. The committee is planning come HUGE things and since we’re planning for our Open House to be November 1, you’re going to start seeing some pictures of the design process soon! That wraps up this weeks rendition of Just another Friday at ABG Capital and we hope you have a great weekend!