Employee of THIS month. Only.

As I mentioned way back in the very first blog post, I was recognized recently as Employee Of The Month. I was talking to some co-workers about my chances of winning it again and a supervisor overheard me. This is the conversation that followed:

"You can't win it more than once in a year."
"What? Why not?"
"It wouldn't be fair. Everybody deserves a chance to win it."
"Everybody DOES have a chance to win it. If they do a good enough job."
"Well, how would it be fair if the same person won it all the time?"
"If the same person wins the award for best employee every month, there are bigger problems than fairness, don't you think?"
"The purpose of the award is to motivate people to do a good job. If they don't think they have a chance to win it, there's no incentive to do a good job."
"Okay, what about my motivation? I can't win it again. What's my incentive to go out and do a good job now?"
"You already won it."
"I know. But I can't win it again."
"You can win it again starting in January."
"What if this is how they did it in pro sports? If the Bucs won the Superbowl this year and were automatically ineligible to win it again for 12 years, why would they even bother showing up the next season, other than to do the bare minimum required just to collect a paycheck?"
"That's a poor analogy."
"How so?"
"Because the Bucs aren't going to win the Superbowl this year."

Oh.