How fortunate was that?
So then I decided to check and make sure before I sent out wishes to you all.
I went online and sure enough,
there it was.
I looked further to read about how it began.
It was apparently originally
"Bring Your Pineapple to Work Day"
Here's the story...
The First Pineapple Day
“What’s up with the pineapple?” James asked as he walked in the door. He had noticed the large, ripe-smelling pineapple sitting on my desk, and was a bit confused.
It was 9 AM on June 27th, 2011, and we were in our small coworking office on Townsend St. in San Francisco. James and I were a bit over 3 years into our startup journey, and we had just started our summer at Y Combinator. It was still just the two of us; we had yet to hire any full time employees.
The truth was that I had craved pineapple that morning, so I stopped at the nearby Safeway on the way into the office. Our recent infusion of Y Combinator investment money had enabled us to switch our diets from mooching off of my aunt and uncle to actually buying our own food at the grocery store. This was super exciting, and I was taking full advantage of this newfound freedom. I like my fruit fresh, so canned or even pre-cut pineapple was out of the question. I bought a whole fruit and planned to chop it up in the shared kitchen. Even if I couldn’t eat the whole thing, I was confident that the other nearby founders would be happy for a snack.
Of course, that’s not what I told James. After 3+ years of working together in a confined space, we had developed a special level of snark in our relationship that’s normally reserved for notes left on badly parked cars. “It’s International Bring Your Pineapple to Work Day,” I responded. Adding casually, “Where’s yours?”
“That’s not a real thing,” James retorted with an eyeroll as he set his bag down and sat down at his desk.
“Sure it is” I insisted, and to back my claim up I pulled up Google Calendar and added “International Bring Your Pineapple to Work Day” to our shared company calendar. I set the event to repeat every year on June 27th. Later that day, we ate my pineapple in what we later termed the “pineapple slaughter” (a term which, in hindsight, was unnecessarily violent). At the time, we had no idea how significant this day would eventually become.
That night, I made the first public announcement of the holiday in a tweet:
worst Bring Your Pineapple to Work Day ever. No one else even brought their pineapples.
See Andrew Lee's other Tweets
One Year Later
By June 27th, 2012, Firebase had grown to a team of four with the addition of Vikrum and Michael. The first pineapple day had been long forgotten at this point, so it was a surprise to me and James when we arrived at the office to find Michael with a big, juicy pineapple on his desk.
“What’s up with the pineapple?” we asked.
“I don’t know. It said ‘International Bri Your Pineapple to Work Day’ on the calendar. So I did.” Michael responded.
“Where’s yours?”
I knew then and there that this was going to be big. If Michael was excited enough about the idea that a random confusing calendar event was enough to get him to buy and bring a pineapple, then this thing had legs. We decided that from then on, “International Bring Your Pineapple to Work Day” (“Pineapple Day” or “BYPTWD” for short) was going to be a company-wide holiday.
Secretly, I had grander ambitions: to make Pineapple Day a global holiday, on the level of New Years, Independence Day, April Fool’s Day, Festivus, etc.
Pineapple Day at Firebase Over the Years
We’ve celebrated Pineapple Day every year since.
There you go...What a fun story!
It's back to work for me but now I'm going to want a darn pineapple all day. 😋
