At my last job I used to bring fresh baked rye bread and hand churned butter for the mandatory potluck and would sneak out as soon as possible, without eating anything I didn’t trust so I could have some precious alone time. I never once took leftovers home. I also marked my potluck time as working on my time card and had a good time discussing why I deserved to be paid for being forced to be there.
Happily for me, the head bitch went on a low carb diet and told me in public that I couldn’t bring bread in anymore. I took that to mean that I was uninvited and never went to another one. Shortly after that, everyone else went on high carb diets and were uninvited as well. I was a hero by the time strongly suggested every one attend team building potluck lunches were down to three or four people.
Update- they got even better at my previous employer when the Indian co-workers decided to throw a Diwali pot-luck for everyone.
If you like Indian food, there’s not much on this earth better than a home-cooked Diwali pot-luck.
At my current employer, pre-pandemic we used to have quarterly pot-luck things - sometimes breakfasts, sometimes lunches, sometimes ice cream/snacky type things. They’re fine by me- I like showing off a little bit with my cooking. They weren’t mandatory and they weren’t regarded as a “treat” from management- they were more of a grass-roots sort of deal that the worker bees would scheme up on our own.
I can definitely see how having them too often or for too many people could be onerous though. I wouldn’t want to have to do this monthly, or for 75 people or something like that. That’d go from something fun with minor inconvenience to a total pain in the butt.
I know I’m in the minority, but I loved potlucks. It’s one of the many things I miss about going to work before the pandemic, like actually going to work of being forced to work from home.
Our work potlucks had the management team providing the main course (usually BBQ or pizza), and then the riff-raff bringing sides/desserts.
That resulted in a satisfying spread of bags of chips, store-bought coleslaw, potato salad, cookies and cake, and, from those so inclined, delicious home made stuff (from hot vegetables to salads to desserts).
All of the work potlucks that I’ve seen or participated in were employee driven, not organized by the Company. If you didn’t want to participate, you didn’t.