Dear work, potluck is not a 'treat'

I like Potlucks at church. We have some great cooks and one guy bring this loaded lasagna that is to die for.

I bring deserts mostly and they go. I like to socialize once in a while but the fact they make it mandatory takes all the fun out it. I used to dislike my companies Town Meetings for that reason until I realized it was an hour to relax and listen to a bunch of bull and get paid for it. Not so bad…

Now potlucks are something you never want to attend in AA. Just because someone gets sober doesn’t make them a clean person. I once was asked to pick up this guy who didn’t drive and a turkey he cooked for a potluck. I follow the directions and find myself in a trailer park In front of a fifth wheel trailer home. Very small and cats everywhere. I go to the door and he opens it and I looked inside and it was bad, really bad. OK, disgusting!

So he says, I don’t have a stove so we go across the road to his neighbors house who has a larger fifth wheel and there is the turkey on top of the dirty stove. His place was full of dirt and empty beer cans. I dropped off the smelly guy and his turkey at the potluck but I will never eat at one again. People were gobbling the turkey up and as I watched in horror.

A-freaking-men!
In my office we do this for every birthday, and it gets really tiresome. Not only are we expected to bring food, we get hit up to “donate” for gifts and decorations. Right now I’m on a team of 13 people, so you can figure out how often I have to deal with this.

Not to mention having to sit among balloons and streamers almost constantly… Some people leave the crap up for days or even weeks. When it’s my turn, everything goes in the trash first thing the next morning. What a waste.

My wife worked at a place where once a year, the boss would take everyone out to lunch at the same place, with a set menu of about five items you could choose from. And you had to stay late to make up for the time you spent at lunch.

Sometimes, yeah. Thankfully not my office.

I shudder at the thought of trying to bring a casserole on the trolley.

I was a contractor at a very large insurance company once. The managers in the department were real jerks and took every opportunity to remind the contractors that we were barely tolerated. They paid us big money, so we didn’t care.

The funniest though, was the infamous “Christmas memo” concerning the huge departmental potluck. In bolded print was a statement that the contractors were NOT included in the merriment and fellowship.

Hooray! said us, as we hied ourselves to the local tavern. Thus, we avoided the fights over who’s got the most kids so deserves the most leftovers, the lukewarm casseroles teeming with bacteria, and standing in line in a long hallway, watching plates of food go tottering by. I don’t miss that place.

If I never see another tater tot casserole again it will be too soon.

I always figured that one wouldn’t bring anything to a potluck he/she wouldn’t eat, so I pigged out and enjoyed. I can’t anymore- I’m on a sodium-restricted diet.

Had a potluck with classmates. Had to remind one that no, you can’t leave coleslaw in your locker. It needs to go into the fridge. Really. The worst part was he had leftovers that he stashed in his locker and ate for lunch a couple days later.

Good thing I don’t like coleslaw.

Ewwwww!

When I worked at the radio station, we had some part-timers that would not bring food and then make themselves to-go boxes before the potluck was even scheduled to begin. In that world, you always let the djs go first - since they had a limited window where they didn’t have to be on the air - and couldn’t hang around for seconds or thirds. Fortunately, Miss Bertha always schooled those nasty-ass part-timers whenever she caught them. And you didn’t mess with Miss B.

I also detest pot lucks. Not only do I not like being forced to take time out of my day to purchase ingredients and cook for work, it seems like most people are on a diet of some sort (except me), so what inevitably happens is everyone either brings a rich, fatty entree no one can eat (and that I don’t want to) and there are tons of leftovers or everyone tries to bring diet food so that the dieting people can eat it and no one does because it never turns out well.

What I don’t get about the diet food is that it’s usually rabbit food - a dry salad, low-fat substitutes for typically high-fat, high-calorie foods. I always find myself thinking that they’d find losing weight much more pleasant or at least more bearable if they cooked something that actually tasted good and used “real” ingredients instead of using almost exclusively low-fat, low-carb frankenfoods. Yeah, some substitutes taste ok, but not when your whole dish tastes like it.

Mine does, and the majority of people I work with take the bus in. They still do this potluck nonsense. A lot of people just run down to the store and buy cookies or chips or something. Our potlucks are really sad, but we keep having them anyway. There are some people, strangely enough, who *enjoy *these things, plan for them, cook meals for the office the night before, take their car instead of the bus for a day so that they can bring in crock pots, and are really excited about it. These people I like to call “crazy.”

My co-workers are mostly married guys. Without fail, they’ll bring in something their wife made. Either that or a bucket of KFC. In other words, something that required no effort whatsoever. I’m a single guy and I know how to cook…I used to spend an hour or two making something tasty. Now I just get something from Trader Joes that I can stick in the microwave for 5 minutes and toss it out on the breakroom table.

I can’t blame her. If she spends her weekends working hard to create tasty and attractive confections that people pay her good money for, I can imagine that she wouldn’t be particularly interested in doing it for free just for the company potluck. I’d bring Little Debbies too.

I hate forced workplace socialization with a fiery passion. One of the best things about being a work-from-home contractor is not having to do any of this bullshit anymore.

When i was in my 20’s, I worked in a place where we all got along very well, and of our own accord organized potlucks. That was fun and pleasant.
As you can guess, management eventually forbade them. :rolleyes:

That made me snort with laughter. Of course they did!

We had a potluck lunch back in December. It was a holiday thing. I didn’t bother cooking anything, but I picked up an appetizer platter from Stop & Shop. It had cheese, pepperoni, and crackers.

Good thing, too. Everyone else brought in cakes, pies, and cookies. Nothing like an all-sugar lunch! (Washed down with soda, of course.)

A little off-topic:
When our potluck Christmas party was announced at work, an older guy complained, “I can’t bring anything! My wife works!”

Yep, I had a boss a few years ago who was really into golfing. So guess what our department did as a team-building exercise? There were a number of us who were not even remotely interested in spending an afternoon golfing, but we were more or less forced into attending. Oh yeah, and we weren’t allowed to charge the afternoon to company time either, it came out of our vacation. :mad:

Peg Bracken recommended this tactic in one of her books. And actually, given the fact that a lot of women don’t wash their hands in public restrooms (I have no idea of men’s handwashing habits in public restrooms) I think that I’d rather eat the commercial snack cakes.

As for the older guy whose wife works…tell him that every supermarket these days has ready made platters of vegetables or fruit, and that any deli can make a tray of cold cuts and cheeses. Or he can just order some sliced cold cuts and cheeses, and arrange them on a disposable platter. Or he could pick up a couple of cakes or pies at the store. Or he could provide the plates, utensils, napkins, and garbage bags (and cleanup services). Or he could even learn to cook. I’m willing to bet that he’s the first in line with his plate, whether he’s brought something or not.

HA!!! :smiley: These stories are great. (Except Shoeless. That totally sucks, dude.)