This really sucks. This is not a team-building exercise, this is a bunch of people forced to take their vacation with their boss, doing something they hate. Way to keep morale up people!
Stupid, stupid, stupid companies.
I did a six-month work experience when I was 19. As it got closer to Christmas, all of the other students talking about how excited they were about their companies upcoming parties. I was told that since the meal was " so expensive", they were not inviting me to the company party. After I had worked as an unpaid employee for weeks.
Nice
[Doc Martin] Salmonella en croute, prepared yesterday by unwashed strangers.[/Doc Martin]
I’ve been known to bring in five big bags of Oreo Double-Stuf cookies, plus a couple of gallons of ice-cold whole milk. Far from being sneered at, this dessert was fallen upon and gobbled up ravenously.
Well, yeah! My parking deck is three blocks and a 15-minute walk* from my building in downtown Cleveland. No way I’m schlepping a cheesecake on an icy sidewalk or the hot sun.
*and I get half an hour for lunch, so a quick trip to the store would have to be zero minutes long.
I’ve got a potluck tomorrow at work, and it will be a busy day (we’re going to be working). Damn straight I’m not going to waste my Friday night cooking something up that probably no one is going to have time to eat, anyway. The food has to be grab and go - cookies fit the bill perfectly.
Huh, this is a new one on me. I worked twenty-seven years and I never remember any party where the employees were told to bring in food. It was always the supervisors who paid for the food, brought it in, prepared it, and served it. The point was that we were throwing a party for our employees not making them throw a party for themselves.
We have a massive holiday potluck at work that I always avoid. Why wait in line for half an hour or more just to go back to my desk to eat? I’ll bring my own, thanks. But when our smaller teams do it, I’m more inclined to participate. We take over a conference room and combine work with lunch. Although I prefer tossing $5 into the pot and ordering pizza.
I’d love to see what our power useage is on pot luck days - I bet the electric meter is just spinning from the crockpots!
You bring up a good point! Taking the bus or holding it on your lap can be dangerous especially if it is baked beans in a crock pot. This also happened to me. A friend without a car called and asked me to bring her and the kids to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. I felt so bad because they were in the backseat and she had her son holding the Crockpot of baked beans. I went around a curve and some of the hot beans spilled on his leg and he was livid! I pulled over and he got burned through his jeans. I put the Crockpot in the trunk for the rest of the ride. I should have thought of that first.
I agree with the others who said this isn’t a bad thing. I’ll generally do something similar, in fact. It’s not that I don’t like to cook, or that I’m bad at it. It’s that I don’t have the time or money to spend on making a dish that’ll feed a lot of people. For example, my office had to work on Memorial Day, so we organized a cookout. We each kicked in two bucks for hamburgers and hot dogs, and signed up to bring something. I brought the cheese.
Even if I were inclined to bring something I made, I’m careful about what I bring. I can make a dish in the most sanitary kitchen with the freshest ingredients, but if it’s going to sit out for an hour or two before it’s lunchtime, forget it. I don’t want my dish to be the cause of everyone else’s food poisoning, thankyouverymuch.
I generally didn’t mind the potlucks I’ve had at my jobs. I liked trying the different food and showing off my abilities. We didn’t mandate participation and that helped make them enjoyable.
What always made them weird was we never had any place to eat together, so we’d all get our paper plates and go sit back at our desks alone.
One job had a crazy office manager who would go back to her house to cook during the day and get tanked while she was there and “forget” to turn the oven on and stuff. The holiday party when the barely-cooked turkey showed up 3 hours late was not fun.
There were a bunch of us, including my boss, who needed a real break from work during the day. Like away from everyone else, not to rest physically, so it was always fun to watch those of us like that sneak out for half an hour to re-charge.
What I hated though were people from other departments who would “happen” to walk by and be all “gee, what smells so nice?” and dig in before those of us who brought stuff in could eat. That happened a lot when I was in the South, so I always wondered if it was Southern hospitality thing that no one every said “Did you pay for that? Bring anything in? Were you invited? No? Then get your fucking hands out of there,” as I fear my Northern coworkers would have said.
I had one coworker who made sure she was first in line and would make two plates. When asked why, she’d say “My husband helped pay for my contribution, so I am getting him a plate to bring home.” When it was pointed out to her that her coworkers weren’t getting food and if she wanted to bring him a plate so badly, then she should not eat, she didn’t get the math.
They always got fried chicken, which I don’t eat anyway, but every single time we had a party, by the time I managed to get over to the table, there was never chicken to be seen, due to the husband-plates and interlopers. It’s a good thing I didn’t eat it!
Yes. I have never seen the word spelled. I detest cabbage, so pancit is out for me.
Reading that link explains why it’s always pancit: it’s the dish used in celebrations or birthdays. :smack:
The weird thing is I like palabok, which (apparently) is another form of pancit–sans cabbage (in the version I’ve had).
There is no way in hell I’d bring a hot dish or even brownies etc on the train and then the bus to work. Not happening. Luckily, it’s not an issue for me at work. I drive to my other job, so that’s a bit easier, but even then, I usually bring homemade cookies.
We have irregular potlucks in my department, and I enjoy them. Sometimes I cook something but more often I swing by Safeway on my way to work and buy a couple tubs of some deli salads. Once I brought a meat loaf, and people went nuts for it. These potlucks are always organized by the staff, and we all get along really well and enjoy each other’s company, so it’s a pleasure.
And this is exactly why potlucks need to be held within small social groups, and not among bigger non-social groups. Even among social groups, there’s usually at least one mooch who doesn’t contribute anything but who WILL help him/herself to everything not nailed down. The co-worker who fixed a plate for her husband should have been told that she’s entitled to ONE share of the food, unless she makes at least TWO contributions.
This does, as I said, also happen in social groups. I am particularly minded of a player who used to frequent our D&D group. He never had any spare cash, but he was always helping himself to whatever he found in our fridge, and he’d always beg for people to buy him a taco or two or he’d ask if anyone minded if he had a slice or two of that pizza that everyone but him had chipped in to buy. Oddly enough, he was always able to buy cigarettes. Finally, because of the mooching and because he was a bad player, the DM told him that he was no longer welcome at the weekly games. At the time, the games were held at my place, which was on an Air Force base. Everyone who wanted entrance had to show at least one military ID per car, or have someone on base vouch for them. This guy tried to get onto the base despite being told that he wasn’t invited to the games any more, and we’d have the MPs call us up, asking if this guy had our permission to come on base.
You solve this problem by opening up a large flour sack-type kitchen towel, setting the CrockPot in the center, then tying opposite corners together over the lid to hold it on. Learned that trick from my Mom, and I’ve seen her do it to big roaster pans, too. Guess you could also use a pillowcase, if you didn’t have the right sort of towel.
I hate potlucks with a passion, for all the reasons outlined above. I’m a food snob, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. If I can’t escape it, I’ll take something I know I will enjoy, and stick to eating that. Honestly, I can’t believe the garbage some people eat and proclaim how delicious it.
I remember one particularly grim church potluck where one dude brought a wee bowl of “potato salad” that was supposed to suffice as a contribution for his hoggish self, his equally hoggish wife, and their three hoggish pre-teens. Seriously, there wasn’t more than about four or five cups total in the bowl. He bragged on and on about how fabulous his salad was. I tasted it. It did not qualify as potato salad, as far as I was concerned. No hard-boiled egg, no celery, no onion as far as I could tell, zero flavor. It seemed to be nothing more than potatoes, mayonnaise, and a teeny amount of mustard. Not even any pepper! Nom nom nom, or vom vom vom?* You be the judge!
A friend who works for a state government entity regularly tells ridiculous work potluck stories. The supervisor is a tyrant who just looooves to tell people that what they plan to bring isn’t appropriate (it really would be), or that she herself has already decided to bring the same dish, so the unlucky duplicator will “just have to go to Wegman’s and buy a deli platter” or some shit like that. She’s notorious for making the annual holiday party a totally non-festive affair.
I’m glad I work for myself and the closest I get to any sort of potluck is if I make cookies or something like that and decide to bring extra to share with my vendor neighbors.
- I totally stole that from my friend Melissa.
Actually, I’d be delighted if I could find a source of potato salad that didn’t have pepper or raw onion in it, as those trigger my IBD. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, and all that. I do like the hardboiled egg and celery, though.
Yeah, he was being extremely unrealistic about the size of his contribution, though. Who eats only one cup of potato salad for an entire meal? I mean, most people will want a meat dish and at least one other vegetable, and possibly two or three veggies. When I was a young bride, I learned that my husband was perfectly happy to eat potato salad for dinner, and ONLY potato salad, if I let him.
…I don’t get it.
If it’s a potluck, wouldn’t you just take some pot…?
The only potlucks I’ve found that work are those at my church, where there are little old ladies (including the pastor’s wife) who really like to cook, and miss making food for a bunch of people. This sort of thing keeps out the resentment. Combine this with the churchy attitude of feeding the poor, and the ability to give monetary donations, and it works out pretty well.
I hated potlucks, mainly because I didn’t like my coworkers. However, at the place I’m working now, I get along with everyone. Our last potluck, the food was pretty good. The accountant made homemade, from scratch, with basil he grew in his garden, pesto. Tomorrow, we’re having another one.
Imho, the key is how much you like your coworkers.
I know this one guy that brings his own tupperware and fills them at the end of the Potlucks. Is that tacky or what? The guy is shameless and you can tell him others may want to take some home and he smiles and keeps filling his tupperware. He never brings a thing either!
MsChilipepper Thanks for the advice! I felt so bad he got burned. That is better then putting it in the trunk where it can still spill.
My sister got transferred into a place with a every damn month potluck tradition. Fortunately she was forewarned, and the very first lunch time she established she had this rare digestive disorder and was ‘stuck’ on a really strict diet to control it.
She would bring herself a single serving sized salad type thing on pot luck days and just eat that while ‘socializing.’ 