Hooray! It’s THAT time of year again! Time for institutionalized, organized FUN!
Just got a note that tomorrow is our department party/monthly meeting! Bring a dish! It’ll be a blast! Oh I hope I can sleep tonight from the excitement - we all know that METTINGS are a blast, and office parties are seven kinds of fun, so imagine what a shindig a MEETING PARTY will be! I can scarcely contain my enthusiasm!
And I’ll certainly bring a dish! Thankfully, I have nothing better to do this evening than whip up something for my co-workers to eat! Or maybe I’ll buy some chips and dip, and feed them at my own expense! The cost will be more than offset by the Christmas bonus I won’t be getting because “times are tight”.
Not TOO tight, though, because we ARE having the grand office shindig with the steak dinner, free bar, and prsents for the kiddies at the really expensive hall! You can bet your bonnet I’ll be there, folks! I can’t think of a better evening than watching my co-workers get drunk and listening to the president of the company talk about what a great guy he is!
It’s a shame our office doesn’t have a speaker system they could blast Christmas music on constantly, but you know, “times are tight”.
Yeah, our office party was on Monday (Monday’s a funny day of the week to have a party, but whatever). Thankfully, I forgot all about it, so I didn’t have to feel guilty about non going. I probably wouldn’t feel guilty ANYWAY, soulless bastard that I am.
Got an e-mail, yesterday. There’s going to be ANOTHER office holiday party. What the hell? One not enough? THIS one’s going to be a breakfast and gift exchange. And guess who’s not going? If you guessed Kn*ckers, you guessed right. Because I’m poor, and I don’t buy presents for people I don’t know, and I have actual WORK to do, thankyouverymuch. So there.
But KN*ckers, that’s the beauty of a MEETING PARTY! You can’t decide to not go, because it’s also the meeting! The best kinds of parties are the ones you’re obligated to attend!
My office party takes place after office hours. No, I am not obligated to attend. That is, not obligated if I don’t care about my bonus. I have only been here for about nine months, but I have come to understand that a vague relationship exists between bonus and appearance at the party.
The office Christmas party is a bit of a sticking point for me as well, if only in principle. It’s an evening event, held at a swanky restaurant and bar, and all employees are strongly encouraged to attend (read: “You’d better be there”). But spouses and significant others are not invited.
That’s right: Semi-formal dinner out on a Friday night to celebrate the season, but leave your wife/husband/S.O. at home. I think this is hideously inappropriate. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have no S.O. at the moment so it’s not an issue for me, but I know it is for others who work here.
The partners want to act like the Winter Party is a “social event,” but they totally ignore the long-established social convention that couples are not invited to dinner parties as singles. And then they virtually make attendance mandatory, so even people who don’t want to go out without the S.O. are required to go, often pissing off the wife/husband/live-in in the process.
IMO, if it’s social then it should be truly social – S.O.'s invited and the option of declining. If it’s business then it should be conducted at work, during business hours.
Same thing here, Jodi. My office party is firm-only. While the idea of exposing my lovely SO to the odious people I work with is distasteful, I would enjoy going rather more if I didn’t have to hide at the bar.
At least you don’t work at my wife’s elementary school. Her festivies include:
A five-day “Secret Santa” gift exchange. You buy one gift for your person each day. On the first four days it’s something small, like a candy bar, or bottle of Coke. On the fifth day is the gift, no more than $20. Overall you’re looking at spending between $25 and $30 all told.
The Christmas Party. Last year it was held at a shit restaurant here in town. This year it’s at a country club. The cost $25 dollars per person, plus a “white elephant” gift. This gets you in the door, and the food. Drinks are extra. Total cost if we both go and have one little drink: At least $60, probably closer to $70.
My wife didn’t feel like being the Rosa Parks of this situation, but fortunately a few of the other teachers are sick of the situation too, so they’re silently protesting by not participating in any of the festivities. There’s only a few dissenters so far (including a Jewish woman who received a Santa Claus statue from her secret Santa last year), but hopefully enough people will withdraw so the school realizes that teachers don’t feel like spending close to $100 at Christmas for this nonsense.
My office is pretty odd too. We received an email from Those Who Are Most Exalted™ yesterday. It said:
We may decorate our cubes, as long as it’s in a professional, non-offensive manner (I’d love to see something that’s both professional and offensive).
We can wear “Super Casual” clothes all next week! This is big news for us, since we don’t ever get to evade the business casual chic and wear jeans, even on Fridays. The catch, we have to purchase stickers for each day that we plan to dress down. It’s a buck per day currently, but the price goes up to two bucks per day soon. If we’re caught in casual-wear next week without a sticker, we get fined 5 bucks. The money goes to pay for the festivities.
We’re also having a bingo parlor day, where each employee can go play bingo for 30 minutes. Then of course, the whole thing concludes with a gigantic potluck.
In all seriousness, I’m not entirely happy with the office holiday party either. Due to the tight budget and whatnot, we’re only having departmental parties on campus. So I get to hang out with my coworkers in a big meeting room. No family, no beer. At least it’s during work hours.
They’re talking about having some of us double as musicians, standup comedians, etc. Blargh. There’s also the issue of asking us to bring “ethnic foods”. I’m too white to do that. But, if I didn’t want to cook, I could just throw in my $15 and be done with it.
Best office Christmas party: Company footed the bill for a hotel room at a swanky joint downtown. All revelers dressed to the nines. Spouses ENCOURAGED to attend. String quartet during faaaabulous dinner. DJ rocked our world into the wee small hours. More partying ensues in the rooms til the sun comes up.
Stupidest Boss: Company has 50 employees. One Jew. Catholic boss refused to buy anything but ham for the pot luck – even when he was reminded that there was a Jew in the group. Just flat out refused.
Worst party: My husband’s company has a party during the day at a pizza joint. You don’t get paid if you attend. Wha???
I’m painfully white, so when management asks me to bring ethnic food, I go on the offensive.
Cheese Whiz on Ritz crackers, sliced bananas on 'Nilla wafers, pb&j on soft white bread with the crusts cut off (use the nasty grape jelly for best effect), a bag of Mother’s frosted animal cookies or anything you can add a dollop of Cool Whip to.
Ask for crap, get crap.
See, that’s pretty much the kind of Office party (as opposed to the departmental meeting party) that we’re going to have, and I can’t think of a single reason I would want to go to that. I work with these people - they’re not my friends. I don’t want to spend a night dressed up eating expensive food with them. Fortunately that one is optional.
We have a daytime party here on campus where all the employees have stand on line to shake hands with the President and his wife. It’s excrutiating. And the food sucks. We also have a divisional luncheon where we pay our own way and do one of those “swap” things where you can steal a person’s gift. I am going on vacation that week to avoid both parties.
At a Christmas party for a company I used to work for, the CEO got up in front of everybody and berated them for not being grateful enough for working there. He actually said, “You should get down on your knees and thank God you work for SIS!” I am not making this up!
We just got the email today. We’re doing a freaking COOKIE EXCHANGE! That’s right, we should each bake 72 cookies, and put them in little plastic bags (12 bags, six each, plus a copy of the recipe) and then we’ll exchange our 72 cookies for everybody else’s. YAY! I don’t eat cookies but rarely, I doubt I have baked 72 cookies total in my entire life, and why would I want to eat food prepared by strangers under unknown circumstances???
The whole thing sounds like a health violation, to me.
That was the one and only tradition I enjoyed at my old job. It wasn’t required, though. Purely optional.
The trick that works for me is to be really grumpy and just flat out refuse to attend. I always hint at some tragic Christmas-related event in my past, and people usually back off. I guess this doesn’t work when you won’t get your bonus if you don’t attend, but…
