In a world full of horrible things it’s almost ridiculous to post this, but I was truly pissed off at an email the whole office received as a result of an email I sent.
I sent the following email to coworkers yesterday:
*Lawrence and Kelly have agreed to run the monthly birthday cake celebrations for 2007. (now through July)
If you would like to participate, please let L or K know so that your special day will be celebrated with a delicious confection.*
The person who quit running the birthday club sent this in response:
*
No, No, No……All birthdays will be celebrated the last Friday of the month.*
She also called me to tell me I had it all wrong. Perhaps my message wasn’t clear, but the **3 noes ** really pissed me off.
Yell at me, call me immature, but I really got upset about this.
She sounds like “That Lady”. You know, the one who has worked there since the beginning of time and needs things done the same way forever and lives for her job and doesn’t have a life outside of it. Am I close?
See, I’d probably reply along the lines of “Yes, yes, yes! Lawrence and Kelly are running the monthly birthday cake celebrations, and if you want to participate you need to let them know.” That’s just me though.
Her time has gone. Lawrence & Kelly’s time is now.
Imagine telling her where she can stick her three noes – then just ignore her. I’ll bet that’s not all she’s picky about (and celebrating all the birthdays just at the end of the month sucks.)
I ain’t seeing how what you wrote conflicts with what she said. Nothing in your message seems to preclude having last Friday as the day for celebrations.
It’s not that irrational. Her tone pissed you off and that’s understandable. I hate being “Corrected.” Especially in a condescending way. I’d like to respond to her with something like, “Hey. If you wanted to decide how it’s done, you should have kept the duty.” But then, I tend to make problems worse when I respond to others.
That’s what I was thinking. “…so that your special day will be celebrated” does not indicate to me that a celebration will occur ON “your special day”, just that the day itself will be celebrated - perhaps on the last Friday of the month.
Everyone has their buttons that, when pushed, no matter how petty the trigger, just set them off.
Having my plans or ideas made to seem stupid and/or just plain wrong by one who no longer has that authority and/or who presets as being smugly superior is one of my big ones. The E-Mail above would make me want to do two things:
Go the mentally pleasing route by responding with “Things change. Get over it.” This has the benefit of immediate satisfaction.
Ignore it. That’ll leave a lingering sense of unfinished business, but the longer term satisfaction of knowing the other person is just getting more and more pissed off the longer they’re ignored.
She quit the “job” when someone asked her to stop buying the boutique $40 cake with a $10 delivery fee that only feeds 20 when we’ve more than doubled our staff. (I think she’s a friend of the bakery owner). She feels that a sheet cake isn’t classy enough and the rest of us disagree.
Just out of interest, how does the scheme work? Who pays for the cake?
(In the places I’ve worked that had some kind of cake/birthday thing going on, it was just a case of people bringing in enough cake to share with others on or near to their own birthday date - most people would bring in a selection of individual cakes or doughnuts from a local bakery)
It never occurred to her that she would need to buy two cakes or more? Daft bat. She deserves not to keep that little job - personally I think I’d have told her to get stuffed.
So she’d rather the cake be pretty even though not everyone would be able to indulge? What a nitwit.
I am on the side that birthdays should be celebrated on the actual day. I know I do that with my staff as I am well aware that this is the only celebration that many of them will have. So, you buy a few more cakes. Employees are worth the effort.
Talk about too high of expectations! In my work experience, sweets are sweets. I think my coworkers would eat styrofoam peanuts if you dipped them in chocolate and left them on a plate in the breakroom.
I think that would piss me off just a tad, too. I don’t think anybody likes being corrected when they aren’t wrong. The right thing to do is probably to be the bigger person and let it slide, as unsatisfying as that can be, because it is fairly petty. Just say to yourself, “This is her problem, not mine” and let it go.
I don’t have any problem with celebrating all the birthdays in the month on one day each month. It’s sort of neat to have birthday buddies. Of course, you only get cake once a month at work that way, though. In larger companies, you could have cake almost every day of the year if you celebrated on the actual birthdays.
And no, work birthday cake doesn’t have to be superduper. Who expects their freebie work treats to be Grade A stuff?
The best way to deal with these types is 1) agree on every point 2) do something else.
I.e., email her “Yes, good point. I totally forgot.” Then continue to send the same emails and announcements to other as before.
That’s the only way they will learn that it does no good to complain.
Hell, who likes being “corrected” *in front of the entire office * even if they *are * wrong?
I’m firmly of the opinion that the “Reply to All” button should be banned. Even if you had been wrong, the way to handle that is to email YOU saying “hey, FYI, we do one birthday cake a month*.”
Since you *weren’t * wrong, she can get doubly stuffed.
*Which is what we do in my office. We bring one cake to the monthly staff meeting, and give each individual whose birthday falls in that month a card.
At my workplace, the policy is that the birthday boy or girl’s supervisor and immediate coworkers are the ones to take him or her to lunch and/or buy whatever cake they see fit to feed their immediate group. These celebrations are to be done once a month max, so that if two or three people in one unit have birthdays in one month, all must celebrate on the same day. Occasionally someone will be promoted to HQ and then the head honchos provide enough cake for everybody, usually one or two sheet cakes from Sam’s Club. I don’t mind 'cause, hey, free cake!
