I don’t get it, either - boss’s wife should be having a shower at her own work, not at her husband’s work. I would also not be volunteering to plan a shower for someone that far removed.
On the other hand, I can sympathize, because sometime in the next two months I will be expected to pull a bridal shower for my sister out of my ass. I don’t know how to plan one, and I have less than zero interest in throwing it (less every day, as a matter of fact, as she continues to piss me off). If I were you, I would take the advice here to plan it the way YOU want it; that’s what I intend to do.
I don’t do baby showers any more. I have no intention of having a baby, so I don’t go to other people’s any more. I have less than zero interest in babies, too.
I read the OP 3 times, and I still don’t understand why YOU have to do it. All these girly-girls you speak of seem so interested, why can’t one of them do it? I bet one of them has thrown a shower before, and would be thrilled to do it again.
Fortunetly, I have gender immunity from these types of things.
I suspect this is her boss…the other girly girls don’t have the boss relationship.
But this is easy. Pick a date, schedule a conference room, call a bakery and order a cake to be delivered, send an email.
That’s it. Its a meeting with a cake, for which you show up and make minor small talk for forty five minutes (with gifts to direct the small talk), not some sort of weird three day getaway with the girls where you talk about hair and men and do each other’s nails and “oh my God, isn’t Brad Pitt cute!”
We do ours co-ed. Since this is for the boss (and marginally the boss’ wife), I’d do that. I’d also set up a practical joke where most of the office brings size two disposable diapers rather than a gift (but don’t let the girly girls in on the joke). Your boss will have a trunkful of diapers - very useful - and you’ll get to have a little fun without watching everyone goo and ga over little sleepers with duckies on them.
One need not require that the diapers all be size two–I’ve heard of diaper showers which deliberately resulted in many packages of differently sized diapers.
(Someone I know had a single-present shower–a 4-1 transportation system for the baby, paid for by 20 people all chipping in 10 dollars (dollar amounts may vary). She also had a more or less traditional shower with a wide variety of gifts, and her husband got a “shower” of his very own.
Decorations–1 balloon. and a package of napkins.
Food–one batch of mini-cheesecakes.
Gift–one gift card to Babies R’ Us, in a somewhat substantial amount. Entertainment–People laughing and eating food.
But, we were a social organization who knew the wife(an ex-member of our group), and so we chose to take 15-20 minutes at the end of one of our regularly scheduled meetings to celebrate his impending fatherhood. It was a lot of fun, and not much fuss.)
I once worked in an office that did shit like this. I really hate when the office tries to pretend that all the workers are family, or some kind of social group. They are not my family and they are my social group only during working hours, if that.
I particularly hate it when the word comes down that you’re expected to attend a shower for so-and-so, after work hours. (Or frankly, even during them.) Collect money for a card and a joint gift by all means, I’ll throw in a couple of dollars, but inviting me to a shower, even on company time, is assuming a warmth of relationship that just does not exist. I’ve got stuff to do at work or else I wouldn’t have a job; if I have to take 2 hours out for some stupid party, then that’s 2 hours I’ll have to make up somewhere else. And if I’m asked to do something outside of work hours, I had better get paid for it, one way or another. If there is a business reason for doing it then that’s different.
I had to practically threaten to file a sexual harassment lawsuit to get out of stuff like this. Hey, if only the women in the office are asked to contribute, bring food, etc.–as was the case–that is sex discrimination, right? When it looked like the alternative was dragging everybody of both sexes into the conference room for a shower, somehow the idea got dropped.
Oddly enough, about half the women in the office privately confessed they were happy not to do it either, so I wasn’t quite the pariah. On the office manager’s shit list though for sure (but then, I was on that list of hers anyway).
I don’t get how you’re even going to do it. I can be girly, but I too HATE the work baby shower and the work wedding shower. If it were me, I’d simply just say, “Oh no, I don’t do that kind of thing” about planning it. I’d participate in it, fine, but the planning of it by me is not going to happen. Why is it not acceptable to just say no?
None of the baby showers I’ve been to had games. Is the impending mother even going to be in it? Sounds to me like you may want to just change the label for it in your mind… perhaps a “give boss our gift and have cake meeting” is easier to organize than a “shower”?
I’m the one getting the pressure because it’s my boss’s wife. No, I don’t really really HAVE to do it, it’s true, but the time-encrusted custom here is that the attorney’s secretary throws a shower for the attorney’s wife. Of course it’s within my rights to refuse, but it’s going to make me seem an asshole. I’m already outside the secretaries’ social network here as I don’t attend holiday parties or gift-wrapping sessions or scented candle scams.
The hell of it is, my boss himself probably thinks the whole thing is stupid, too, and like me, this shower stuff would never have occurred to him but for the pressure of the shower-and-party lobby. And he and his wife are quite well-to-do, having married a bit later in life after each had acquired some property.
He has been asked to ask his wife if she’s feeling up to a shower. As I said, she’s pregnant a bit later in life than most, and has not been feeling well. Hopefully it’ll all fizzle out. But if it must go forward, I will enlist the “help” of one of our more domineering and control-freak social mavens and happily let her take over. Hey, maybe it’ll take place on the very day of my colonoscopy and I’ll have a great excuse to not attend.
I think (also working at a fairly large law firm) that the easiest course of action for you would be to enlist the biggest Squealer Party Lady you can find (you already know who she is, don’t you?) and tell her, truthfully even, that you don’t have much experience with baby showers and would she mind lending a hand?
Then you can see how quickly she takes over all the crapola. The squealing office ladies will get what they want and expect, you can paste an affable expression on your face and smile and nod at any and all suggestions, read the emails that make the rounds about it, and then have a conveniently timed bout of intestinal distress that results in you “having” to take that day off work. So sad really - you were so looking forward to it. The key is to delegate. If you have to, you can even pick two or three and put them in charge of some facet.
I’m thinking… assuming you are right about his view of this event, you could go to him with a carefully phrased variant of “do you think it’s really appropriate for a subordinate to be pressured into arranging something so *personal *for a employer?” Add winks and nudges as you see fit. Being a lawyer, perhaps he feels special obligation to not be seen as Acting Inappropriately as an employer, and call it off. It sounds like the boss and missus are just going with the flow and would probably prefer to give the whole thing a miss, too.
A variant of this came up in our office. Our office is about 40% manager, 60% grunt. Executive Chief Mucky Muck’s wife had a kid and the managers all arranged a shower for the parents and whelp. All ranks were expected to attend. Of course, the year before, when my fellow grunt’s wife had a baby, they never thought of throwing him a shower.
I don’t do showers. If you are someone I care about I will be buying you a gift to commemmorate whatever event is on the horizon. However, I’m not buying wedding and baby gifts for everyone I ever met just because I have a twat. It was sooo unfortunate I couldn’t make it to Mucky Muck’s though. Damn training/dentist appointment/ rectal cleansing/ whatever the fuck I said it was. And the only shower gift I’m getting for a family with an income over $100K is a donation to the Food Bank in the kid’s name.
I hope you can find a way to avoid it. It sounds infuriating beyond belief that you are expected to take on extra NON-office duties just because someone who doesn’t even work there decides to have a baby. :mad:
Exactly! Just be helpless about this one area and someone will swoop in. I’m not a girly girl but I love the idea of a new baby and if I were deputized I would be happy to go buy partyware, cake, big gift. There’s got to be someone like that who will not hold it against you that you don’t want to take the lead on this.
Update: without a bit of prodding from me, militant social-planning matrons have taken over the whole shebang. My only role is to call the pizza joint and order in some pizza. Oh, and attend the shower and bring a gift. My boss is vehemently anti-squeal, so hopefully his presence damps down the Barbie factor.
Isn’t there a bullet-dodging smiley I could insert here?
Good news! I still tend to think that other people’s babies definitely shouldn’t be allowed to intrude in the lives of innocent bystanders, but it’s great that someone who likes that sort of thing has taken over. Sigh of relief, eh?
