First, my company cancels the Christmas party. Not one to bitch much, I only complain because this is the one company event I can actually take my girlfriend on, and she likes to play dress-up with the posh frocks and I look damn fine in my James Bond tuxedo.
So instead we have to go to this cheap-ass Curry house in some crappy little town with limited public transport. Partners / spouses are not invited, because this being my company they have to tell us stuff about business and how we’re doing ON A FUCKING CHRISTMAS DINNER! I have to spend most of the evening sitting down with people I don’t really like and wouldn’t normally choose to spend time with since you set assigned seating within our teams (most of my friends are in another team), and I have to drive home afterwards since you put it so far away from any public transport that it would take taxi rides (which you won’t let us expense) to get to it or walk for an hour in the cold.
Then, your idea of wonderful entertainment for all of us, is God forbid and Baby Jesus save us, a pub quiz. For wankers! I don’t really care when IBM made it’s first mainframe, and I really don’t give two shits as to when Jo Bloe Dipshit won his first world cup with a reversed bollocks-blast or when such and so won the world tiddly-winks championship. I just want to have a couple of pints with my mates, eat some fucking curry, and go home to poison-gas my girlfriend in the wee hours with rank curry gas and a little Dutch oven action under the duvet.
But when I mixed up two US states (Kansas and Nebraska), as a US citizen, of course you had to publicly humiliate me in front of all the other tossers.
So I put a challenge to you, fuckhead - you name ANY of the states other than California, New York, Washington State, or Florida. Or just to bring it a bit closer to home, how about you name all of the Counties in England? Or even easier - how about all the countries in the EU based on their geographic location? Yeah, thought not you wanker.
So to you, Mr Manager: this warm holiday season I would like to be the first to offer you a hearty and warm cup of Fuck You!
All company-enforced socialization is evil. They should have taken whatever money they were planning to spend on this, and given it to you as a Christmas bonus; give the time to you as a day off.
Then, if you actually like these people and care to see them outside of work hours, you can spend part of your bonus on that, at some entertainment that’s agreeable to all of you.
I think that would be much less patronizing, it would be more pleasant for everyone, and it would be easier for the company to arrange. And nothing puts an employee in the Xmas spirit faster than some extra dosh and a paid day off.
Believe it or not, my M-F workaday week is a pretty sweet deal. I work from home 2-3 days a week, get to travel all over the world, get paid a decent wage, and the work is interesting and engaging and motivating. It’s just they so badly screw up celebrations so damn often. It’s an english thing - they seem to think any celebration is merely an excuse to get falling down drunk before 11pm, then wander home in a drunken haze or pass out in the gutter.
Too fucking right! The last couple of years have been much better than this, to be honest, and 5 years ago the Company Party (not the Christmas one, which has always been a spouse-friendly event and always formal) was to fly everyone in the company to Dublin, and every person was given an envelope getting off the chartered plane with £50 in it to get a drink; there was a bit of a conference (doing business stuff) followed by a massive piss-up. Those were the days…
This is great, I will definitely use this one again…
I was with you until here. These are the principles on which Empire was built, dammit! Okay, so they’re also the principles which mean we tend not to win the Ashes all that much, but by God it’s Civilisation with a capital Bleurrrgh and we’re not changing it for any man. Unless you buy us a pint.
(Definitely with you on the pub quiz thing, though; what was he thinking?)
You are in England - somewhere near London (where for interest?) and you are going for a curry and THEN to the pub.
I have to say I admire your avant-garde re-writing of traditional English behaviour.
It is simply illegal to go for a ruby sober.
I have to say that your company’s xmas bash is bar far the worst I’ve heard of. (I’m taking my lot to Wimbledon dogs (with Brittneys provided, then a ruby, and I thought that was a bit pikey - You’ve made me feel a lot better). Do you work for an America company? (they can be pretty puritanical to our ways of thinking)
Oh, I quite agree. What would passing out in the gutter be without a curry to ease the passage? All means to an end, though. Which end is merely a matter of timing…
We came, we saw, we conquered, we ate our first ruby, we brought it back with us. From that point on the Empire was doomed.
Sadly the news never got through to the antipodess which is why they have to migrate here in their hordes to get away from snags and meat pie floaters.
WTF is a “ruby”? I’m guessing from context that you mean a takeaway curry, but why “ruby”? Is it some form of rhyming slang, or do you guys just coin words to confuse us septics?
As for office parties, eh, I look at them as free grub and time off from actual work. My employer is buying us a pissup and feed at the Irish pub around the corner, and I get a 4-day holiday as well, so I say God bless us, every one!
Yes, I work for a Yank company. Based in Reading, but with offices in Manchester and London. I live in Fulham near the River, so only go to Reading as often as I can’t avoid it…
I told you all it was a badly planned evening, as i totally agree with you about the order of events - get pissed then get a curry - and especially with the quality of the curry (not great, to be honest…). The only good thing was we had the whole restaurant for our use, and a pretty decent bar tab to close out (£1,500 for 140 of us, over half of which left as soon as the meal was over). Too bad I couldn’t farking drink because I had to drive home! BTW - this little soire was held near Reading, over 40 miles from where I live, and I didn’t really feel like training it as I didn’t want to get glassed by some yob let out from the pub, as well as the fact it takes me damn near 2 hours to get home from Reading!
To be fair, this was my ‘group’ do, not a company-wide thing - the company wide thing was cancelled. My direct team is going to an Argentinian steak house in central London tonight, so much much better, and I am taking public transport so off on the piss for me!
My company hates Christmas and if my shift has to work through it they like to rub it in a little as well.
“Seeing as you have to be here on Christmas day, here’s a B767 engine change to keep you busy”, and just to make it a real challenge we’ll give the rest of the company a few days off, so you can’t get any spare parts that you might need (and of course if you don’t manage to get the job done by the time we all come back from our holidays we’ll have a meeting about it and bollockings will be issued all round).
We will let you have an extra 15 mins for your Christmas day lunch break though. But that’s it, not a minute more.
