[offended party organizer]
“But I was just being nice! What’s the matter with you?”
[/opp]
Heh. This thread made its way to me in a very timely manner.
I just got done telling the few people we have here that we are going to eat ice cream cake on Thursday or Friday. They asked why, and I said that it was my birthday on Sunday, and I wanted an excuse to eat ice cream cake. I don’t want a party, they can all eat it at their desks. I’m bringing the damn cake. I just want some. I dislike some of these people intensely, and I hate the days when someone around here gives us the forced socialization, but there’s no reason for me to go buy an ice cream cake for myself without sharing.
Hooray for ice cream cake with no strings attached!
The place that I work now has a monthly birthday celebration plus at least one other monthly holiday dealy. They pay for it all though. I’m a grouch so I don’t go but it makes a lot of the people happy so it’s nice that they have them. The good news is that the company pays for it and, from what I have heard, they do get good food for them.
They publish the birthdays on the intracompany website and on a huge banner in the cafeteria for the birthday thing. I went to HR and told them that I did not want my birthdate to be published on either of those things and a couple of days later a companywide email went out telling people that if they wanted to opt out they should respond to the email. My fellow grouches were all slightly less grouchy that day.
This has calmed down a bit where I work, but I’m with the OP 110%. My own time is my own time. I have almost a 2 hour commute, and I don’t feel like staying downtown for some forced socialization.
Look – I’m paid for my time here (salary - no overtime pay) and I always work more than the standard week. When it’s time to go home, it’s time to go HOME.
Two of us did manage to kill the monthly birthday lunches. It started fine, with everyone going paying for those who had birthdays that month. Then the number of people in the department started growning, and we were in some major projects, so often you couldn’t leave work for the birthday lunch. So the group that did go decided that even if you didn’t go, you had to contribute. So let me get this straight, I’m too busy with work to go to lunch and I have to pay for a lunch I didn’t get to go to? At that point a couple of us said we were not paying and not going any more, and it swelled to finally kill the damn thing.
Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays!
I’m surprised no one has said that one yet. 
When the stupid envelope gets passed I have a nifty little move wherein I can pass it to the next pod-person in one deft motion. I have lots of practice, about 3 times per week.
When the birthday card comes around to be signed I always sign it with my employee number, we have over 100 people in our office and I’m never missed.
When there’s cake in the lunchroom I don’t partake.
The only donation I made was for flowers to a co-worker’s family when she was murdered, that’s appropriate.
I have work to do. Usually enough to fill up my day. Are you so light on tasks you can spend your time organizing baby showers/birthdays/bar/bat mitzvahs/weddings/retirements?
I give SBS a 10 for the simple fact that he/she used “co-worker” in the title and not the always annoying “cow-orker”
I don’t have any problem with making friends at the office, but I do resent the forced friendship. The place I work is a pretty small office, and when I started there was this tradition that each person buys a birthday cake for one other person, and it rotates around. So A buys for B, B buys for C, C buys for A. Which might have been nice enough, except that this person doesn’t want to buy for that person because they’re fighting, and this one wants a huge expensive cake from a fancy bakery AND ice cream but she doesn’t think she should have to be in the buying rotation because she doesn’t get paid enough, and that one wants chocolate no vanilla no chocolate no vanilla no wait marble, and the person in charge of keeping rotation is mad because she has to do all the work even though this whole damn system was her idea.
So finally when it came time for my birthday, I just pulled out, said that I’m not really into birthdays (true) and that I don’t want cause any trouble (only partly true). I said I would bring something myself. Well, it turns out that no one else really liked the rotation system either, and as soon as I opted out everyone else did too! So now we just each bring something on our birthdays (cake, cupcakes, bagels) or not, depending on how we feel. It’s a much more civilized system, and we’re all a lot happier.
If people are being pressurised into participating, then you have an event fascist at your work. These are terrible inhuman cretins, jackbooting indignities up everyones arses. I’d organise an event to throw the event fascist into a compost heap for charity donations.
If the events are completely optional, then I would tell you to fuck off and stop being a miserable sod.
It is all about the optionality of the events. All that Birthday party stuff is for kindergarden, not for the workpace.
This is one of the best phrases I’ve ever read here. May I have your permission to use it?
As for my workplace, we don’t have an awful lot of that sort of thing. Management puts on a couple of major social events for everyone each year, during off hours. It’s up to the worker whether to go or not. Other than that, occasionally someone gets up a cake-in-the-conference room event but those are rare. The last one I went to was for someone who was retiring; I only went because the guy had been in my group when I joined the company. I liked him well enough and honestly wished him well. But if I feel completely neutral or worse about someone, I won’t bother.
“Nibbled to death by ducks” a/k/a “Death By Duck-bite” is certainly not a phrase/idea I originated, so you sure don’t need my permission to use it, but since you asked – [Queenly]You may.[/Queenly]
Glad you liked it. 
S’because it’s Tuesday, jackass.
( )
Just remember, there is no “I” in “Fuck off and drink paint.” No, wait - there are two.
There’s no I in team, but there’s two yous in “Stupid Cunt”.
Excellent rant against a type of workplace I’ve been stuck in before.
A couple of other points. First of all, like many people, I don’t have cash with me on most days. I got my arm twisted into going out after work later this week for my manager’s b-day. That means I need to make an extra stop for cash as there is no way in hell I’m running a bar tab surrounded by 20-30 coworkers I don’t know well.
Second, mandatory “spirit” days. Look, not everyone in the world has a Hawaiian shirt or a sports jersey. I don’t want to waste my hard earned money on a shirt I"ll wear once.
There is no I in Team.
But there is an Eat and a Me.
I once worked in an office where they held monthly (often weekly) potluck lunches, to celebrate anything from a birthday to a pregnancy to the first Tuesday of the week. Everyone was expected to sign up and bring a dish to feed 15-20 people.
At the time, I was a single mother of a small baby with significant health problems. I didn’t have the extra cash to buy a bottle of pop, let alone buy food to feed anyone other than my son and (sometimes) myself. I know that more than a few other women in my department were in similar circumstances, at the time. Did that matter? Nope.
My boss would still hound me, asking “So, what are you bringing?”
Me: “Nothing. Can’t afford it.”
Boss: “Oh, you can just bring some chips, or drinks, if you want.”
Me: “Nope, not if my baby is going to have diapers this week. Can’t do it.”
Boss: “Oh, it can’t be that bad…”
Me: (throttling boss)
She tried coercing me into their after-work gatherings, until I asked who was going to babysit my baby, change his diapers, clean his catheter and change his dressings while I had margaritas with them. That shut her up.
I agree.
There’s too much of that shit at my work as well.
Money for someones birthday, someone I’ve never even heard of or worked with personally. ‘But we’re all one big team’.
Pish.
We now have a social committee at work who constantly try to badger people into attending events.
Luckily the guy I sit beside has exactly the same attitude as me.
Social Committee Person: “So will you guys be coming out after work on Friday for the <insert mundane event here>?”
Guy I sit beside: “No. I have two young children, children I like to see after work”
Me: “and I have real friends that I like to see on a Friday after work”
Social Committe Person: “But surely you see your family and friends all the time?”
Me: :rolleyes: