tell us your strangest office holiday stories

by Alison Green on December 7, 2017

It’s once again the season of forced workplace merriment, horribly inappropriate gifts, holiday party disasters, and other seasonal delights!

In the spirit of the season, I want to hear about office holiday-related debacles. Did a coworker throw a tantrum when she didn’t win a raffle? Has your party planning meeting ended in tears multiple years in a row? Were you given a nude, spray-painted gold Barbie? These are all real stories that we’ve heard here in the past. Now you must top them.

Share your weirdest or funniest story related to holidays at the office in the comments. And to get us started, here are some of my favorites that people have contributed in years past:

• “A woman who had worked at our office for more than twenty years pouted and threw tantrums like a child if she didn’t win a door prize at the annual Christmas dinner. Every time someone else’s name was randomly drawn, she would yell, ‘FIX!”’ or ‘CHEAT!’ or something similar. And one year, she just snatched a prize she really wanted from the table and told the person who won the prize, ‘I DESERVE this,’ and walked away with it.”

• “The CEO threw an evening holiday party at his house. The A/P director drank too much and threw up shrimp cocktail on the white shag carpet. The plant manager got into a screaming fight with his wife in the driveway. The chemist was found making out with the loading dock supervisor, who was about 30 years her senior and more importantly not her husband. And I accidentally walked in on the sales director peeing in the unlocked hallway bathroom (which I thought was the coat closet; we were both surprised). The president himself got completely hammered and went around telling people totally inappropriate stories, gave me a giant bear hug that lasted a little too long, and broke the sliding door to his patio.”

• “A young coworker overindulged in alcohol and somehow managed to miss that the company was offering a car service to help folks get home safely. He proceeded to wander drunkenly through the city trying to make it home, but ended up running into some bad sorts trying to accost him. In trying to escape, he got completely banged up – cuts, bruises, blood, and filthy, torn clothing. At this point, he was so disoriented that he wasn’t not sure how to get home, so he decided to lay down in back of pickup truck parked on the street (this was December, so it was probably 40 degrees outside). An hour or two later, the truck owner spotted him and chased him off. He forgot his bag, which had his MetroCard, so he decided to go back to work and sleep it off under his desk. Meanwhile, the truck owner sees the nice bag left behind and thinks it was stolen, so he calls the cops, who then go to the address…where the young coworker lives with a now panic-stricken mother. The panic doesn’t abate when no one at work has seen him for hours…until he stumbles out from his desk around 11 a.m.”

• “Our Christmas party planning (once again) ended in tears over an argument about whether body-part-shaped gummy candy was an appropriate table decoration. It was apparently Halloween candy (think bloody zombie arms and legs).

For reasons which I dare not know, there is a small contingent of people in my department who all have strong personalities, strong opinions, and no chill. Everyone hates each other, but they all must be on the various party planning committees. Our fall potluck was simultaneously ‘sports jersey,’ ‘Halloween,’ and ‘Richard Nixon’-themed because I accidentally ended up in charge and did not have the energy to veto anything.”

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  1. SpiderLadyCEO*

    My favorite will always be the teetotaling boss who got so drunk she flashed the city, and froze her boobs to the railing in the process.

        2. Spooky*

          I had completely forgotten about that. It’s actually kind of sad in context. :(

          But last year’s “what are we going to do about my situation?” will always be a classic.

      1. Anastasia Beaverhausen*

        My thought as well. My mom’s in the program, and it would be devastating to her to lose her sobriety.

      2. Anon druggie*

        It IS kinda sad but in recovery, you really have to have a sense of humor and laugh at this kind of stuff. Anything that makes for a good story is always relished. Levity makes for good sobriety and now she has a fantastic story to tell when she goes back to meetings.

        1. SallytooShort*

          I totally agree with you. Being able to accept that sometimes you slip and see the humor in it rather than as a total failure of your whole recover process is absolutely important. But, sadly, from the rest of the letter it seemed like she took her recovery very, very seriously and probably doesn’t have much of a sense of humor about it. :/ (Seriously as in in a serious manner. Not that she cares about it more or it’s more important to her than those who can see the humor.)

          1. Artemesia*

            But two of her female colleagues came to her rescue and did their best to ‘shield her modesty’ — which was kind of nice.

          3. Wendy Darling*

            “I need to stop drinking because last time I drank I froze my boob to a handrail” seems pretty compelling to me, but my sense of humor is known to be dark.

      1. Annony for this*

        My kid got his tongue stuck (a la Christmas Story and Dum and Dumber) at a ski gondola scenic overlook thing and it was a nasty mess to look at. I am talking blood folks, it was gross.

    7. The Bimmer Guy*

      I remember that one. I shared it with some of my coworkers.

      “Seeing her two (female!) HR admins blowing on her boob to release it whilst shielding her modesty with scarves is a sight that will never leave me.”

      Priceless.

      1. NorthernSoutherner*

        Wouldn’t hot water release them? Or would that just cause more ice? I’m seriously asking…

  2. Margarete*

    Several years ago my (now former) employer had open seating at the holiday dinner and dance: sit wherever you like. One of the interns and her plus one picked a table close to the front, by the podium, and wasn’t too familiar with any of the other people seated at the table, but she and her guest were still friendly and chatting with everyone. Eventually, when the event got underway, the emcee announced that the CEO would be giving a few words. The intern mentioned to her guest that she wasn’t sure what the CEO even looked like – it was a big company, and as an intern, she knew the name but hadn’t interacted with any C-levels to know them by face.

    Then the guy seated next to her stood up and walked towards the podium.

    After that the CEO started inviting all the interns out at the beginning of their work terms for lunch, to get to know them.

    1. Anonymous Poster*

      That ended a lot better than I thought it was going to! I’d still be mortified as the intern, but it looks like it turned out okay.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        Heck, this is downright inspiring as an example of “Just be polite to everyone and don’t trashtalk people to strangers” as the baseline for life events.

    2. Leatherwings*

      Aww that’s exactly the sort of innocent and understandable mistake I would’ve made as an intern. And good on the CEO for making changes afterwards!

      1. Elizabeth West*

        Exactly–that was really smart of him. I can see how this would happen in a big company; you often don’t have any interaction with executives at the lower level.

        1. Margarete*

          Something similar happened earlier in that semester with another intern asking a C-Level named Fergus if he was Fergus, and the guy said no, as a joke – I think between the two cases, although both interns handled the situations quite well (though they were, understandably, mortified), it made it clear that there was a big disconnect. In addition, I noticed a number of interns really struggled to talk to higher level staff because they were intimidated, so getting to know them over a relaxed lunch really helped them learn how to talk to people much higher up the food chain.

      2. Midge*

        Agreed! I had a weird experience with my non-profit’s director when I first joined and he did not take it as a cue to change his behavior at all. I was staffing an event where our constituent attendees got to have a cool interactive experience. Some high level staff members were attending as well. I had been working there about a month. I knew who the director was, and had been impressed at how he seemed to know everyone’s names during the Q and A at the staff meetings.

        So when he walked by my station, I put on a big smile and asked if he wanted to do the interactive experience. He gave me this puzzled look and said, “I work here.” I could have died of embarrassment! I think I actually replied, “Yes, I know.”

        Anyway, he never learned my name in the three years I worked there. Even though I filled in for one of the executive assistants on a key function whenever she was out on vacation. Turns out only the heavy hitters asked questions at the staff meetings, so it was never really the case that he knew everyone’s name.

        1. Minister of Snark*

          A few jobs ago, I happened to look a lot like another lady in a different department who had worked for the company for a few years. (Same body shape, same hair color and length, somewhat similar facial features.) I got mistaken for her often for the first few months, but eventually most of our coworkers figured out who was who.

          A week into my employment, the “Big Boss” came up to me to ask me a question related to this other lady’s work. I said, “I’m sorry, sir, I’m not assigned that particularly case. Similar Looking Coworker is handling that. I’m My Name. I’ve worked for Completely Different Department for about a week.” He looked sort of perturbed, but didn’t apologize for his mistake and sort of stalked off like he was pissed I didn’t just memorize Similar Looking Coworker’s caseload just in case he asked.

          I thought, well, he’ll probably remember my name from here out. NOPE. He made this mistake several more times throughout the course of my employment. And each time, looked super annoyed that I politely corrected him instead of just being Similar Looking Coworker. He actually sent out an email about how annoying it was that the staff had an attitude of “That’s not my job” instead of just being willing to work on assignments not specifically given to them.

          Or, you know, the Boss could take the time to learn people’s names.

          1. 2 Cents*

            My friend had a similar name to someone else on staff at her job. The Big Boss came around one day to ask her to do something. He called her by Other Woman’s name. She said she’d do what he asked as soon as he learned her name. (They’d been working in a small office for about 5 years at that point, so there was no reason he shouldn’t have known her name.)

          2. I See Real People*

            This reminds me of a doctor’s wife from years ago who would say “It’s nice to meet you” every.single.time. she met one of us from the department. I worked there for three years. We saw her four or five times per year. She was a fairly young woman too, so no chance of organic memory failing.

              1. Bagpuss*

                Thank you. I have moderate face-blindness.

                It takes me around 6 months of working with someone on a daily basis before I can recognise them out-of-context (e.g. meeting them in the street / while shopping) and even then, something like a change of hair style can throw me completely. Someone I saw 4 or 5 times a year? There is virtually no chance whatsoever I would be able to recognise them.

                (I once failed to recognise my own sister, when I went to meet her at the station, and she hadn’t mentioned to me that she’d dyed her hair)

                I do make a point of letting new employees know and specifically telling them that if I appear to ignore them it’s not intentional and I apologise in advance, but there isn’t anything I can actually do to change it.

                1. Misc*

                  > I once failed to recognise my own sister, when I went to meet her at the station, and she hadn’t mentioned to me that she’d dyed her hair

                  I frequently fail to recognise my brother when he does whacky things like grow a beard or shave a beard or get a haircut. Flatmates have also freaked me out by getting a trim. My dad left me with a traumatic/confused memory as a child by shaving his beard and leaving me wondering for years who the random stranger who walked downstairs and said hi like he knew me was. Fortunately context helps a lot and I’m really good at faking being friendly, but I always feel like I’m talking to a stranger…

              2. Bobbin Uffgood*

                I literally read an article once about a woman who was face blind whose husband was a doctor

              3. Misc*

                One of my favourite things about library jobs was how everyone had to give me their ID cards if they wanted help :D I just don’t recognise people on sight (probably ADHD related, I have zero recall so take a while to dredge up context clues). Hypocritically, I refused to wear a name badge… (I was so used to not knowing who people were I just felt to weird and vulnerable having people both a) able to recognise ME and b) knowing my name. I would just be totally confused when they used my name and spent the first half of the conversation trying to figure out how I knew them. If EVERYONE has a name badge, I am fine with that).

                In fact I once mixed up our neighbouring department’s local manager (worked on site, different organisation entirely) with my Boss of Bosses in charge of my entire department (who normally worked elsewhere but I encountered occasionally over the years). So when he walked up and asked for my manager I was all non-respectful* and matter of fact and didn’t jump up immediately to escort him over because I had actual customers to deal with, and I could tell he was kind of put off but figured he was just in a hurry or something… until I mentioned ‘so and so’ was here to a coworker and they went ‘uh… actually that was Boss’.

                I think that’s one reason he didn’t like me much, although HE apparently went around telling people I was a (implied overpaid) unqualified casual worker when I had two degrees, was permanent staff who had been there longer than him, and was working on postgrad. After 3 years on the job and my qualifications listed online in the staff database. So I don’t feel bad about not recognising him – it probably would have lost me my job eventually (there was a lot of Restructuring going on) but I got a way better job offer and moved on.

                *in the ‘respect my Authority’ way of older white men who jumped into their positions based on being white business men hired to Save Money And Modernize rather than having actually having any experience in working in libraries at all.

                1. Polaris*

                  Dammit every single time someone mentions a problem they have as a result of ADHD I find myself going “hey, that sounds like me”.

              4. Let the Hotties Hit the Floor*

                I always thought it would be a great explanation for Lois Lane not recognizing Clark Kent as Superman because she has face blindness, and the glasses are part of how she knows who he is

            2. Specialk9*

              Sadly, many of us young whipper snappers have terrible memories too. I often flounder to remember the names of period I know, really like, and have given professional recommendations to. I also struggle with the names of appliances. Lots of reasons for not remembering your names other than being a stone cold arse.

            3. Little Twelvetoes*

              Conan O’Brien always says, “Good to see you.” so that it won’t sound weird if he forgot that he has met them before.

    3. Grad student*

      I had a similar (but milder) experience at a conference! In the opening session, the presenter asked us all to turn to a person we ideally didn’t know and discuss various prompts (what brought you here, what’s your favorite part of this type of advocacy, etc.–it was a regional conference for a national lobbying organization). To my right was the person hosting me at this conference whom I’d met the previous night, so I turned to my left to the last person in the row. She was kind and confident and we had a lovely discussion! At the end of the session, after the presenter did some wrap-up and went through the agenda for the day, including a keynote speech in the afternoon, the woman and I exchanged “nice to meet you”s, and since we hadn’t yet exchanged names, I introduced myself and asked hers. She replied by saying she was the keynote speaker!

      1. Artemesia*

        I have been a keynoter speaker many times and usually attend the lunch or other activities and interact with the participants as it gives me a few points of contact for the speech. If I want to use local examples, I have picked up a few by the time of the speech by chatting to the participants.

        1. Grad student*

          To be clear, I think it’s wonderful that she did, too (and I was grateful for the opportunity to chat with her)! I was the one left a little embarrassed by my obliviousness.

          1. SusanIvanova*

            Not as embarrassing as the one that went around Twitter recently, where a guy tried to pick up a woman at a conference by saying he could introduce her to the keynote speaker.

            She was the keynote speaker.

    4. Murphy*

      I don’t blame the intern for that at all! (Not saying that you’re doing so either.) Obviously I would be mortified if I were her, but that’s such an understandable thing!

    5. Snark*

      Dear Santa:

      I’ve been a very good girl this year and all I want is a hole to crawl into forever. I love you!

      ~Intern

    6. CatCat*

      I’m sure it felt awkward for the intern at the time (I would have wanted to melt into the floor!), but the outcome is so nice.

    7. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I did something similar in college. I worked in the college bookstore, which gave out a discount to all employees. I was ringing up a gentleman and asked if he worked at the college. He said yes with a puzzled look, I finished the transaction, and he walked away. My coworker who was hovering near by had to tell me it was the college president. I remarked that since I had been there for 4 years and it was a small college, maybe he needed to mingle with the students more.

      1. Brett*

        Back in the early 90’s, I was at the University of Chicago where our president was one of the faculty members, Hanna Gray. One winter day while walking through the quads with another first-year, we heard a very brusk “Hello!” right behind me. Whoever it was had snuck up behind us and said hello that way on purpose.

        It was Hanna Gray! She just smiled and kept walking past us. We then watched us she walked up behind another pair of students and did the same thing. Turns out that was just her silly thing, to sneak up on students on the quad and say hello to them.

      2. Christmas Carol*

        At my college the majority of students wouldn’t have recognized the president if they ran over them with their bicycle, but if you didn’t recognize the football coach……….

        1. No Parking or Waiting*

          This reminds me of when I worked a large university (I think it’s the other one in I think the same state). I had a secretarial job straight out of college, because hey, job. My biggest nightmare work task is answering the phones, but there I was, in the Dean’s office. So I was extra careful taking messages, “can you spell that name please?” A second of silence and the caller carefully spelled out the name of her boss and I carefully wrote it down and repeated it back. Later, I handed the note to the Dean who said, “I wonder why the president is calling me.”
          Yup. No idea.

      3. Tad Cooper*

        My high school was the same way. Most would not know what the principal looked like until their junior or senior year. He was later fired (years after I graduated) for having porn on his school computer…so I guess that explains why no one ever saw him.

        1. MerelyMe*

          The principal in office when I was in high school (in New England) was never seen once the weather got cold. We decided he spent the winter hibernating in his office. The year after I graduated, there was a new principal who seems to have dragged the school kicking and screaming into the 20th century, which is only fair because it was the 20th century at the time.

        2. As Close As Breakfast*

          My senior year of high school we got a new principal. I couldn’t come up with an accurate description of the principal for my first 3 years, even for one million dollars. But I’ll never forget the new one. Because she looked EXACTLY like the principal on the TV show Daria. (This was in the late 90’s, so totally relevant) It was like someone brought the animated character to life with the same glasses, haircut, wardrobe, etc. and dropped her down in the middle of my high school.

          1. Julia*

            My high school principal looked oddly similar to the one in Gilmore Girls, which is weird because I’m from a different continent.

      4. Presidential Suite*

        Yeah, our president is like that. He seems to be under the impression that he’s a really great communicator and has a real rapport with the staff and students.

        No. No one has a clue. I recognise him because I make it my business to remember this stuff, but I doubt the students could pick him out of a line up and half his staff find it hard because he’s never around.

        In fact his entire leadership team is like a line up. “Which of the old gray white men mugged you for your tuition, freshman?”

    8. selina kyle*

      The stress I felt expecting this to end in bad second-hand embarrassment was a lot. I’m glad it seems to have ended well! And what a sweet initiative for the CEO to take on afterwards.

    10. Bea*

      I’m so happy the CEO took that as “I need to be visible to everyone”! Embarrassing for the moment but not anything to want to die over, especially when you’re an intern.

    11. Mary*

      Sixth week of my new job, someone came into our office and I said, “sorry, I’m Mary, and you are…?” She looked very surprised as said, “I’m Janet,” and fortunately that’s when I realised she was the CEO.

    15. Nic*

      Had something similar with a new hire class when I worked for Big Video Game Company. BVGC was very relaxed, and even the higher ups wore casual clothes basically all the time.

      One day a trainee is at the door, and someone tries to piggyback on her badge swipe. She stops him, tells him that she doesn’t know him, and so cannot allow him in. It was the President. He pulled out an ID and thanked her for being so cautious. It was awesome!

    2. Cookie D'Oh*

      Same! My office is so boring. We have not holiday celebrations at all so I’m fascinated by these stories.

      1. Robin*

        My worst Holiday Party – I was Ms. Claus to Santa. Someone thought it would be nice if Ms. Claus was the gift to go around. Santa was not pleased. The person who thought of this was a lech. I was 19 years old to his approx 50 year old lech. He was stoned or drunk (can’t recall which) and thought a hot babe would make a good office party gift. This was a government holiday party in the 1980s (1980 to be specific)

        2. Lissa*

          So….I hesitate to even ask this…but what did he mean for you to DO as the “office party gift”? Strip? Give lapdances? Was everyone else male? I have so many questions I don’t think I want the answers to…

        3. Specialk9*

          I don’t understand this story. I mean, I get that it’s hugely skeevy, but what does being a gift to an office mean?

          1. Sarah M*

            Robin would have to clarify here,but in my experience that would have been an attempt at a double-entendre at my expense, for the enjoyment of the male employees, as in : “Hee, Hee, Sarah M is now going to perform sexual favors for you all!” Wink wink, nudge nudge. Ha ha, indeed.

            1. Specialk9*

              So the gift is to make skeevy comments about a young woman. Wow.

              I often reflect on that picture of grown men and women screaming at tiny little Ruby Bridges, over segregation. Many of those people are still around. It makes a lot of things make sense.

              1. Specialk9*

                Uh, sorry, mind skipped some steps. People in the old days did horrible stuff that they thought was normal. Like dehumanizing women because of a power imbalance that they relished, and like terrifying a tiny little girl because of having terrible hearts. I’m so glad I live today, even as awful as today is.

                1. Sarah M*

                  Yeah, and you had to smile (grimace) and go along with it, or else you’d be labeled –
                  best case scenario – “humorless” and “difficult to work with”. And that was literally the best case scenario.

  4. Myrin*

    For some reason, the part that I find funniest of all of these is #2’s “(which I thought was the coat closet; we were both surprised)” – the delivery is spot-on somehow.

      1. Grad student*

        Somehow I read it too fast and thought the sales director was peeing in a closet! Glad that wasn’t the case–and agreed the delivery was perfect despite my misinterpretation.

        2. Anon non non*

          A friend of mine did that when she was younger. She had gone out with a friend, gotten so drunk that she ended up on her friends couch, and in the middle of the night got up to use the bathroom. She did her business and went back to bed. The next morning her friend got up and discovered a laundry basket of freshly launderered and folded towels had been used as a toilet. They have never discussed the “incident” since that date .

          1. many bells down*

            In college once, I woke up to the sound of someone thrashing around in my closet. I said “What are you doing?!” and a female voice said “Where’s the toilet???” “You’re in my CLOSET!”

            My roommates had been having a little party and one of the guests got drunk enough that she walked PAST the bathroom and somehow ended up in my closet.

            1. Alli525*

              Once upon a time, I had an ensuite bathroom in my apartment, and the other bathroom was on the other end of the apartment and not an ensuite. I once woke up and discovered that my roommate’s guests from the night before had not only wandered into my bedroom (instead of the other bathroom), but they’d turned the wrong direction in my bedroom… so instead of puking in the ensuite bathroom, they puked next to my bed. In an oddly perfect circle. And then covered it up with an empty box and left.

              Needless to say, I gave a talking-to to my roommate about leaving strange dudes unattended in our apartment.

            2. MashaKasha*

              If we are talking college, we once invited three guys to our all-night holiday party that we’d just met a few days ago, and barely knew. They all got drunk beyond belief. One turned out to be an angry drunk. While we were all trying to get him to calm down, his friend, unnoticed by everyone, walked into the bathroom, locked the door, and fell asleep on the toilet. It was a suite, so he locked us out of the only bathroom, for several hours. We had no idea who was in there. Finally had someone kick the door down and found him, still on the toilet, sleeping like a baby.

            3. Merula*

              I am so relieved that other people have similar stories.

              In college during a study abroad, I lived in an apartment with three other women. The bedrooms were all along one side of the hallway (two singles and then a shared room), with the bathroom across the hall from the shared room.

              One morning, one of the women who had the shared room was freaking out because she found poop in a bin she was using to store her purses. What she was convinced happened is that some neighbor kid had snuck in past the doorman, up the stairs, picked the lock to the apartment, walked past the other bedrooms, picked the lock on her room, pooped in her purses, left everything else exactly as it was, picked the locks on the way out to lock them and left.

              She went everywhere with this story. Our RA, the program director, the local police, her parents. And I don’t think a single person believed that was the more likely scenario than “she got drunk and mistook her bin for a toilet”.

              I can’t remember her name. I think of her as “Poops in Purses”.

              Side note: on the last day of the program, the one roommate who was a local made a call to order us taxis. Poops in Purses was like “Are you speaking [local language]?” Seriously. She lived in a place for FOUR MONTHS, attended a program with a language requirement, and couldn’t identify the local language when she heard it.

          2. Arjay*

            On Anna Faris’s podcast, she had a caller whose boyfriend’s sister peed ON her in the middle of the night. They weren’t sleeping in the same bed. Eek!

            2. MashaKasha*

              I am simultaneously dying to know, and really not wanting to know, how that is physically possible for a woman. Did the sister somehow squat on the bed?

            3. Mishakal*

              My best friend had her computer peed on by a drunk guy friend of her roommate. Thankfully the computer still worked since my friend had a computer programming midterm due the following week and it was on her computer.

              1. Rainy*

                I had a friend who destroyed a Macbook Air by going to bed drunk with the macbook open next to the bed. He woke in the middle of the night, rolled over to vomit off the side of the bed (like you do, I guess? ugh, I don’t get that drunk) and vomited straight into the keyboard, killing it instantly.

                Luckily his dissertation was backed up elsewhere, but SERIOUSLY.

                1. Tiny Soprano*

                  My grandmother has a delightful story about my father coming home very drunk as a teenager and mistaking the bamboo pattern wallpaper in the bathroom for actual bamboo. As he held onto it for mid-vom support he managed to rip half of it off the wall.

              2. Nic*

                Reminds me of a party at my exes house in college.

                DrunkDude: *starts to pee on the stove*
                MyEx: Dude WTF are you doing?!?!
                DrunkDude: Naw man, it’s okay. I’ll buy you a new one.

            5. anon for boyfriend's sake*

              My boyfriend once sleepwalked and peed on the kitchen floor. (This was maybe a year ago, and there was some alcohol involved, but he wasn’t drunk at all.) I heard him get up at about 3am and he said he was going to the bathroom but went into the kitchen. I heard what I thought was the faucet running…and then realized it wasn’t the faucet. I ran in and turned on the light and he said “hey, I’m going to the bathroom!” I told him he was in the wrong room and directed him into the bathroom to finish. He had peed in the cat’s water and food bowls so I had to clean it up right away, and I think I cried a little because I was so exhausted and it was so absurd. I told him about it the next morning, and he was mortified and had no recollection of it.

          3. MidwestRoads*

            There’s an oft-told story in my family about how the first time my newly-married parents vacationed with my mom’s family on Cape Cod, my dad went out with my uncles and apparently got rip-roaring drunk. My mom woke up to the sound of my dad peeing in the closet in their room.

          4. Not Australian*

            I shared a room at a media convention with a good friend of mine. Since we were organising the thing, the hotel gave us a very nice suite on the top floor with two bathrooms … and yes, my friend got stupidly drunk, fell out of bed at 2 a.m. and piddled on the floor. End of the friendship, I’m afraid.

          5. Skii*

            When my daughter was 4, she had a bathroom in her room that she didn’t like to use at night (monsters in there, naturally). So she would stumble across the hall to the bathroom in my room. She frequently back feel asleep on the toilet after peeing, so I would listen for her to finish, and then I would go guide her back to her bed. Well, one night, I discovered that she never made it to the toilet. She had just sat on the laundry basket of clean clothes on the floor at the foot of my bed and peed in it. She was snoring with her pants around her ankles when I found her. I woke my husband to tell him what she’d done, but he’s a deep sleeper, and didn’t quite understand. Then he tells me the next day that he dreamed she had peed in the laundry basket. The look on his face when I told him it actually happened was priceless.

          7. Caitlin*

            When my brother was in college, he and some friends lived in an off-campus apartment. One night, they had a party and a friend of theirs slept it off on the couch. When he woke up, he realized he peed on it. He was so embarrassed, he brought over cleaning supplies to help clean up.

    2. Language Student*

      For some reason, #2 reads like a telling of the events during some kind of murder mystery game. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it’s hilarious.

      1. LizzE*

        Number 2 has always been a favorite of mine due to the eclectic cast of characters involved. This scenario certainly does render itself perfect a murder mystery.

      2. HumbleOnion*

        It reminds me of the 30Rock episode where everyone goes to Kenneth’s party & Kenneth gives them a stern talking to about their behavior the next day.

        1. OriginalYup*

          I’m the one who submitted this story (ages ago), and I can confirm that the actuality of the party was very much like Kenneth’s epic 30 Rock bash. Right down to the “ugh, I don’t wanna go, it’s gonna be so boring” whining beforehand, and Jack Donaghy’s f-ed up hair at the shaming meeting afterwards.

  5. Archie Goodwin*

    Should I be looking forward to the day when I have something to share in one of these threads? Or should I be grateful that I work with sane people?

    Just wondering.

    2. Anon Accountant*

      Be grateful. Like ready to run around shouting how grateful you are. Or stop just short of that. :)

    3. Bea*

      I’m grateful to never have these stories! My worst one was taking shots with my supervisor and then playing arcade games with his and the owner’s teenage daughters. They thought it was great since I’m so quiet usually at the office. Nothing crazy just lots of laughter and a good way to wrap up my time there.

    4. Falling Diphthong*

      Don’t make dares with fate.

      Sure, you think they’re all sane, but next year you’ll be telling how it was all Gladys who melded the flakes of insanity into a capable whole, and she left and now there will NEVER BE PRETZELS AGAIN.

        1. Archie Goodwin*

          I…I don’t want to talk about it.

          But my therapist thinks it’s why I developed a fear of llamas, Plexiglass, and string cheese.

    5. Goya*

      Ditto! I’m grateful, yet I feel like I haven’t really lived until I am able to experience something like this in the workplace.

    6. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Yeah, I’m sad that the worst office holiday stuff I’ve experienced seems to be the HR woman who had a totally panicked look on her face when the ED led us all in a rousing rendition of jingle bells after lunch was over and we were about to leave for the university winter break. That’s it. Crisis over.

    7. bridget*

      The most awkward thing that happens at my work holiday party is that I’m never sure if I should hug people hello (just that sort of side hug, nothing too personal) even though I see them every freaking day and do not hug them hello. My natural inclination would be no hug, but then people go in for the hug after I do the handshake or vice versa and it’s the worst. (By virtue of this thread existing, it is objectively not the worst).

      The hug or not to hug or handshake or not to handshake dilemma is the bane of my social existence. I don’t have strong feelings either way, I just want the rules to be clear!

      4. Sarah M*

        Hmmmm…. Needs a creepy guy in a trench coat lurking in an underground parking garage. Oh, with a creepy porn name as I.D.

      3. LizzE*

        I am thinking of a Saturday Night Massacre-style game: you start at the top of the org chart, going down the pecking order, asking employees if they are willing to do something unethical and possibly illegal. Winner is the first person who can get an employee to say yes.

    7. Natalie*

      Alone in your office drinking and taking barbiturates, drunk dialing your staff and eating dog biscuits until you pass out.

      [This would be the mid-Watergate scandal version]

    9. OlympiasEpiriot*

      Everyone is white and male except for one extremely limber woman.

      And the centerpiece is a reel-to-reel dictaphone.

      1. Decima Dewey*

        Random people announce that this is their “last party” and that the company won’t have Fergus Ferguson to kick around anymore.

        Then show up as usual the next workday.

  8. ChemistryChick*

    My company always does a White Elephant (or whatever your region calls it) exchange at our holiday party. You know, the thing were you pick a number, grab a gift and then people can steal or choose another gift. Nothing too fancy, we have a $10 limit and people stick to that. Usually there’s Starbucks gift cards, candles, lotion, things like that.

    A few years ago, we hired a new employee and this happened at her very first holiday party with us. She chose to pick a gift instead of stealing, so she grabbed one and unwrapped it. Ya’ll, I kid you not, inside this box was a pet rock, a Family Guy iron on patch, and something that looked like a stick you’d put rock candy on. The mood in that room dropped like a lead brick. It was awful. She played it off fairly well, but you could tell she was a little disappointed. If I hadn’t already taken my turn, I would have taken that box from her so she could choose another gift.

        1. Anon non non*

          I remember going to a large family party as a child where this was done. Everyone had brought silly gifts and there was a lot of laughing. One person had brought these beer mugs with some pictures on them (pictures that I now know were of an adult nature, but I was like 8 and had no idea at the time!). My mom let me take her turn and it was a bald cap complete with hair on the side and around the back. I traded it for the mugs and the laughter erupted in the room. I remember thinking “what are they laughing for? The mugs can be used, none of this other stuff can!” It was all joke-y type stuff that I didn’t understand. I brought those mugs home, was really excited to use them the next day and was devastated when my mom told me that we’d been robbed during the night and that she’d only scared them off after they had stolen my mugs.
          So…long story short – silly Yankee Swaps (White Elephants, etc) can be done as long as EVERYONE is in the spirit to be silly.

          1. Lala*

            “we’d been robbed during the night and that she’d only scared them off after they had stolen my mugs.”

            This cracks me up so much.

            2. Not a Morning Person*

              Aww, me too! It’s a charming story, and just reminds me of how innocent we all used to be!

            4. Specialk9*

              I’ve got tears in my eyes from quiet-snerking. That poor mom. A very odd and discriminating robber.

          3. kible*

            wow if my mom had told me we’d been robbed, no matter what was stolen, i’d be super paranoid about ever getting stuff i liked again!

          5. Woman of a Certain Age*

            I wonder if there was something about the mugs that might have been inappropriate, like some kind of vulgar joke that a child might not understand. As a child I remember finding a cigarette case that had a “naughty” limerick printed on it. The case was hidden in the back of her china cabinet.

            1. Specialk9*

              “One person had brought these beer mugs with some pictures on them (pictures that I now know were of an adult nature, but I was like 8 and had no idea at the time!).”

              Yup, dirty pix.

        2. Danger: Gumption Ahead*

          One place I worked all the gifts had to be a dessert. It was probably the only one I’ve been to where no one was terribly disappointed

        3. Susanne*

          +1. Only if the rules are CLEARLY explained – is this “spend no more than $10 on a gift that could be enjoyed / useful” (such as a Starbucks gift card, mug, candle, etc.) or is this “bring some random piece of junk from your home wrapped gaily, maybe an odd wedding gift that you scratch your head at, the more absurd the merrier.” Don’t mix the two concepts!

          1. Jessica*

            My department mixes the two concepts, but it actually winds up being fun. The expectation is that the presents will be odd, but the occasional actually legit item makes it more fun for the people who don’t really have an interest in silly stuff.

          2. Stone Satellite*

            This was not clearly explained the one time my office did this at OldJob. But it turns out the traffic cone was the absolute most popular gift in the exchange.

        4. dirty santa revenge*

          I despise Dirty Santa exchanges but one of my favorite stories of revenge comes from a mutual friend’s family Christmas. They did Dirty Santa but one of the aunts was especially competitive and made it her mission to steal a gift from one of the nephews in particular, and over years, she went out of her way to constantly target and harass him because it was “so funny” to see him upset when she would take his gift from him. When he tried to sit out, she would call him a sore loser and heckle him more. (She was a very unpleasant woman, I met her once and hated her on sight.)

          So one Christmas, he had enough. They were out on a farm, and like most farms in the area, they had a large array of barn cats. One had passed away and he set the body aside somewhere cold to keep. When time came, he wrapped it up in a box and put it into the exchange, making sure to pick his own box so some innocent didn’t accidentally get it. The aunt couldn’t resist the bait and took it, and of course she mocked him, just like usual. He just waited it out, and after her horror when she opened the box and found the now defrosted dead cat, he told her to never take his goddamn gifts again. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm if she learned anything, or if she was back at it next year.

          3. Former Employee*

            The only thing I hate more than passive/aggressive types who use practical jokes/pranks as a way to “get” other people and then make the victim into some kind of party pooper as in “Can’t you take a joke?” is someone who does that to a kid or anyone in a subordinate role to them.

          8. Candi*

            I am laughing so, so hard at this. Like doubled-over laughing. Well done kid!

            A moment of pity for anyone who ever had to work with this woman, let alone anyone who was related to her.

        5. MRK*

          I was in a Secret Santa once ($15 limit I think) for a school club. I received an American flag puzzle, still in the plastic Walgreens bag. 12 year old me was pretty devastated. I know it isn’t the worst gift, but it screamed “I don’t care!”

          1. Julianne*

            We did Secret Santa in my English class my freshman year of high school. The guy who picked my name immediately announced it to the whole room. Over the week of Secret Santa, he gave me the drawstring from a hoodie, a tin of Altoids with only two Altoids remaining, and – finally – a pack of Starburst.

            In the intervening 17 years,I have never once participated in Secret Santa. Around the holidays, I sometimes idly wonder what became of that guy.

          2. Candi*

            But-but-but Walgreens sells gift bags!!

            My apologies, but that was the first thing I thought of. The still-in-the-plastic-bag just adds to the terrible of the cheap gift.

        1. Specialk9*

          Sometimes actively pursuing the worst gift is the secret joy. It’s so unlikely to get the best.

          1. Specialk9*

            I would love that gift! As would apparently 9/10 of the commentariat, as evidenced by that thread sponsored by PooPourri.

            (It wasn’t actually, but how funny that Alison had to clarify that.)

        3. Mishsmom*

          In defense of shitty gifts, some of us are just shitty gift givers. :) I can’t count the times I thought something would be a cute or fun gift and it fell flat. I am a shitty gift giver. Over the years I have learned to ask others but I get how it can happen. It took years to realize it I kid you not :)

      3. Dlique*

        It’s really a matter of everyone being on the same page. My extended family did this when I was growing up, and it was understood to be entirely silly because most of my family didn’t have money for nice things. Sometimes someone would bring a gift that was actually pretty cool, but it always went over without any drama because nobody took it super seriously. If you ended up with a gift you could actually use, you were lucky – then again, if you ended up with the Disney Pocahontas towel that made it to this exchange every year, you were still kinda lucky.

        But I have come to understand that not everyone is capable of enjoying such a low-brow gift exchange. I got my office to agree to do a White Elephant/Yankee Swap starting last year. (Previously we’d done Secret Santa, but it could be awkward when some of the work study students pulled names of other students who they’d literally never worked with, and also since they’re students, I felt it would be better for everyone if we lowered the bar a little bit and made it more of a game.) One of my full-time colleagues still doesn’t seem to have warmed up to this. Last year she took me aside and tried to convince me to back her up in telling our other colleague we should raise the maximum to $30 per gift, because “you can’t get anything good with $20 anymore.” Thankfully I convinced her not to do that, but then this year she sent out the reminder email and ‘accidentally’ (?) wrote “Please keep in mind that gifts should be more than $20.” When asked, she said it was a typo but it was already the morning of the exchange so she didn’t feel the need to send a correction. “If folks were smart they would’ve bought something on Black Friday and then they wouldn’t have spent more than $20 on it anyway,” she said. Shopping on Black Friday?? For an office Yankee Swap??? To me this is taking things way too seriously!

        1. Candi*

          …someone likes expensive-ish gifts, and is being a passive-aggressive brat about it. Even though the workplace is NOT the place for that!

    2. Snark*

      In some fairness, White Elephant exchanges are generally of some kind of offbeat, weird item. That was a lame white elephant gift, but it wasn’t totally off base.

      1. Amadeo*

        Yeah, around here we tend to call it ‘Dirty Santa’. Most of the time when I’ve played the gifts have been all right, but trend toward things that have come from or will go into a regift box. We go to my brother’s place for Christmas dinner and since everyone’s already exchanged gifts, we play Dirty Santa. I’ll admit I tend to just go buy something *I* want and if someone else unwraps it before I do, I’ll steal it. We still usually do geegaws though. Kitchen towels, kitschy cheap lamps, my bro’s mother in law brought a cash box last year (although since I do craft fairs and cons now with my crafting, it’s come in handy) and there was one of those laser light projectors. My brother tends to buy McAlister’s gift cards and then steals those if they get unwrapped before he pulls from the pile.

        So, you know.

        1. Lala*

          My family started doing this a couple of years ago, and my brother probably enjoys it more than anyone I know. Half our family roots for one sports team, the other half roots for the rival. The first year, he got a really nice *his team* gift, and wrapped it in *rival team*’s themed gift wrap. A too-trusting, rival team cousin picked it and of course was less than pleasantly surprised, but it was hilarious (and a fan of his team later stole it from the cousin so no one ended up with something they couldn’t enjoy).

          Last year, his gift was a professionally framed portrait of him (with a gift card tucked behind the photo). This year, he’s apparently getting a cardboard cut out of himself made.

          1. Say what, now?*

            I love the photo with the giftcard tucked behind it. That’s a good practical joke where you’re the butt and the victim gets recompense.

          3. MasterOfBears*

            When my brother-in-law first joined us for Christmas, he and I didn’t know each other very well, so we both defaulted to ye old Amazon Gift Card fall back. To make it a little less lame, we both tried to spice up the presentation: his to me was in a giant economic textbook, mine to him was inside a lovingly wrapped shoebox punched full of airholes.

            We know eachother well enough to personalize gifts now, but the weird wrapping arms race continues unchecked. I’m excited for this year – my new job involves disease research, so I now have access to biohazard stickers

          4. nonymous*

            My sister tried to introduce this tradition to cut down on xmas shopping (her kids were getting completely drowned in moderately priced gifts they didn’t want). Our Dad was super frugal and, frankly, not very imaginative. So he insisted that all our contributions (his, mine and my Mom’s) come from the ready-for-goodwill pile. Yah know, where all the broken household goods retire to? And then it turned out that the grandmas (including Dad’s ex) – who were also mightily confused about the whole point of a yankee exchange – just ended up buying their normal amounts of gifts anyways.

      2. an infinite number of monkeys*

        When I’ve played them, white elephant exchanges are a mix of gags and nice inexpensive items. It adds an element of Let’s Make a Deal to the game: do I steal something I’d be okay with getting, or do I risk it all on curtain #2?

        At one office white elephant exchange many years ago, I ended up with a CD of Liberace Christmas music – not only steeped in a glorious amount of smarm, but also badly remixed, so the pitch is wavery and wobbly throughout. To this day it’s one of my most prized possessions.

      3. ggg*

        Where I come from, White Elephant means you bring a goofy joke gift.

        Unfortunately, the last time I was at a White Elephant party, everyone brought “nice” gifts, and I brought some thrifted 60’s-era Gallery of Regrettable Food-level recipe books, which nobody liked or even thought were funny.

        Come on, people. Aspics are always funny.

        2. Footiepjs*

          Aspics ARE always funny. I was cleaning my grandma’s china hutch years ago and she gave me a jell-o cookbook and that was when I learned that they used to make vegetable gelatins.

      4. White Ephelant*

        My brother in law is very straight-laced, with this vein of puckish humor. One year for the White Elephant, he brought a wooden briefcase, that opened up to be a lifelike rubber human head, mounted on a plaque. Turns out it was a dentist mannequin, and so utterly freaky. My sister was a good sport about ending up with it. Next Christmas, out comes her actual real gift to him – a heavy wooden briefcase. It’s continued thusly ever since. An odd, good natured family joke.

        But seriously, it’s freaky looking.

    3. k*

      I’m guessing the gift-giver was confused and thought they were supposed to be gag gifts. There’s so many different names for gift exchanges, it’s easy to misunderstand.

      1. ChemistryChick*

        We think this is what happened. There were a couple people who participated that year who didn’t in years previous.

        1. Tuna*

          We did a gift exchange at work one year where the theme was “Something you already own”. Most of us used it as an excuse to re-gift. There were lots of dishtowels, coffee mugs and scented candles passed around. Everyone had a good time until one of the ladies opened a gift to find a dented rusty gas can. I guess one of my co-workers took the theme too literally.

        1. Cordelia Vorkosigan*

          Same here. Dirty Santa and Yankee Swap are basically the same thing, but White Elephant is different — gag gifts, not things anybody would want for real.

        2. White Ephelant*

          Where I’m from, white elephant is gag gifts that you steal. Preferably with lots of booze and that one person who gets weirdly attached to something awful they could buy for a dollar.

      4. Samiratou*

        I agree, most likely the gifter didn’t realize it wasn’t the funny version. Such things really need to have the rules laid out (preferably with examples or, if it’s the funny version, pics of previous gift collections).

      5. Allison*

        Yep. Where I’m from, a Yankee Swap is where you put in good gifts like gift cards, bottles of wine, etc. (and you unwrap, then steal if you want, it’s not either/or) and White Elephant is a variation of that where the gifts are kind of silly, like a Squatty Potty or a Grumpy Cat snow globe.

          2. Oranges*

            And this is the beautiful thing about White Elephant swaps. I actually heard about one where everyone brings something they don’t like but someone else might. AKA your typical regifts and then everyone tries to barter for something they want. It can get silly.

            Example: If I swap Person #1 PresentA for PresentB then I can swap Person#2 PresentB with Present C and then… and after figuring out a chain someone comes along and ruins it. And you react with pretend outrage since it’s just a silly bunny hat that was your aim.

            1. AMPG*

              At my old office, my team got a lot of mementos from international clients, so we’d always have good stuff for the White Elephant. One year, a 6-inch-tall bust of Lenin was the hot item. I still have the miniature beer keg from Moldova that I got that year, and a chip-and-dip set shaped like Hawaiian shirts from another year. And I contributed things like the double CD set of Turkish folk music and the embroidered vest from somewhere in South Asia (I forget which country).

            2. Pickles*

              Yeah, we had a small group people conspiring for a Frozen-themed waffle maker a few years ago. I just wanted a waffle maker since mine had recently broken, but the level of intensity over Olaf was strange. I stole it from one person in the group, who then glared and muttered until someone else’s name was called from the group and they promptly stole it back while I was in the restroom. Then there were trades worked out, apparently. It was just strange. I could have stolen it back later, but it wasn’t worth the animosity. They were someone’s family, but sat off to themselves the whole time and I remember wondering why they’d bothered to attend.

              That was a mix of nice and weird stuff at that one – I had a bottle of chocolate wine stolen also, the woman who ended up with the set of toilet golf toys (?) actually wanted them (?!?!), and wound up with this awesome giant bobblehead owl. I walked around hugging it on my hip and have it displayed in the library with my fancy cardboard school trunk of Harry Potter books. Win!

        2. Specialk9*

          Where I’m from, White Elephant is terrible gifts, that people steal. Preferably with lots of booze, and one person who gets weirdly attached to something they could buy for a dollar.

    4. Murphy*

      I find with these things that people need to define what they mean. “White Elephant” typically refers to hilariously bad gifts, but it’s often used for any kind of grab bag/swap thing, and unless it’s clarified, people often have widely different ideas of what constitutes a “White Elephant” gift.

      (My friends and I do one, and it’s evolved from the former to the latter and I’m not sure how or why. People who attended the party for the first time but weren’t participating said that when they saw the exchange they were glad they didn’t, because they didn’t expect “good” gifts and would have brought “bad” ones.)

      2. CatCat*

        Yeah… I always thought White Elephant exchanges were supposed to involve funny or odd gifts. I’m taking something that I think is really funny next week to our office exchange. Maybe I’ll end up with a debacle story!

        1. Adlib*

          Ours is next week too, but we always get pretty good gifts and still call it “White Elephant”. I was so proud of what I brought last year then kinda disappointed when it was unwrapped almost last so I didn’t really get to see anyone steal it. I still need to find one for this year!

        2. Mallory Janis Ian*

          Our White Elephant gift exchange is tomorrow, and I’ve only been here since late August, so it’s my first here. My co-worker who’s been here for twelve years says that there are a few gag gifts that have been in circulation for several years, and the rest of the exchange is a hodge podge of whatever anyone wants to bring for $10 or less. She says there’s usually several gifts of wine or spirits. She brought a tape dispenser that looks like someone sitting on a toilet. I’m bringing two Bean Boozled games, because earlier this week we went around and cajoled various professors, grad students, and staff into playing Bean Boozled, and many of them asked where they could get the game for their grandkids’ stockings, so I think someone will like it.

      3. Trig*

        Hm. I’m pretty sure at my church growing up they called the charity gift collection “white elephant”! You were supposed to buy a thing for a needy family, wrap it in white wrapping paper, and put a label on saying the age range/gender. I think the needy families had a specific night they could come pick out some things, or they were distributed somehow, I don’t know. But definitely not gag gifts!

          1. Trig*

            Oh, possibly I’m remembering it wrong! It would be like child-me, to get the two mixed up. Both involve a secret gift and the word white!

      4. Kaybee*

        Yes, defined and disseminated rules are critical. I’ve seen White Elephant exchanges be for gag gifts, getting rid of unwanted gifts, and as substitutes for the “secret santa” concept where gifts are usable but beneath a certain price point.

        Personally, I really only the like the last one because I usually get a gift card or something that I can actually use. In general, I try to practice minimalism to fight the hoarding tendency the runs so strongly in my family, so I don’t have gag gifts sitting around and I tend to re-gift unwanted presents immediately, which means that I have to go out and buy a gag gift or “unwanted gift” for the event and come home with something that I immediately have to dispose of.

      5. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

        Yeah, my family has done this every year for ages; our variation leans toward “useful but goofy” for the most party. There’s a lot of “As seen on TV” items, but they’re never things that are just disappointing.

        (For example: last year, my contribution was a set of travel + regular mugs with a picture of a crab and “don’t talk to me, I’m crabby!” on them)

      6. DecorativeCacti*

        Tell me about it. I brought a playable toilet mat piano thing to my last White Elephant exchange only to have people start opening bottles of wine and warm, fuzzy blankets. Whoops.

      7. T3k*

        My family calls it White Elephant, but that’s because they didn’t like the way Dirty Santa sounded. So we basically have a mix of both good and bad gifts along with the rule that you can steal.

      8. Oranges*

        Also, any one else call it “The Dice Game”?

        Set Up: You have a pile of gifts and there’s two dice in a pie tin that go around the circle.
        First Round: You grab a wrapped gift once you get doubles. You drop out of rolling the dice once you get a gift.

        Second Round: Everyone then unwraps their gifts and you steal/swap gifts once you get doubles.

        1. Candi*

          Never heard of that version, but it sounds amazing. And the randomness would help with the people who think “fair” applies to everyone kowtowing so they get exactly what they want.

    5. EddieSherbert*

      Yeah, we did our first office white elephant last year and it was a mix of fun gag gifts (like… a farting animals coloring book versus a stick and a rock) and like… random crap people were obviously just trying to get rid of (a spray bottle of “urine off” carpet cleaner, a really old looking candle holder, etc.). We hopefully hammered out the details this year. We’ll see ;)

      1. CMDRBNA*

        I’m kind of souring on white elephant/dirty Santa games, because inevitably a few people ruin it by contributing crappy stuff, and it sucks to have gotten something you actually wanted and then have it get stolen. I went to a dirty Santa recently that had over 20 people participating, and I ended up with a single theater box of candy and a dust-covered candle, because some attendees had clearly just grabbed shit from their garages to contribute (of course, they went home with the fancy hot chocolate gift box or wine because other people actually contributed good gifts).

        1. Bleeborp*

          Does it really suck though? And isn’t it a little petty to worry about who brought and got what? It’s a game! I guess I always thought that the way to approach these things is to assume what you get isn’t going to be that great -either very goofy, useless, not your style, etc.- and that the gift you get isn’t the point, it’s the fun of the surprise and the stealing and all that. While of course I would like a Starbucks gift card because it’s useful, I’d think it’s super boring if that’s the kind of gift everyone brings. I’ve gotten “good gifts” and “random junk” gifts (and I’ve brought both) and it’s always entertaining.

          1. CMDRBNA*

            Uhhh…yes, it does suck? I mean, I’m not butthurt that someone stole a gift I liked or whatever. Those are the rules of the game. It sucks when you that handful of people who bring literal junk instead of a goofy gift. Dick soap (just soap in a ring shape)? Fun gift! Broken trash from your garage? Not a fun gift!

          2. Candi*

            Yes, it absolutely sucks. Under NO circumstances should anyone ever gift actual junk, trash, or garbage to anyone. It’s RUDE.

            Hiding it behind “well, it’s just a game” is in the same vein as “it was just a joke” or “can’t you take a compliment”.

            For instance, of stuff I might regift for a white elephant-gag-gift that I’m looking at right now: Maybe the “joy” necklace or the egg timer, or one of the goofy little figurines. Not the lovely little water fountain -my mother gave it to me broken years ago (for my birthday!). Not the “Time for Laundry” coin bank I got when living in my apartment -it’s old enough for the pattern to be wearing off. Not the broken earrings -they’re lovely, but the only way I’d give them to anyone is to break them down into a “treasure chest” for a kids’ present -and I have never found a suitably-shaped box.

            Just because it’s a secret gift thing is no license to give trash. Like the peanut SHELLS mentioned in one holiday thread 3 or 4 years ago.

        2. Specialk9*

          The only way to win at these things is to deliberately seek the worst possible gift. Any other approach ends in tears or bad feelings.

    6. Master Bean Counter*

      The gifts that got stolen at my former’s office’s white elephant were either chocolate, booze related, or funny hats. Except one year, I brought a singing and dancing Bill Clinton doll to the party. He was the hottest item that year.
      I usually scoped out the bottle of wine and tried to keep that as my gift.

        1. Brett*

          Bass Pro’s “Giant Stuffed Fish for Kids” are amazing exchange presents regardless of the type of exchange. Totally weird gift that for some reason grows on everyone and normally ends up with someone who realizes they have no idea what to do with it. And you can get them for $15 or $10 at the right time of year.

          1. Doctor Director*

            HA! Now I know where my uncle got that giant stuffed fish! It was his Christmas gift to me about ten years ago. It’s currently at my parents’ river house, sitting on the fireplace mantle. His name is Boris, and he’s become a family icon.

          2. Mallory Janis Ian*

            My kids brought a stuffed trout that they got at a yard sale to Christmas at their grandparents’ one year, and all the cousins spent all week long playing “Stair Trout”, a game of keep-away played on the staircase with the trout. One kid at the bottom of the stairs, one kid at the top of the stairs, and all the remaining cousins in the middle of the staircase trying to catch the trout. That’s been several years ago, but we still have the stuffed trout, and we still call it the stair trout.

            1. Whimsy and Forest Fires*

              A lot of the fun there is presumably the fact that the participants find themselves saying things like “Oh, awesome, I got Ebola!” or “My turn! Fergus, give me your gonorrhea!” :)

              (I have several giant microbes. They’re pretty adorable.)

              1. Candi*

                There was a subthread about those in the “weirdly dramatic responses to mundane office changes” thread a bit back.

                It started when Apollo Warbucks mentioned his coworkers were not happy about no longer receiving free (fake) meerkats.

                …they were cute meerkats. There were links posted.

                But someone mentioned that there is a Valentine Day’s plushie STD microbe pack. (This is even funnier if you remember VD was the predecessor to STD.)

    7. Q*

      I have a friend whose parents do it at their annual friends/family, but they make all the presents for the game themselves so no one can be disappointed.

      That said, when I went as a teenager, all their middle aged friends stole like, the vinaigrette and stuff from me because they felt bad for me having it.

      1. Sled dog mama*

        My husband’s extended family does it this way, each year a different part of the family provides gifts. One year it was all coloring books and candy….that was a fun year, no small children yet so a bunch of adults, drunk, high on sugar and coloring.

      3. Crochet Touché*

        My former office did Dorty Santa. Gifts were mostly booze and gift cards. The biggest draw were the people who brought $25 worth of scratch off lottery tickets. I’d never thought of it before, but I think scratchers will be my go-to office gift exchange gift going forward.

        1. Q*

          I’d be wary of that because a lot of people would consider that gambling which they don’t do for some reason.

          1. Orange*

            As a non-gambler because of religious reasons, if I ended up with scratch offs I’d have no problem with it. It’s not my money, therefore I have gambled nothing. I actually had a boss give them to our team one year as holiday present, I think I won 5 bucks…

            That said, I’m a bit less orthodox and I can *totally* see some fellow members of my faith being super offended (but nice about it, because my people are notoriously nice).

    9. it_guy*

      My old company did a white elephant exchange for lunch one Christmas, and one of the very, very lucky recipients was a candy dish/statue of a seated monkey with a bowl sitting between his legs. It was THE MOST ugly thing I have ever seen. Once we got back to our desks, the new dish owner sat down at his desk and a few minutes screamed “WOOHOO!”. He had just checked the dish on E-Bay and it was worth several hundred dollars.

      Made it the best one ever.

    10. RabbitRabbit*

      Yeah, one of our department admins gave one of the “box full of crap” choices this year, when everyone else went with “cute or odd but maybe at least useful to someone.” I kept saying that the e-mail announcing the game should have pretty clear instructions.

    11. Christmas Carol*

      My friend’s family adds a rule that the gifts can’t be unwrapped until the very end of the game, you have to evaluate the packages based on size, shape, weight, response to shaking, quality of wrapping, x-ray vision, whatever. This happened long long, ago, when prices were much, much lower. There was then a $2.00 limit on the gift exchange. Everyone kept stealing and re-stealing the largest package, which was also the lightest in weight. At the end of the game, the recipient unwrapped a package of 20 empty beer and pop cans. Note: Our state had just instituted a 10-cent deposit on drink containers = two dollars cash

    12. Kaboobie*

      We call it a Yankee Swap in these parts (New England). I used to work for a large department that did this at our holiday lunch and it would take FOREVER. Bottles of wine and lottery tickets were always the most popular gifts, and over the years the percentage of those items increased until very little else was included.

      1. Kaboobie*

        I forgot to mention, one year my husband came across a flyer for a Yankee Swap at his workplace (different department) and it emphasized, “This year, we will be exchanging NICE gifts”. We laughed a lot imagining what kind of gifts had been given in the past.

    13. Mary*

      It’s so important with these for everyone to be clear on what the tone will be. I had a job at a very small company where we did a white elephant at the holiday party. There was a very strict $20 limit, which everyone obeyed, except, it turned out, the CEO. His contribution was several expensive gifts (think high-end electronics) as a “surprise,” which totally threw off the balance of the game. He meant it as a nice gesture, but it turned the whole thing unpleasantly high-stakes.

      1. Mallory Janis Ian*

        Like that episode of The Office where Michael (1) turned the Secret Santa into a Yankee Swap because he didn’t like the knitted potholders that Phyllis gave him, and (2) threw an expensive iPod into the mix because that’s what he’d brought to a ~$10 gift exchange.

    14. Goya*

      White Elephant where I come from means “gag gift” (someone got a pair of slippers made out of feminine napkins once) so that would fit in perfectly. I wonder if someone wasn’t in the know about that? We call what you described a Yankee Swap or Gift Exchange

      1. Mallory Janis Ian*

        Around here it’s called White Elephant whether it’s gag gifts or nice gifts, so we have to specify which kind of White Elephant event it is. Kind of like how we call all soft drinks “coke” and then you have to specify what kind of coke you want: Sprite, orange soda, actual Coke, etc.

    15. Wendy Darling*

      True story: I quit my extended family’s White Elephant after they 1. decided to let small children (under 5) participate with the adults, and 2. my cousin stole a big thing of candy from HIS OWN 4 YEAR OLD and stuck him with a scented candle. The kid was inconsolable. I ended up stealing his candle so he could have my scratch-off cards because… wtf that was mean.

    17. Xam August*

      We do a white elephant every year with my large extended family. One year I ended up with a multimeter voltage meter thingy (I don’t do electrical) from my multi-millionaire Uncle, which I received because he stole my gift of a Best Buy gift card. No problem, I returned it to the store the next week, and it turns out he bought it using the stores rewards problem and I could get a refund of … 12 cents. I took the money and did shook my head all the way home.

    18. Totally Minnie*

      This is why I only allow white elephant exchanges at the work party if there’s a theme. One year we all brought Christmas ornaments, the next year everyone brought a mug, this year it’s books. That way we’re all on mostly equal footing and nobody’s stuck with a garbage present.

  9. mrs__peel*

    “Our fall potluck was simultaneously ‘sports jersey,’ ‘Halloween,’ and ‘Richard Nixon’-themed because I accidentally ended up in charge and did not have the energy to veto anything.”

    Please send help, I am dying…

    2. Hope*

      I’m just…I can understand sports jersey and Halloween, but…Richard Nixon as a potluck theme? What?

      1. Former HR person*

        I’m imagining foods that were popular in the 1970’s….though a nice gate with some water may have also been a part of the decor.

        1. pope suburban*

          I’m not sure if 1970s food would fall under the auspices of the Nixon theme, or the Halloween one. There were many crimes against gelatin in that era. As well as pates, mousses, fruits, and tinned anything. I’d be pretty scared to try any of it.

  10. Snark*

    A few years ago, we all went out for a pre-Christmas happy hour at the local outpost of a national chain pub. All of us placed orders for beers, some time passed, and the waitress came back with a massive tray loaded with 12-15 full, sloshing pints of beer.

    And tripped.

    Angels wept as beer in many shades of amber, gold, and chocolate arced through the air, accompanied by the festive tinkling and glitter of exploding glasses and the wailing of those showered in the malty goodness. Except for one full pint glass which landed on the table at such a precise angle as to remain wobbly but upright, sliding and teetering gently to a halt….neatly before the person who had, in fact, ordered it.

    Merry was the laughter as all the people partook of a sip of the Beer of God, for it was blessed, and all were in amazement.

      1. Snark*

        I didn’t want to interrupt my Biblical flow with too much detail, but it was truly amazing. She tripped right next to the table, and somehow one just ended up landing base-first with a little sideways momentum, and it just….didn’t fall over. And it was right in front of the guy who ordered it, who ended up wearing my beer. I mean, no laws of physics were broken, but it was amazing.

    3. ChemistryChick*

      I always love reading your stories, Snark. You’ve got a way with words.

      I’m picturing the beer shower in slow motion…almost like the scene in Spongebob when Squidward dramatically trips into a pole.

      1. Snark*

        I was – naurally – telling a story at the time, and so I actually didn’t really see it. I was just wet and smelling distinctly of hops all of a sudden, and I had no idea why.

        1. Mananana*

          1) Thank you for sharing that story, you are a natural story-teller. And,

          2) This “I was just wet and smelling distinctly of hops all of a sudden, and I had no idea why” describes my entire time in under-grad.

    4. Pam*

      Mine isn’t as good as that, but I did end up wearing a tray of chocolate mousse once when a waiter stumbled. I, naturally, was wearing a white sweater.

        1. Artemesia*

          Two bad you were not wearing the white tank and shirt that Meg Ryan wore in ‘French Kiss’ — you know the one that she slept in for days, had chocolate mousse spilled on and just rinsed out in the sink and looked pristine. I so wanted that blouse for travel; mine have grungy cuffs, neck and a couple of spots after about 6 hours.

        1. Your Weird Uncle*

          I remember a waitress tipping a plate of spaghetti on my head when I was about 4 or 5, just before I went to go see Santa. I was NOT a happy camper that day!

        2. Midge*

          I once gesticulated into a server carrying a tray with a single mimosa. The mimosa fell, the glass broke and it splashed all over me. This was the moment that someone started giving a speech, so I tried desperately to play it cool while the horrified server kept coming over with more and more napkins.

      3. MsMaryMary*

        In college, I was working on a group project and we decided to meet during happy hour at a local bar (oh, college). We were seated at a high top and the happy hour special was 22oz beers, so we had a round of tall beer glasses on the table. Someone jostled the table and knocked five tall beers over on to me and the two girls next to me. We had actually been working on the group project, so my notebook was drenched and my bookbag dripped when I fished it out of a puddle on the floor (luckily this was back in the day, so no cell phone or laptops were harmed).

        1. JD*

          A first date with a great guy, he ordered a pitcher of beer. Before one was even poured he knocked it over and poured the entire thing on my shirt, chest down. The bar tender gave me a t shirt and I went to the bathroom. We happened to be going to a fair later so I had brought jeans to change into just in case the weather changed. So I went out to my car and changed from my skirt into jeans. When I walked back into the bar the whole place cheered and bought us drinks all night. All were happy I came back rather than leave him. We of course never made it to the fair as I smelled like a brewery even after changing.

      4. Rebecca in Dallas*

        OMG! A waitress once spilled a glass of red wine on my SIL who was OF COURSE wearing a brand new white silk blouse.

        This is why I could never be a server, I am way too clumsy.

    6. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I read the story but didn’t see the user name first, and I said to myself, I bet this is Snark. You have a way with words!

    7. SunshineOH*

      Come for Alison’s genius and practical work advice. Stay for the amazing comments and stories from our friend Snark.

      Ah-mazing.

        1. OhNo*

          Better start planning ahead for the holiday party this year, then, so you can replenish your supply. ;)

        2. Teapot Librarian*

          You can make anything into a delightful ambrosia of words. Unlike me, if this comment is any indication :-)

    13. Julia*

      I recently knocked a glass of water off my desk, and it flew, turned in the air once, and managed to lodge itself into my tiny handbag face up. I just stood there laughing for minutes.

  11. Anon non non*

    One of my co-workers makes candy as a gift for all of the people in my branch. She also makes a small tray for the holiday party. Last year a small fight (verbal, not physical) broke out over the last piece. Apparently the woman who took the last piece hadn’t actually opened or eaten the pieces given to her as a gift and the woman who had already eaten hers didn’t think it was fair that she couldn’t have the last piece because of that. The first woman was actually planning to give her gift to her husband who had expressed a love for the homemade candy as well…and she had only taken one piece the entire day which just so happened to be the last piece. It was quite ridiculous. The second woman still harbors a lot of resentment over it and has actually told the candy-maker to “make sure there’s enough for everyone this year!” There was enough last year…but apparently not for her. And the candy? It’s okay…but not so great that it should start a fight.

    1. YpsiGuy*

      Ohhh, no. As soon as the sentence “make sure there’s enough for everyone this year” is uttered, that would be the end of my candy-making days.

      1. Amber T*

        As the office homemade candy/chocolate maker around the holidays – if it ever got rude like this, I’d shut it down ridiculously quickly. I gift small individual packages to my immediate peers (just a few) and bring in large trays to leave in the lunch room. Candy and chocolate is supposed to bring happiness, and if you’re going to try to use my creations to be an asshat, you’re going to get shot down.

    2. Libby*

      If someone told me to “make sure there’s enough for everyone this year!” I would stop bringing in any at all.

      1. Snark*

        Yep. I’d bring in a Costco-size bag of Christmas Hershey’s Kisses, dump it on a table, proclaim “See! Enough for everyone this year!” and go drink in a corner.

        2. Beancounter Eric*

          Forget Hershey’s…..find the cheapest, no-name, “candy-substitute”….marzipan joy-joy’s mit iodine come to mind!!

          1. Natalie*

            Those tiny boxes of raisins, but only if they are really, really old and have been stored improperly.

        3. As Close As Breakfast*

          I would definitely bring some of my homemade candy to eat while drinking in that corner. The whole time just dead eye staring straight at Miss make-sure-there’s-enough-for-everyone-this-year.

    3. Amadeo*

      I brought handmade bath and body stuff for everyone last year (and probably will again this year). Fortunately no one fought over it, thank heavens, but there’s one coworker who, whenever I bring any, including reject bars (ugly, don’t smell/scent faded, whatever) will help herself to one, and then later on tells me how pretty they are decorating her bathroom.

      I expect the same thing to happen to whatever she gets this year and I really wish she wouldn’t tell me about it! Obviously I can’t skip her, she’s a very lovely individual, but I bring this stuff for people to enjoy in its use, not as pretty baubles for the bathroom counter (that may last years, but will eventually lose their scent after a prolonged amount of time, or start to look different or any other number of things, they’re not meant to be decorative). Either stop telling me that it’s too pretty to use so it’s decorating your bathroom like a Pier One purchase or stop taking them please and thank you!

      1. CM*

        I get what you’re saying — as a home baker/candy maker, I’ve also been pained to see a festively wrapped bag of treats decorating somebody’s desk months after it should have been eaten.

        But if she’s using it (albeit not in the way you intended), enjoying it, and expressing her appreciation, that sounds great to me.

      2. Cherries in the Snow*

        This seems—not a very charitable spirit. Gifts are to be used however the recipient most enjoys them. I too make handmade bath products; if someone only wanted to display them until they go off—fine! They’re enjoying the gift, that’s all that matters. I wouldn’t get all judgmental and huffy about it; I’d be glad they enjoy my handiwork.

        1. Amadeo*

          Oh, I get that it’s a pretty petty thing to be annoyed about and I’ll openly admit that! I’ve never told anyone but my mother that it bothers me a bit, so it’s not getting back to anyone at work and she’ll get her bar of soap again this year.

        2. JD*

          Ya, this is a bit odd to me. She loves the items. I have some nicer looking products in my bathroom I display. It is a great compliment frankly.

      3. viva*

        I get it. I was gifted a big bunch of homemade soap by a family friend because she was overjoyed when she learned I actually used (and loved!) the soap she had handed out the previous year as party favors. When I complimented her on the soap – seriously, it’s marvelous stuff for dry skin – she gave me a big bag full because she was thrilled that I would used it.

      4. ket*

        I know what you mean… I have to say sometimes I make a different version of a gift like that for people I know don’t use it (like no scent, or skipping the ingredients that make it great but also make it go bad). It’s fine if they don’t use it for the purpose it’s intended, but it feels like throwing food away or something similarly wasteful.

    6. Artemesia*

      If someone told me I needed to make more of a gift I brought to the office, that would be the end of candy trays in the break room from me.

      1. Pickles*

        That happened to me once. “Oh, you didn’t bring paper plates and utensils along with that homemade cheesecake? Well, we’re just not going to eat it and sit here complaining.”

        Well, then I’m just going to not bake for you anymore. And delighted my new office shortly thereafter with a constant stream of baked goods.

  12. Elvira*

    This isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but my first job out of college was as a staff assistant for a small nonprofit. My first year there, a coworker and I planned the whole Christmas party, and it went very well! That is until the CEO announced at the end of the party that they were giving out bonuses, but only to people who had worked there at least a year. The organization had hired a lot of new people that year (I had only been there 8-9 months at that point) so naturally quite a few people were upset by this. Like, I guess that’s the organization’s prerogative, but why announce it like that, especially when you know it’s going to hurt people? I didn’t throw a fit over it or anything, but I personally would rather have thought no one was getting a bonus than that some people were and others weren’t.

    Anyway, I guess someone complained, because they ended up giving the rest of us prorated bonuses, as well.

      1. Artemesia*

        Merry Christmas, many of you are not getting bonuses this year! What was he thinking. It reminds me of the high school principal who wrote a fulsome Christmas letter in which he featured many of the 100 of so teachers in the school; it was very long and here was an anecdote about JV and another one about Bob, then remember how much Martha and JoAnn contributed to the special edition of the paper and Coach Roberts won the big game and on and on. He mentioned about 80 of the 100 people and of course everyone happily read it looking for THEIR star moment. And then it was done and Merry Christmas and no mention of me (and a couple of dozen others). Yeah I was new, but I had also really done some great work, but I was also new and thus insecure and to discover that I was of such little significance that the principal couldn’t grub up some nice thing to say, even ‘we were happy to welcome new colleagues, Artemesia, Fred, Fergus, and Bambi’, was totally crushing. I felt that horrible drop in the pit of my stomach of total loserdom. And he was a GREAT boss who later was very supportive, but he really blew that one. It is like birthday parties — invite the whole class or a handful but not almost everyone but not quite.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          It’s the kind of thing that I don’t understand why some people don’t see it until it’s pointed out to them. It seems obvious that saying nice things about nearly everyone will make the few people not included feel bad.

    2. Laura*

      A past job the owner announced everyone seated in the room would receive a $250 bonus for the quarter. Several weeks later, another woman and I found out not us because we started during the quarter. No problem but the company was growing and he never fixed his speech so I’m sure many more people have had an unpleasant surprise.

        1. SusanIvanova*

          My first software job, at a very small company – no more than 20 people – the boss encouraged us to put up pictures of what we’d get with our holiday bonus. I don’t remember if he said how much it was or just dropped major hints, but we were expecting something around $500.

          Holiday comes and goes, no bonus, no explanation, but shortly after that the boss took his family on a nice vacation.

      2. Coalea*

        At my first job out of college I received a small Christmas bonus the first year. My boss told me she knew that it was small, but to hang in there because once I’d completed a full year of service (ie, the following Christmas), I would received a significantly larger bonus (like, more than 5x greater). The following year I got the same small bonus and when I expressed my gratitude tempered with disappointment, my boss claimed she never said anything about a larger bonus after 1 year. This was so typical of her, so I was delighted to be able to turn in my notice shortly thereafter.

    3. BlueWolf*

      I started at my company in November of last year and I still got a Christmas bonus. I was pleasantly surprised. I don’t know if it was the same as everyone else’s or not, since I didn’t discuss specific numbers with anyone else.

      1. CS Rep By Day, Writer By Night*

        This happened to me at my previous employer. I started two weeks before Thanksgiving and didn’t expect to get a bonus, but I was given $50. Then the next year I got the full bonus which was $250. I thought it was great of them to pro-rate the bonus and not just skip the new employees entirely.

      2. Former Hoosier*

        I once started in November and it is a long story, but I was kind of forced onto a manager until a different job was available for me. Anyway, he gave me $100 as a personal gift and it meant so much to me. Not just because it was a large personal gift but because I hadn’t been there long and his manager was the one who hired me. I bought something I had really been wanting with the money and have thought of him every time I use it.

    4. MsMaryMary*

      It’s not quite the same, but at OldJob only certain roles were bonus eligible. There was a complicated bonus formula where you could receive a certain percentage of salary based on your individual performance and the performance of your business unit. The first year I was in a bonus eligible role, I was really excited about it. My business unit had done well and my performance review had been stellar – I just gotten promoted based on how well I’d been doing. Then I learned bonuses were pro-rated for the amount of time you’d been in a bonus eligible role. Bonuses were paid at the end of December and I’d been promoted in October. After taxes, my bonus was about $80.

      1. Mabel*

        This especially sucks if admins (or IT techs, etc.) aren’t eligible, even though they make it possible for the eligible people to actually do their work.

    5. JD*

      This happened to me as well. The best was my “bonus” the next year. A $25 Costco gift card. When I finally went to Costco I happened to buy tampons with it as let’s face it, their price is good there for them and I needed them. So my bonus was tampons. I was always a bit salty about that.

  13. Daphne B.*

    My first year at the last company I worked for, my boss (who oversaw a department of about 70 people) got so drunk during the Christmas party that he got kicked out of the venue. He snuck in a full bottle of bourbon – not a flask, a full bottle – and proceeded to drink most of it. He got so rowdy that the staff at the hotel came in and told him he had to leave. He went and passed out in his truck while his partner stayed through the party.

  14. AdAgencyChick*

    I’m gonna out myself as the anon who posted last year about an employee who bitched about how Yankee Swap was not being played by her rules, and then when she drew a gift card as her gift, she stuffed it down her bra and tried to walk out of the room so no one else could take it from her.

      1. AdAgencyChick*

        hahahaha, your username is perfect for this story.

        My favorite part was when one of my indirect reports, who was super quiet and docile, got her turn, and told the loud, exact-opposite-of-docile lady who’d put the gift card in her cleavage that that was the gift she wanted.

        1. Mallory Janis Ian*

          hahaha — “I’ll be taking the gift card from within the depths of your ample bosom.”

        2. Clever Name*

          That’s amazing. That’s exactly what I would want to do if I were there, but I’m not sure I’d have the guts to do it.

        3. Specialk9*

          And then what? She tried to walk out, card in cleavage. Did someone stop her? Surely she didn’t feel shame, if she had just pulled shenanigans. How did it get retrieved?

  15. Umvue*

    I love that fall potluck horror story. Someone should have dressed up as Zombie Richard Nixon in an LA Dodgers jersey.

  16. MrsJ*

    My first job out college was working for a small startup tech firm. We had 10 employees. The company owner told us we were required to attend the company holiday party in order to get our holiday bonus. The party was hosted at his mansion-like home complete with catering and a bartender… and 50 of his closest friends. He made the party a requirement for us to get our bonuses so that we would show up, which allowed him to justify it as a company event and write it off as a business expense. We had to stay a requisite amount of time before he would hand out the bonuses, and he made a big show of it when he finally felt we had “enjoyed his hospitality” enough. We had to stand up in front of everyone and were cajoled to drink a toast with him to the success of the company in the coming year. By this time he was pretty well drunk and would try to kiss the women. Then finally he would hand over the check.

    This continued for several years with various amusing incidents. Perhaps the funniest one involved us realizing this guy had a picture of himself in every room of the house. Imagine walking into the bathroom and seeing your boss’s framed, smiling face watching you use the toilet!

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      This continued for several years with various amusing incidents. Perhaps the funniest one involved us realizing this guy had a picture of himself in every room of the house. Imagine walking into the bathroom and seeing your boss’s framed, smiling face watching you use the toilet!

      There are no words

    6. karou*

      “Perhaps the funniest one involved us realizing this guy had a picture of himself in every room of the house. Imagine walking into the bathroom and seeing your boss’s framed, smiling face watching you use the toilet!”

      Was your boss Peter Gallagher’s character in While You Were Sleeping?

    7. Amber T*

      I’m very curious about these kinds of parties where they hold bonus checks hostage like this. First of all, no judgement at all because I certainly wouldn’t want to chance it, but if you didn’t show up, what would they do with your check? Would they shred it? From a budgeting perspective – accounting sets aside $X for year end bonuses, so if 5 people don’t show up and that totals $Y in bonuses, what happens to that money? And if you have direct deposit, do they still do checks for bonuses? (My bonuses have been deposited alongside my paychecks on the last business day of December.)

      Curiouser and curiouser…

      1. Natalie*

        For whatever reason, a lot of places give the bonuses out as live checks even if they normally do direct deposit. I’ve always assumed it’s so your boss can sit down with you and have a little “year in review” chat and then hand you the check.

        If someone didn’t show up to this boss’s party I bet 1 million dollars he’d have that check reissued to himself.

      2. Former Hoosier*

        My husband used to work for a very large company that gave out very large performance based bonuses each year. The company would tell you your bonus the day of the Christmas party. If you didn’t show up that night to the Christmas party, it was assumed that your bonus was low. Everyone watched. You didn’t have to come to the party to get the bonus, it was just assumed you didn’t if you didn’t get one or yours was low.

      3. AnonymousCrank*

        Yeah, holding bonuses hostage in order to get people to show up is a dick move. At my last workplace, morale was SO bad that the boss scheduled the Xmas party on payday, because it was the only way they could get some of the employees to attend. They also held the party during business hours (this was a retail store, open to the public) so as a result, any customers coming in got to feel extra-awkward about interrupting what was already a gloomy party, and the staff couldn’t relax and enjoy themselves due to customers needing help. Needless to say, I quit shortly after that!

      4. MrsJ*

        In this case, we could still get our bonus, but the charade played out in reverse. Bossman would give you your check at the office, but you had to explain in front of your coworkers why you felt you had something more important to do than coming to his party and basking in his hospitality. The December after I got married, I dragged my poor sick husband to the party just so we could show our faces; he was running a 101 degree temperature with a raging ear infection/sore throat. I wonder who infected, but oh well. He claimed the whiskey was medicinal, and we left right after my check was in hand.

        1. Candi*

          So did your husband spend a lot of time hanging around the boss, in his space, breathing on him…? Please?

  17. Zoe Karvounopsina*

    Last year, for reasons that escape me, our chief executive decided to attend dressed as a Native American, and give herself a Native American name (which I now cannot remember, as that was when I started drinking in earnest.)

    As I put it later, the theme was Christmas number ones, not casual racism!

      1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

        We’re in the UK.

        This year the theme is myths and legends. There’s already been one lightsaber seen wandering the halls.

          1. Zoe Karvounopsina*

            Our team are going as gods and goddesses. I have a wreath in my inbox, and the colleague next to me is working around a winged helmet.

      2. Violet Rose*

        And *this* is what finally set off my giggling fit. Good thing I work from home!

        Christmas Number Ones makes me think of Riker in a santa hat.

    3. Zoe Karvounopsina*

      Wait, I lie, it was the President, not the chief executive, and the president of the allied organisation whose attics we rent.

      None of that helped.

        1. Not Australian*

          Except that the correct term is ’roundheads’. And nobody would give a toss, honestly.

      2. Oranges*

        I… looked it up and I still don’t understand the chain from Native American to Cromwell’s Ironhead. Could you explain please?

        1. paul*

          They’re a group of people that’ll cause offense (presumably) in a large segment of the UK’s population is all; admittedly for very different reasons, but I don’t have a huge knowledge of the UK’s history pre-WWI and my store of “things from that time period you shouldn’t dress as” was pretty low.

          1. fortunatelyjenkins*

            They honestly wouldn’t cause any offense. There are things that could – comedy Irishman, traveller – but no one in the UK is that invested in the 1600s.

  18. RabbitRabbit*

    At an old workplace (a department in a medical center), we always had a holiday party in our office – closed down a little early, brought in caterers to put out a spread of food (mixed appetizers and desserts), and had an open bar with beer, wine, and cocktails. Doctors, residents, med students, nurses, techs, office staff, everyone mingled and had fun.

    One year, it got a little out of control. A couple of the guys decided that starting early and a free open bar wasn’t good enough. They went to a nearby restaurant/bar and had a couple (?) drinks, then started in on our party. The catering was good and plentiful, but it was still a lot of finger food and thus harder to fill up on than if you had a full meal set out for you.

    By the end of the night, we had some seriously drunk people – not doctors/nurses – and at least one of the guys who threw up in an office wastebasket (his own, at least, but it was in a shared office with 3 other people’s desks). The next day involved major hangovers. And apparently some very serious discussions from managers to those who had misbehaved.

    They cut down the open bar to ‘two drink tickets’ after that.

    I just can’t understand why you’d do the opposite of “pre-gaming” (having a drink or two at home to get loosened up and not have to buy as much at a bar) – paying to drink before you get free drinks.

    1. Natalie*

      Finger food is always high risk. A few years ago, my entire office including myself got completely hammered sort of by accident. We had received tons of gift cards to an upscale steak house (from vendors and stuff) so we all went there for our holiday dinner. Since no one made a reservation we couldn’t get a table and sat in the lounge instead. They had champagne half price because it was snowing, it took forever for our food to get there, and of course we didn’t have an actual table so no one ordered a real meal or ate close to enough. I ended up getting in the wrong Uber – free ride! – and my colleagues apparently all decided to share an Uber so I got an expense report with the most ridiculous map on the receipt.

      I think our total bill for fewer than 10 people was close to a grand.

    2. AdAgencyChick*

      People in advertising do this all the time. It’s like once they say “party” everyone is like “what do you meeeeeeeean the drinking doesn’t start until 6?”

      So they head out to a dive bar at 2. And that’s that.

    3. Anonicat*

      I’ve heard stories of crazy hospital Christmas parties in the 80s, where many of the staff ended the night by hooking each other up to drips to mitigate the next day’s hangover.

    4. mscate*

      yeah when i was vegan for a while while working at a university, we had christmas lunch. All vegetarians and vegans got the same three course meal- vegetable salad, pasta with tomato sauce and fruit salad. We all got super drunk as there was no protein and fats.

    3. LawPancake*

      Oh god, I used to work in a hotel that would host impersonators and I’ll never forget the night I had to go down to the sound guy’s van to get a a very stoned Tom Jones, Elvis, and Neil Diamond out of the back to get ready for their second act.

      1. Marillenbaum*

        I used to work with an Elvis impersonator–he would bust it out for Christmas and retirement parties, but without his sparkly suit, because it was at his mom’s house in St. Louis and he didn’t want to risk it getting lost in the mail. He is now at seminary to become a youth pastor, and I am quite happy to think of some group of teens now experiencing the joy of Pastor Jake’s Elvis Spectacular!

  20. Anon for this*

    We have a departmental secretary, who is incredibly kind and generous if not somewhat overenthusiastic. She supports close to 50 people in our department with very little complaint, so I suppose we shouldn’t have been surprised the year she ROASTED all of us at the mid-day (no alcohol) holiday party. She emceed the gift exchange and some of the raffles and games and spared no one. When it was my boss’s turn to participate in the gift exchange, she gave her a Snickers bar, because she “always looked so cranky and stressed” (which was not even a little bit true). She made fun of people for being skinny, for being shy…it was AWKWARD. She no longer “emcees” the party.

    1. Snark*

      I was thinking at first that she was like, “I see you, Fergus. I see you not refilling the copier tray when you use it all.” But getting too personal would make that awkward real fast.

      2. Samiratou*

        Yeah, if she’d gone with mild riffs on people’s annoying office habits that could be quite entertaining but it’s really hard to do right, particularly for 50 people.

        1. Anon for this*

          It started that way! But then she got super carried away and she is privy to some personal information as she books many people’s travel. That day I learned that one person we work with always arranges to put the mini bar on a separate tab, because he empties it every night…

      3. selina kyle*

        Yeah I thought petty office complaints or jokes that everyone would sort of know about and wouldn’t cut deep could be very fun. Not this!

    3. Lissa*

      Thank you for a story that proves that “I’m punching up!” does not automatically make this type of thing ok. :)

      Also, eeeeesh.

  21. paul*

    Mine is years ago, first year on the job. I was hired in the late fall, so fairly new.

    We were at our Communications Director’s house for a party; I’m feeling fine, all is well, I’m pleasantly chatting over some snacky thingies.

    And with about 5-10 seconds warning, I projective vomit. over my plate, her floor, our finance director, etc. Run to the bathroom and continue to puke for a solid 10-15 minutes.

    A coworker drives me home because I was in no shape to drive.

    0 alcohol involved; I was fine the next day too. No idea WTF happened. My stomach just said “nope!” and decided an emergency evacuation was in order I guess. Hadn’t even had much to eat.

    3. Lunch Meat*

      My headcanon is that the finance director was a spy and was trying to poison you and you sensed it subconsciously.

      1. paul*

        Actually, he and I are still friends; he’s the ED of a fairly major local non profit now. Nice guy.

        That I sprayed with a hose of puke while trying to get to a trash can or bathroom or ANYTHING.

    7. Adlib*

      The human body is weird. I once had chills & a fever that lasted like 2 hours, and I woke up the next morning feeling fine. So bizarre. (Good thing too as I was out of town on business.)

    8. As Close As Breakfast*

      I had a projectile vomiting ‘incident’ that still haunts me to this day when I was doing my very first summer internship. It was my first week and I was innocently walking down the long empty hallway one floor above the labs I worked in, when I was suddenly struck with the same 5-10 second warning you experienced. I had just enough time to hang a quick right and run directly into the bathroom. And by ‘just enough time’ I mean that I turned, opened the door and projectile vomited all over the room. Being a young and unsure woman at the time, I started sobbing and trying to clean up the mess. So as I’m down on my knees trying desperately to wipe up the mess while crying uncontrollably, the door opens and in walks… a gentleman. Because OF COURSE I had run into and vomited all over the MEN’S RESTROOM. I still don’t know which one of us was more shocked in that particular moment. It turned out that for some unknown reason, while the two floors were identical in every other way, the restroom locations were switched. If I had been on my own dang floor at least I would have covered the women’s restroom in vomit. I still cringe.

    9. Cassandra*

      Oh gosh I thought the denouement here would be a kidney stone, which can (as I learned the hard way — not at a party, though!) cause a sudden unstoppable attack of the barfs.

      Awful thing to happen, but I’m glad it wasn’t worse.

      1. Candi*

        It might have been. I’ve had kidney stones a couple times, and I felt miserable even though they passed (feeling every inch). Increasing fluid intake put a stop to that. (Almost nothing makes me actually vomit, though. Pregnancy and very bad stomach bug have been the only culprits.)

        My other thought was bad food, sea or otherwise, and the body reacted with a prompt eviction notice when it detected that. The thing on the Osmosis Jones movie, with the oyster and the father getting real sick real fast? Is a thing.

  22. AnnaleighUK*

    One of my co-workers at OldJob got so wasted at a party that he walked over eight miles home in the snow with no jacket because he’d given it to someone who had said he was cold. That was the worst we ever had, we were far too well behaved. I find out what CurrentJob parties are like tomorrow night so maybe next year I’ll have something better to share!

      1. whingedrinking*

        I mean, “in the snow” can mean different things – it could be slightly above freezing, or it could be forty below – and if it’s more the former than the latter, and you’re walking briskly enough, you’d probably not lose any fingers.
        Still sounds unpleasant. Yikes.

        1. Jessica*

          8 miles at or below 32 degrees with no coat, when you’re drunk…that’s a good 3 hours or so. Zoinks. That would really suck.

          1. Candi*

            Bus stop is a mile from my house. Today was fog, fog, fog… was that a bit of clearing? Nope, more fog. This is very weird. Usually fog burns off by midmorning, even in winter.

            So, I, thinking that the fog would burn off, wore a light coat designed more for keeping the rain off and a long sleeved shirt.

            FREAKING COLD walking home. Fortunately, walking did keep me warm enough so I was okay.

            Temperature didn’t get above 40 F today.

            So I so, so feel for this guy. Especially since the alcohol would have made him feel warmer than he was through vessel dilation, and he would have temperature misreading and heat loss going on with the loss of judgement and discernment.

  23. Hmmmmm*

    My strangest holiday party work story: I try to explain to my boss that most people will not attend unless they feel like they have to or unless a lot of money was spent or both. I try to cushion it in budget and time investment concerns, but that backfires. He tells me to schedule it during the lunch break and not serve alcohol for cost concerns. Most of our employees were young creatives, part-timers or contract work based with a variety of other gigs, scheduled based on need an union agreements, so we can’t make it mandatory and there is nothing to be gained by “face time.” I send out invites to the entire org and no one RSVPs. I get a few emails asking if this is mandatory and/or if alcohol will be served. I show them to my boss, he neither wants to upscale or downscale. Over a period of a month or two, he sends me emails of random of things he wants to make sure I include, such as using giftwrap to cover the tables instead of table cloths etc etc. Cut to the day of the party: I spend 4 hours setting up, coordinating the catering deliveries, setting up a speaker system, giftwrapping 8ft tables, sending out reminder emails through various channels every hour or so. I call department admins to remind them to encourage people to attend the party. The room looks gorgeous and I did a really good job considering I had a budget of like $300. The only people who show up take a plate of food and immediately leave. Including my boss.

    My best holiday party story: The next year my boss closes the office half day instead of throwing a party. Everyone participated in that.

    1. Hallway Feline*

      Sounds like you did an awesome job though! So while it sucks the way it turned out, I’m going to applaud your effort. You are a true RA in spirit (or maybe you were one?)

      1. Hmmmmm*

        It was fine. If anyone ever leaves these things up to me, forever and ever I will do a “holiday office closure” instead of a holiday party. I am 100% convinced the best gift you can give someone in 2017 is a weekday afternoon off.

        1. Kelsi*

          How about both? My office does a (non-mandatory) holiday lunch at a fancyish restaurant, with some fun events like an auction where senior level staff has donated time/skills (for instance, last year I won a line-dancing lesson from a manager that line dances competitively and a pie of my choice from one of our department heads). Once lunch is over, we get the rest of the afternoon off.

          (We have a large enough staff that this works…some people choose not to go to lunch and instead take the time off, but the majority do come!)

  24. Snark*

    “at least one of the guys who threw up in an office wastebasket (his own, at least, but it was in a shared office with 3 other people’s desks).”

    There was a guy in college who was so hammered he was sitting on the floor, hugging a trash can on his lap, and barfing into it periodically. It was a mesh trash can. Good times.

    2. RabbitRabbit*

      Yikes. At least in my example, they were solid plastic with thin trash bags inside – basically the thickness of a disposable shopping bag, enough to keep a trash container from getting messy from small spills but not very sturdy.

      On reflection, he should have grabbed one of the biohazardous waste cans in the procedure room…

    4. MashaKasha*

      I will admit to sleeping on the floor next to a toilet for the entire night once; for the sole reason that I did not trust myself to be away from it. I’d periodically wake up, throw up into the toilet, and go back to sleep. We were at an all-inclusive resort, then-husband and I had a massive fight, and I got the bright idea to go to an (all-inclusive) bar to help me get it off my mind; and get it off my mind I did! Wish I could say it was “the one time in college”, but no, we were in our 40s and had two teenage children.

  25. cherrytomato*

    re: spray-painted gold barbies – I wouldn’t want one, but do you think the person who did that was going for “knock-off Oscar”?

      1. Candi*

        Someone mentioned in the original gold barbies thread that their church did Ken dolls. In bright patterned shorts.

    3. spock*

      That’s what I’ve always assumed. I still think it’s funny but it doesn’t seem outrageous (though the execution could make all the difference of course).

    4. Goya*

      That was my assumption. Ken doll would have been better as an option for that, but the selection might not has been as plentiful if they were raiding toy bins or thrift shops.

      1. Candi*

        Part of the issue in the original thread was that it looked like the woman made NO effort to tidy them up. Just “spritz” with the paint.

  26. MrsJ*

    There was the year a new-to-us VP (relocated from Corporate) forbid our Secret Santa activity, because he didn’t believe in Santa. Under the same guy’s direction, our holiday lunch did not have any food fit for vegetarians beside the salad and the cookies, because – you guessed it – he didn’t believe in vegetarianism. When confronted about it, he pointed out “there isn’t much chicken in the pasta dish” and suggested the non-meat eaters try that dish. It got even better! We had team building activities at the event which consisted of cheap kids’ games at each table. We were invited to play them as part of the entertainment, and then we found out the games were the door prizes. Fun times!

    3. Susanne*

      This is so odd! Vegetarianism is so common and has been for years – whether it’s moral qualms about eating meat or health-related reasons. It’s just sort of been the norm for years that you offer both meat and non-meat options in any kind of public catering setting, IMO.

      1. RabbitRabbit*

        You’d think so, but some people take weird offence. My father-in-law once slipped meat broth into my food. My stomach figured it out. (He called to gloat after we got home from dinner. My husband yelled that he should come over and hold my hair back.)

        2. Alli525*

          This is a fairly common occurrence over at Reddit’s JustNoMIL (mother-in-law) page – so many crazies trying to poison their child’s spouse!!

        4. HaHaChaCha*

          I’m super lactose-intolerant (and also super, super anxious about making things difficult for hosts if I’m the odd one out) and if someone did this to me, I’d really want to try and vomit on them. It’s so rude!!

        5. The Bimmer Guy*

          That’s really effing cruel. Where do people get off, trying to slip meat to vegetarians / vegans?

        6. Properlike*

          My BIL – who is a certified asshole – slipped veal into his sister’s meal after she told him she didn’t want to eat veal at his wedding. Then he self-importantly told her just after the meal finished. He’s still an asshole. I have a list.

      2. MrsJ*

        The truly odd thing was that he was imported from the corporate office in Portland, OR, which is pretty crunchy. I guess his disbelief in vegetarianism was one of the reasons he was unhappy there.

        1. Specialk9*

          I’m sorry, this guy sounds so terrible, but lordy he’s making me giggle. I’m just imagining trying to keep it together when a grown man announces belligerently that he doesn’t believe in Santa. Or vegetarians. But mostly freaking Santa.

    4. MrsJ*

      That VP was a prize human being all around. We used to refer to him as “Lord Farquaad” from Shrek behind his back.

    5. Not So NewReader*

      Sooo applying the same logic in a different way, you guys could have banded together and told him that you all don’t believe in VPs.

    6. FD*

      He doesn’t believe in…All I can think of here is, “In my church, we don’t believe in Mormons.” /obscure reference/

    7. Candi*

      Sooooooooo did he listen when/if someone pointed out to him that he was risking running into some huge ADA/religious issues with that anti-vegetarian crap?

      Also, how do you not believe in something that objectively exists? This guy sounds like he’s a few dice short of a D&D set.

      There’s science behind why people who don’t eat meat get sick when exposed -so jerkarses, QUIT with the SNEAKING. Ditto for allergies and sensitivities.

  27. Broadcastlady*

    The family owned media companyi work for used to have parties with lots of wine. One Christmas about 12 years ago, an employee’s wife got trashed, and as they got ready to leave my boss said, “Are you sure you don’t want anymore wine?” He shouldn’t have, but he did. She replied with “Why don’t you eat my ass?” Havent had alcohol at a party since.

    1. Broadcastlady*

      I should add, this still gets talked about at every Christmas party. That employee has long moved on (left on great terms).

    10. DeeC*

      (it’s totally the ‘it’ thing to do anymore…..we just watched CHIPS this past weekend and this line KILLED every.single.time)

    11. Rebecca in Dallas*

      I’m not sure if she meant that as a retort or as a come-on, both scenarios have me laughing at my desk!

  28. Nicki Name*

    Not funny, but will sound weird to most of you…

    At a past job, the annual Christmas charity drive consisted of buying presents for kids attending a local school that catered to the homeless. The wish list was in a “giving tree” format– a Christmas tree would be set up in HR hung with tags listing kids’ names, ages, clothing sizes, and what they wanted.

    This company operated in a heavily unionized industry, but was not unionized itself. One year, there was an attempt to unionize the workers on the factory floor, with a vote in January, so the campaign period was happening over the holidays. The charity drive stil happened, but there was no Christmas tree– because apparently it qualified as a company-provided “informational display”, which meant the union could set up a display of similar size/reach, and management felt it was more important to prevent that than have the festive giving tree! Instead, the tags were put in an envelope that was circulated furtively among department admins.

    1. Samiratou*

      And there management goes, demonstrating why people might perhaps have wanted to unionize. Whodathunkit?

    3. Candi*

      Assuming that there was a lawyer available who knew the field…

      1) They had an overly-cautious lawyer.

      2) They didn’t consult a lawyer and ran bad searches on the net.

      3) There was much jumping to conclusions and no one did any research.

  29. Fake old Converse shoes (not in the US)*

    Last year the company owner delayed picking a restaurant to have our holiday dinner, so we ended up going to one that is very popular among tourists. When we got a table the waitress locked our bags to our chairs, so we couldn’t leave until we payed the bill. I had to stay until 3 a.m., and my manager drove me home because it was too late to get a bus.

    4. Fake old Converse shoes (not in the US)*

      According to the restaurant staff, it’s a “security measure” to protect bags a purses from being stolen, but I didn’t believe them.

      1. Turkletina*

        I presume because her bag was locked to the chair until the bill was paid, and the bill wasn’t paid until 3am.

        1. Ramona Flowers*

          I still have so many things to say about this and all of them begin with “But why…”

      1. Fake old Converse shoes (not in the US)*

        Or bring a big nail clipper to break the plastic they used to, eh… “secure” my belongings. Seriously.

          1. Candi*

            I have a friend who carries a box cutter in her purse. Again, not what she carries it for…

            Although I would want front-row seats if someone DID try this on her.

    8. Not So NewReader*

      That is weird. And no one knew that before they sat down? I don’t get how the place stays in business.

      1. Nanani*

        If they mainly serve tourists maybe they have a high enough proportion of people being like “WELP I guess that’s just how they roll here” and not question it because they don’t know better?

  30. Chris*

    The large metro public library I worked at didn’t have a staff part per se, but instead held a volunteer appreciation party at Christmas, that was also effectively our party. They never, ever (to my memory) gave us any kind of Christmas bonus or gift. The overall director came to each branch and gave his little speech, and EVERY year, they would come and make a fuss about how many volunteer hours we had. “This year, volunteers put in the hours of 2 full-time staff!” they would say, brightly. This while also speaking to their staff, almost all of whom were part-time, and were constantly fighting for even tiny wage or hour increases.

    Volunteers deserve appreciation, absolutely, but perhaps don’t phrase it as “and we don’t have to give any more cash to THESE jerkwads!” while doing it.

    1. zora*

      I LOVE this mentality.
      I have worked for one nonprofit where one leader would routinely talk about exactly how much she had ‘spent on staff’ on weekly staff calls, as if we were selfishly taking money away from the cause. And interviewed for another leader of an organization who kept talking about his vision for the future: “Won’t it be great when we have volunteers to do all of our work, and we don’t have to pay anyone at all?” …. Um, but I am interviewing for this job because I actually need to get paid… so…..

      Oy, some people…

      1. Tuna*

        Years ago, I interviewed for a job at a non-profit, where I was told that I would get paid for 25 hours a week, but be expected to work 40+ hours a week, or ‘whatever was needed to get the job done’. They would log the difference a ‘volunteer hours’. A week later, the interviewer called to offer me the job and I declined the position.

          1. Tuna*

            I know that now. But then I was very young and had other job offers, so I moved on. The person who interviewed me was actually the one I would have replaced had I taken the job. I remember wondering why she would put up with a schedule like that.

          2. Candi*

            It’s been discussed on this site before. It’s as illegal as printing your own money. There’s laws on volunteer vs paid hours in NPOs in place precisely because some jerks can’t be trusted not to exploit the naive and desperate.

      2. mscate*

        i once interviewed for a part time job which was to train unpaid volunteers to take over my position. I decided not to take the position once I found this out

  31. I'm A Little TeaPot*

    I’m doing my best to avoid being a story here. Tomorrow is my last day. The holiday party is today. And I’m not a happy camper for a variety of reasons.

    I think I’ll be passing on the wine tonight.

    6. I'm A Little TeaPot*

      Yep. I have a new job lined up, etc, so I’m fine. But if I start drinking, I’ll either start crying uncontrollably or start saying some uncomfortable truths. Neither is a good plan.

  32. JanetM*

    I’m not sure this belongs here, but probably the worst holiday office thing that happened to me was the year the company announced, somewhere around December 15, “By the way, to save money, we’re closing for two weeks from December 21-January 3. You’ll all be on unpaid leave. No, you can’t use vacation time.”

    This company had many other employee-unfriendly policies, but that was the final straw. I finished my spring semester of college, got my AA degree, resigned in May, and moved to Tennessee to live with my now-husband.

    1. Language Student*

      Jeez. Bad enough to try that at all, but to only tell everyone halfway through the month in which you find out that you aren’t getting a full months’ pay?

      1. Alli525*

        Especially a month where people are generally spending more money than usual due to travel and gifts! Geez.

    2. Turtlewings*

      That’s the kind of thing that could be seen as at least a double-edged kind of gift — bummer that it’s unpaid, but everyone gets over a week off for Christmas! — but not with only six days’ warning. Not cool.

      1. Kelsi*

        Only a double edged gift if you’re not living paycheck to paycheck.

        I’m doing okay, but finding out I was going to be out two weeks of pay with a week’s notice would have me sobbing on the floor in a panic. I like vacation and all but my bills don’t take Christmas holidays.

    3. Former Hoosier*

      I worked somewhere where this was standard. We considered it a layoff and filed for unemployment.

      1. JanetM*

        This may vary from state to state (and it may have changed in the last 30 years), but when I called the Unemployment office on behalf of my group of four, I was told that since there was a defined return-to-work date, it wasn’t a layoff and we wouldn’t qualify for unemployment.

        Fortunately, I had enough savings to cover my December bills, but I was NOT a happy camper.

        1. Candi*

          Laws have changed in several states. In many, it would now be considered a temporary involuntary layoff, kind of like construction workers often get, and at least a week would be eligible for unemployment.

          Those bosses were arses. How many workers did they hemorrhage after that stunt?

  34. EddieSherbert*

    A couple years ago, my company bought a plot of land with an old house on it next door that we planned on tearing down so we could expand. Then someone decided it’d be fun to host our holiday party at that house before it was demolished (I don’t know why? Celebrating the expansion? Saying goodbye to this random house none of us had ever been in before?).

    Anyways, lots of drinking and then someone pointed out how the house was being demolished next week… and utter chaos started. I have no one idea where or how it spread. Like literally, I was just chatting with a couple coworkers while hovering over the pigs-in-a-blanket, and then suddenly realized people were screaming and ripping down the banister to use the poles to stab holes in the walls.

    It comes up once in a while and always amazes me how calm everyone else seems to be about it – like “haha, wow, that got out of hand.”

    And then I’m like “OH, YOU MEAN WHEN THE CHRISTMAS PARTY TURNED INTO A RIOT AND I PRACTICALLY PEED MYSELF?!”

    1. EddieSherbert*

      There’s a reason I call that place ToxicJob and I’m not there anymore (still have friends there though). A lot of house-destruction-level pent up anger. Hahaha

    5. Hophornbeam*

      This actually made me laugh out loud. That almost never happens when I read stuff. (Actually, I had a coworker who I worked with closely for several years who said he had never heard me laugh out loud, period.)

      1. Alli525*

        When the college I work at decided to demolish the old library to build a new one, apparently there was a big ol’ graffiti party that everyone was invited to – basically it was “if you help us move a couple boxes of books/etc, you get spray paint.” That was before my time but the pictures look like a lot of fun.

    9. Tina*

      A friend of mine was living in a house with a bunch of roommates until one year the landlord announced that when the lease was up he and his family were going to move back in after making some extensive renovations. My friend asked if it would be ok if they drew on the walls before they moved out and he said yes, so she threw a huge party for all our friends who were mostly 20-somethings with somewhat juvenile senses of humor. So when the landlord and his family (including his young child) came by the house with an appraiser after everybody had moved out, they were all treated to many and varied depictions of male genitalia in literally EVERY room.

    11. Phlox*

      My high school math teacher was told that her portable classroom was getting demolished/major renovation (forgetting which) my sophomore year, so she let us draw on the totally beat up carpets. Which we proceeded to see for the rest of my time there (we had the same teacher and classroom all four years). Sadly no major much needed renovations…

  36. bumbletea*

    At my first company Christmas party in my first full-time role, we played Dirty Santa, and I’d brought one of the large crystal ornaments that were really popular at the time because I figured it would be a nice, safe gift, and I knew the location manager was a teetotaler. Well, that was a HUGE mistake. Everyone else, with the exception of the manager, brought some form of alcohol. And we’re talking mostly hard liquor with lots of raunchy jokes from folks I’d never heard even curse before (and for someone raised by sailors, even I was shocked by some of the stories told).

    When my gift was unwrapped, people were making fun of how “quaint” it was and “who would even bring that?” off and on. My direct supervisor said it was “literally the stupidest gift she’d ever seen.” I was mortified.

    Thank goodness none of my other organizations ever played this game (except for my current one – where it was a surprise and all of the gifts were provided for us by our CEO and his wife). I think I’m still traumatized… And I will never give anyone an ornament for Christmas again.

    1. Trig*

      What IS it about anonymous gifts that makes people COMPLETELY forget that the person who brought that gift is right there, hearing everything they say? Like, surely they wouldn’t say that if there was a ‘from bumbletea’ note on it!

    4. As Close As Breakfast*

      I’m intrigued by the game where the CEO and his wife provided all of the gifts! We’ve talked about doing a White Elephant (silly, fun, stupid gift version) at my current company but have always decided not to. We always come to the conclusion that it would be ridiculous and thoughtless to have even an optional version when many of the employee’s are making $10-$14 an hour. I mean really, what do you say? “Please work for 1-2 hours this week so you can then go buy a gift you don’t really have the money for to play a game you might not even want to play but still will because even though we aren’t pressuring you at all you don’t want to be the only one that doesn’t do it?” But maybe one year we could swing a company/owner sponsored version? I’m going to have to suggest that!

      2. Rachel in NYC*

        I worked in an office where the office provided all of the gifts for one of these. I can’t remember what it was for…maybe Secretary’s Day. For the holidays, you got a bonus and any staff you supported typically gave you a present- if you didn’t support specific staff, the office gave you a gift. Nothing crazy but I remember getting a present one year themed for a local sports team that included an official hat with your last name on the back, which I thought was nice. (Though admittedly if you disliked it you really couldn’t re-gift it unless to another family member)

    5. StrikingFalcon*

      That sounds like an excellent and thoughtful gift! I’m sorry your coworkers were such jerks.

    6. Candi*

      Unless it was one of those with fifty million two-inch spikes, I would have been fine with it.

      As for why no spikes, well, spiked ornaments are worse than legos. Yes, personal experience talking.

  37. Crashboom*

    First time commenting here. This happened about ten years ago, but the email I received from our boss was so epic I preserved it.

    Context: The second year I worked at this company, our holiday party was held on a dinner cruise boat. Our boss footed the bill for dinner and an open bar, and a few other companies also hosted their own parties on the boat at the same time. Since I was underage at the time, I did not drink, and actually left early with my date. Everything was fine when I left. The Monday after, I rolled into the office– the first person there– and was greeted with this email from our boss [identifying details removed]:

    *Good morning to all. I hope all of you had time to recuperate and reflect about the unusual chain of events and circumstances at this year’s Christmas party. Some of you went home early and did not take in the full range of events.

    Unfortunately, some of our staff got out of hand, including the spouses. Things were said, and things were done, that quite frankly were very inappropriate. Also, we had people from the adjoining group that decided to take advantage of our open bar and co-mingle with our group.

    In regards to the inappropriate behavior, I am not going to go into all of the details, but let be said that the root cause was probably due to the open bar. Some of our staff decided that the open bar meant that the drinking could be unlimited, not only in how much, but how they drank. As a result, some our staff and spouses decided that shots were OK. Shots were ordered for some who do not even drink. Shots are not OK at a company Christmas party. Other staff and spouses got multiple drinks at once for themselves and for people not even in our group. Others decided it was OK to get openly drunk and beligerent, to the point of making racial slurs. I, myself, am guilty of attacking someone from the other group after he decided to retaliate by groping my wife.

    Having thought about the circumstances and the fact that we have to work together as a firm and team, some of you need to apologize for your behavior and/or for the behavior of your spouse. We specifically implimented a no fraternization policy and some of you could get fired on that alone, while other staff exercised no restraint over their spouse for their drunken condition. It is not OK for a spouse to misbehave, just because he or she is not an employee. Many careers have been destroyed, and people get fired, due to the conduct of their spouse. You are expected to excercise constraint over your spouse, or take them home. And if that cannot be done, then you should not bring your spouse.

    In regards to the Firm’s policy on drinking, there will be no more open bars. Unfortunately, some of you and your spouses excercise extremely poor judgment. Because of this poor judgment, it puts the Firm at risk. Given the poor road conditions that night, some of you could have ended up dead. It is also unfortunate that a few have to ruin it for the whole group.

    I would like to start the apologies by stating I am sorry for not handling the situation that I was confronted with in a different manner. I feel embarrassed, and it was not conduct befitting of the firm’s president. I also felt betrayed by some of you for patronizing the one individual from the adjoining group, who’s behavior was lewd and offensive, not to mention the outright theft by running up our bar tab.

    I invite others to make some form of apology, either by email or in person for what they did or said, or what their spouse did or said. You can do this voluntarily, and you know who you are, or I will confront you by Wednesday of this week. I do not intend to ignore what happened. If I have to confront you, you could lose your job. I will be available Monday and Tuesday late afternoon, or you can email me and/or others. Let’s not let this one incidence stop us from being [#1 company in field]. We have a lot going for ourselves and let’s keep it going.*

    I was dying reading this email. The secretary finally showed up, and since it was the two of us I of course cornered her and demanded the details. Apparently after I left, everyone got rowdier, one of my coworkers knew someone from another group on the boat and was giving him drinks, that other guy groped our boss’s wife on the dance floor leading boss to try to physically fight him, a co-worker’s spouse called the boss’s son-in-law (a black man) the N-word, and basically it was a total shit show. Thankfully since I had left before the disaster started I did not have to apologize. Apologies were made (privately and via company-wide email) and nobody ended up fired. No more open bars at parties from then on, though.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      My jaw dropped reading that email. I think I would have been equal parts relieved and disappointed that I wasn’t there to witness all the chaos.

    5. Meagan*

      For some reason, this line is getting me: “Given the poor road conditions that night, some of you could have ended up dead. It is also unfortunate that a few have to ruin it for the whole group.” I feel as though the ‘some of you could have died’ bit should probably have come *after* the bit about a few ruining the party for everyone. The asymmetry is glorious.

      1. a*

        With the level of shitstorm in this email, I legitimately half-expected it to say “It is unfortunate some of you did not [end up dead due to the poor road conditions].” OMG.

    9. RabbitRabbit*

      I… did two rounds of shots at a work holiday party. It was also my first week on the job. In my defense, I can hold my liquor AND I had been working with that department for about a decade before joining, so it didn’t reflect badly on me.

      And there were no day-after e-mails, no fights, no groping, no racism, etc. So there’s that.

      The drinks bill did turn our future parties into “buy your own booze,” though.

      1. Tina*

        I’ve definitely done shots at a company holiday party and managed to not make an ass of myself. I think that’s kind of a silly proclamation to make. If you’re going to have an open bar, people might have shots. The drunkest I’ve been at an office party was when there was an open bar but no food and I just drank too much wine on an empty stomach (luckily everybody else was in the same boat so we were all drunk together, and nobody did anything horrifying).

          1. RabbitRabbit*

            I mean, I guess it depends on the office’s general atmosphere – sipping cocktails vs beer pong, that kind of thing. Maybe in light of what happened (shots for non-drinkers, general chaos), instituting a “we do not do shots at our parties” rule was best for that workplace.

            1. Not really a lurker anymore*

              I recently attended a work conference in Vegas. There was copious amounts of alcohol at the evening “dinners”. I asked for tequila shots and the bartender said he wasn’t permitted to do shots. But he cheerfully poured tequila into cups with a single ice cube in them for me.

              1. Still annoyed at the guy who told him*

                We had an after party after a work event and we had so many drink tickets left over that it was basically an open bar. A group of us went over to get shots and the bartender wasn’t allowed to serve them. He then proceeded to serve at least 10 “neat” drinks in a row before asking someone why we all changed our drink orders all of a sudden.

      2. Sterling*

        I’ve done shots at a company event WITH my direct supervisor. Not a party but a conference we went to. We are in academia and as I have discovered this is an industry where people drink when off campus lol

    10. Merci Dee*

      Dear (Firm’s president) —

      I’m sorry . . . . that I didn’t stick around to see all this!

      Love,

      Early Party Leaver

      1. Crashboom*

        I know, right? I HATED our holiday parties, though. I was always badgered about why I wasn’t bringing a date (I roped some guy I didn’t even like into coming to this one), and the boss and his wife (who worked for the company in a bullshit “marketing” capacity) would take it as a personal offense if I did not attend. This also extended to post-work happy hours, which, again– I was underage, yet still expected to tag along sipping on a water for an hour with colleagues much older than me.

        Oh, and the first Christmas party I experienced there? Christmas bonuses were distributed via a handheld game of Deal or No Deal. No joke. It was a nightmare.

    11. Lissa*

      I knew this was gonna be amazing from the first line of your post. Any company-wide email after a holiday party that gets preserved has gotta be fantastic.

    13. Jam Today*

      “the unusual chain of events” is so genteel. I derive enormous satisfaction from that soft understatement.

    14. Triangle Pose*

      Wait, how do you leave a dinner cruise early? Once the cruise ship leaves the dock, aren’t you stuck?

      1. Crashboom*

        What makes it more hilarious is that he was maybe in his early 60s and a TINY guy. Like barely over five feet. I know he had been in the military at one point, but he was not some tall or jacked looking guy… very troll looking. The wife was definitely a “trophy wife” type. To make it even funnier, I’m 99% sure the guy who “groped” the wife (which from what I recall was more just grinding and I don’t think the wife was objecting to it) was gay.

      2. Crashboom*

        To paint more of a picture for you, my boss was in his early 60s, and barely cleared five feet. I know he’d spent time in the military when he was young but was certainly not some jacked or tall guy. He was short and wiry and sort of looked like a troll. Oh, and I’m also 99% sure that the guy who groped (i.e. grinded against while dancing) his trophy wife was gay.

      3. Maolin*

        I’m still stuck on the circular logic of that whole line!

        “I, myself, am guilty of attacking someone from the other group after he decided to retaliate by groping my wife.”

        It’s like an MC Escher staircase! The other Dude retaliated with groping before Boss attacked the Dude for the retaliatory grope. *mind blown”

      1. Crashboom*

        I explained above, but it actually only “cruised” for about an hour or so before it came back to the dock.

    21. Not So NewReader*

      Dear Alison, I am a company CEO. I threw an employee’s Christmas party and there was an unusual chain of events….”

      Dear CEO, When alcohol is free-flowing there is no such thing as UNUSUAL.

    22. 653-CXK*

      When I began with my current company 20+ years ago, we used to have our parties at a local hotel, with lavish food and desserts, live music, plus a cash bar.

      This tradition ended after people skipped the food and desserts and went straight for the booze – and at one point, it got out of hand. Managers were lecturing underlings not to drink, but made a bee-line for the bar once they got there. There were more than a few arguments and/or disagreements, and inappropriate behavior.

      These days, the company party is a lunchtime holiday buffet, served by the C and VP suites. Everyone comes down in shifts to avoid a free for all, and there are only soft drinks served during the party (as it’s during business hours).

    23. Candi*

      You know, I like this boss for two reasons:

      Fessing up to his own shenanigans, in written, preservable form, yet.

      Continuous use of the word spouse. It doesn’t cover as much as “partner”, but it’s gender neutral, keeping the focus on the behavior. I don’t know why, but this sits very well with me.

      1. rldk*

        The slur-user was a spouse. If I were that CEO, I’d want more than an apology to not at the least ban both the employee and racist spouse from any and all future work parties, if not fire the employee for letting their spouse do that at a work party

    25. Rondack*

      The guy who groped women definitely deserved a punch to the face, though.

      As did the racial slur lady.

      I won’t lie, I’d seriously consider firing any employee who tried to defend the groper and the spouse of the racial slur lady.

    26. Brigitha*

      Is anyone else kinda disturbed by the language about “controlling your spouse”? I mean, the whole thing is bananas, but that part gave me some heebies.

      1. Lance*

        Given the context, not really, since I just see it as saying ‘your spouse can reflect on you, so make certain they’re on good behavior’.

        1. Candi*

          I’d be more concerned if he was saying husbands should control their wives, or wives should control their husbands. That’s beyond problematic straight into -ist territory.

          Hopefully what he meant was “Have a long hard talk with them about how it is still a work event and their behavior reflects on you” and “Do Not Bring Them Again if they double down.” (Although judging by the comment above, the second probably won’t happen.)

      2. Anon anon anon*

        It’s a creepy way to phrase it, but I think the idea was, “Keep and eye on your spouse, encourage them to behave responsibly, and say something if things start to get out of hand.” But it isn’t realistic. Maybe the spouse just started a new medication and isn’t prepared for the way it interacts with alcohol. Or something like that. You can’t control another person. You can just do your best to advise them and have an influence.

  38. Odyssea*

    White Elephant at my workplace has very strict rules to prevent some of the issues that arose at the very first one, when someone got what appeared to be a brand new candle warmer, took it home and discovered that it reeked of cigarette smoke when it got warm. Ugh.

    While the gifts are better, White Elephant is very cutthroat! Two years ago, someone brought a very nice blender (unused and a regift), and there were some hard feelings for the stealers. Nothing outrageous, but some very pointed comments. Luckily, we get two weeks off, so everyone was over it by the time we got back.

      1. Turtlewings*

        A candle warmer is sort of like a little hot plate that melts the candle from below, so you get the scent without any open flame. It’s a lot safer in that way. I know at my college dorm we were allowed candle warmers but no open flame.

      2. HR Bee*

        It allows you to have the smell of scented candles without fire danger or smoke, in case that’s a thing you’re concerned about.

    3. Fiennes*

      The only White Elephant exchange I ever took part in was at my old knitting/crochet group. We met one night a week for a few hours, so having a little party seemed appropriate; I decided to take part even though I was really new. I drew a great prize–a skein of gorgeous wool yarn–which had the added benefit of being something I could make full use of as a newbie. Someone took it from me and gave me a pack of knitting needles in return…knowing full well that I didn’t knit, only crocheted. So I wound up with something useless, and feeling alienated in the group that seemed to think this was all great fun. So I really don’t get the appeal.

      I found a new crochet group shortly thereafter.

      1. viva*

        Ugh, I feel for you. I’m mainly a knitter but it pisses me off when crocheters are treated like crap by knitters. Having been part of various knitting/quilting/embroidery groups over the years – I’m over it. It’s like high school all over again. No thanks.

      2. Red 5*

        This is actually exactly why I’m not really a fan of White Elephant in general.

        The husband’s office used to do it (before the company got too big for it to be manageable) and for the most part everybody understood that the gifts were meant to be a bit silly, so the whole thing was just a bit silly. And it was voluntary, so we only did it I think the first two years and after that just watched because we always ended up with stuff we didn’t want or need because that’s mostly all there was (since that was kind of the point).

        I’ve just seen way too many White Elephants end up with people being really snitty and rude about the “stealing” either because what they wanted was stolen, or because they stole something to intentionally take a thing from somebody who really liked it. It just brings out a weird rudeness that I’m not a fan of.

    4. Kittyfish 76*

      It very well could have been new. My in laws smoke like chimneys and EVERYTHING from their house smells, new or not.

    5. AliceBD*

      My previous company played White Elephant and had a $10 limit. Some presents were better than others for individuals, and alcohol was always some of the options, but until my last year everything was adult and appropriate. Bottle of wine or 6 pack of beer, kitchen towels with funny sayings, scratch off tickets, candles, as seen on tv kitchen gadgets, etc. Nothing scandalous.

      My last year there was a box of condoms as a gift. I felt so bad for the person who got them as he is under appreciated and not super outgoing and was absolutely morified. The person who put them in is definitely the most inappropriate person in the office but not usually in that way.

    6. a*

      At a previous we did a Yankee Swap/White Elephant at a time when I was very new to the company (I had joined about a month before). Because I was so new I was a safe target, so I got stolen from like nine times in a row. It definitely got into “this isn’t fun anymore” territory for me after a while. This actually turned out to be a canary in the coalmine where company culture was concerned…

      Current Awesome Job established a rule that a gift could only be stolen three times AND the same person could only be stolen from three times. It kept things appropriately fun.

      2. JustaTech*

        At CurrentJob we made up and printed out a set of rules for the White Elephant to try and moderate some of the un-fun bits, like people constantly getting stolen from. Each gift or person can only be stolen/stolen from once.

        One year someone’s gift was a gift bag full of old swag from the company, including a framed photo of our 2-previous CEO. And a $10 Starbucks card, so there was actually a prize. That one was fun for everyone when it was opened.

      3. Candi*

        One of the former holiday story threads had a tale of a guy who worked in a lawyers’ office. As you can likely imagine, they had their YS/WE rules locked down. Including a two-steal limit on each gift.

        Commentator was a Star Wars fan, but there was already a SW fan when he started, so that guy was the Office Star Wars Fan.

        Come office party time, a coworker who is buddies with OSWF puts a present in the YS exchange which turns out to be a really nice SW lunchbox. So one person gets it, OSWF steals it, and buddy and OSWF are all smug about their strategem.

        Commentator steals the box on his turn. Two steal limit on gifts, remember. Other guys are furious.

        Ending comments include not putting personal gifts in the freaking swap, and lawyer dudes, you just got schooled by the IT guy.

    7. Sterling*

      We do a different variation where everyone brings a wrapped gift and there is a complicated game of passing left and right and when it ends you get whatever you are holding and no one can steal anything. People sometimes will trade though after things are unwrapped. We also have a $10 limit.

      My niece just had her work party and they did the white elephant with stealing and someone got a cruise gift certificate and had it stolen. That would be upsetting.

      1. Shandon*

        We did this at my work today. Every year the supervisors of a couple of departments that work together have a holiday luncheon for us, where they bring in food (usually something catered from a restaurant) and bring in some games and such, and we all basically just hang out in a conference room and eat and play games and talk for a couple of hours and it’s nice (even though I wouldn’t go if I could avoid it, not because I don’t have fun because I usually do, or don’t like my coworkers because they are a pretty great group, but these sorts of gatherings just aren’t my thing). This year though, they organized a game like this. Only they provided all the gifts and we all chose one to start out with, then rolled dice for the swapping etc. It was more fun than I’d anticipated and the gifts, though small, were generally nice little things. Travel tumblers, mugs, candles, etc. That’s about the extent of the work related holiday festiveness I can deal with.

  39. Knitting Cat Lady*

    I was a working student at a chair at a German university. So I was invited to the holiday party.

    It was at a local restaurant. And as we were in Bavaria beer flowed freely.

    One of the grad students was fairly deep into her cups when she encountered some fruit she hadn’t seen before.

    They’re called ‘physalis’, little yellow things with a papery covering. Tasty.

    We were treated to a fairly long loop of this:

    Grad student: ‘What are these things called again?!’
    Someone else: ‘Physalis.’
    Grad Student: ‘Er… syphilis?!’

      1. Sparkly Librarian*

        Oh, wow, I had read about these (though never tasted one) and I thought that was a geographical name based on where they grew. Thanks for the info!

          1. Rachel in NYC*

            I’ve seen them called ground cherries in the States. I don’t think I realized that they were the same thing as gooseberries.

            Either way, they are delicious…the green markets in NYC have them in the summer.

            1. Candi*

              The first name I ever learned for them was Chinese lanterns. >.<

              I am so, so glad I learned they were ground cherries, then gooseberries, before I talked about them to anyone else.

            2. SarahTheEntwife*

              They’re the same thing as cape gooseberries, but regular non-cape gooseberries are a totally different fruit that kind of look like small stripey grapes.

  40. einahpets*

    We are still having our holiday party next weekend, despite layoffs of 15% of the workforce being announced and the first round of those effected be notified next week. The executives were apologetic about it (the party had already been paid for prior to the events leading to this layoff), but I am still not sure how this will go well at all. :(

    But I am looking forward to some more amusing stories here!

    3. Trig*

      Yeeeaaahhh we had two big layoffs this year, and lost a lot of our office/my team. Losses in my location included the (female) manager who usually spearheaded holiday party plans.

      There has been no talk of a holiday party or potluck or anything. I imagine by the time the male managers started saying “oh… we should do that..” it was too late. And also would be depressingly small. Meanwhile our “so long to those just laid off” parties have higher and higher turnouts.

      I got an end-of-year bonus for the first time in my five years here, but I can’t help but feel it’s ‘blood money’ from the extra cash in the budget from the laid-off people’s salaries.

    4. JustaTech*

      Oh lordy that will be an awkward party. We had a big blowout party the year we went bankrupt, and alcohol + a whole lot of people losing their jobs, yeah, it was really uncomfortable.

  41. HR Lady*

    At a part-time job when I was in uni I worked in a clothes shop. We were a small and closeknit team, and we’d got the best results in the area, so they company gave us an extra £10 to stick towards our Christmas party. We had already all paid for a meal out (that included half a bottle of wine a head), and also put £10 in the drinks kitty. This was a lot of money per head, in a Scottish uni town in the mid-noughties. Plus, not having a staff room, we sat on the floor on the shop and pre-gamed vodka. This was the whole team, including management!

    So out we went and we had a great meal but we drank GALLONS of wine. We then headed out to a bar. Now, my memory goes fuzzy at this point but I do remember decided to go home as I was quite drunk. The shop manager (Patricia), the shop supervisor (Jo) and a couple of others stayed out. A few days later I asked how the rest of the evening had gone, and everyone looked ashen. Eventually, over a later between-Christmas-and-new-year drink with Jo (who I got on very well with), she confessed that Patricia and Jo had nipped out of the bar for a cigarette, as you can’t smoke indoors in the UK. The bouncer then refused to let them back in, on the excellent basis that they were too drunk. Patricia objected, as she wanted to get her coat and bag back, she was happy to be escorted in, but the bouncer still said no.

    Patricia, being a cross Scottish lady, kicked out in rage at what she thought was the air and instead was a plate glass door, which shattered. She was then arrested. Failing to remember her own address, she announced she was in charge of ShopName and all bills should be sent there. She had to slink back the next day to the bar and request that they did not, in fact, send the repair bill to the head office of the chain.

    Anyway, I now keep an eye on my drinking at the work Christmas party, so thanks Patricia! (Who was also a very nice lady but HOO BOY could not handle wine.)

    2. Cassie*

      Kicking a drunk woman out of a bar while also refusing to let her collect her belongings? Swell idea! Let’s have drunk women wandering the streets, unable to get home safely! There’s no way that could end badly for her, OR the bar!

      1. Collarbone High*

        Yeah, I’m Team Patricia here. I once got kicked out of a club in Denver, in February, wearing a tank top. The bouncer wouldn’t allow to get my coat or purse, or tell my friends I’d been kicked out. Luckily there was another club nearby with no cover, so I hung out there until last call, and came out to find my friends had called the police because they thought I’d been abducted.

      2. Say what, now?*

        Yes, this is what I was thinking too! If she left her phone in her pocket she couldn’t call a cab, let alone pay for one if she managed to flag one down… irresponsible asshat.

      3. HR Lady*

        It’s fairly common in the UK, alas – they don’t kick you out but you DO need to wait outside until the bar closes then they let you back in.

    3. Cristina in England*

      Honest question: how do bars expect someone to get home without their belongings? I understand it would be messy to retrieve the belongings but how can it be legal to refuse to let someone have their own personal items?

      1. HR Lady*

        You have to wait outside until the bar closes then they let you back in to get your stuff; if they let someone too drunk into the bar then under UK law the bar would lose its license if the police did a spot check.

        I mean, the bouncer was being a total arse, don’t get me wrong!

        1. Rondack*

          And there is so much shit that could go wrong to a woman out in the cold with no phone or money or coat

  42. michelenyc*

    The company I worked for about 20+ years ago. The VP I reported to was always cheating on his wife with different ladies in the office. It got to the point that the president of the company told him he couldn’t close his office door anymore. It was a fairly small, family run business run by somewhat religious Jews. We all laughed about it because you would hear the president yell constantly throughout the day for Paul to open his door especially when he was with Annie. The holiday party was at a very nice Italian restaurant in midtown. We had all arrived at the designated time with the exception of Paul & Annie. They finally rolled in about an hour and a half later completely disheveled. We had all started drinking pretty early in the day so by that time we were all on the drunk side. I walked up to them and in front of everyone asked “Where have you two been?” In a lighthearted accusatory voice. The only person not laughing was the president of the company. It was the office joke the entire 2 years I was there.

        1. Candi*

          Forced buyout time, then.

          (Happened to my uncle back in the 1990s. He objected to the converyor belt methods of the other three; they were doctors.)

          (Guess who still had a practice ten years later?)

  43. DanaScully*

    I’m lucky enough to not have any outrageous experiences (yet). The only thing I can think of is my grandboss getting hammered at the pub on our last day before the Christmas break.

    She is a very stoic, stiff upper lipped woman with a glass half empty outlook. That night, however, she got totally soppy and told me how great I am, how much she likes me and how I have so much potential to go far within the company.

    It was very sweet and I still look back on it fondly when she is being difficult!

    2. Kelsi*

      Haha I had a similar experience with a coworker in another department–for years, I thought she hated me. She has a bit of an RBF, plus a very terse tone in written communication, and we’d had some professional disagreements about how to handle things over the years (not nasty or anything, just…informed by the very different and sometimes opposing needs of our respective departments).

      Then one year at our annual fundraising event, she got pretty drunk and spent a good twenty minutes how much she admired me and thought I was an inspiring person.

      It certainly improved our working relationship from then on! I have no idea whether she even remembers the conversation, but it made it much easier for me to assume positive intent afterwards.

    3. Laughing mom*

      This is only very tangentially related to company parties, but your story reminded me. When my second oldest was a college student, she had a roommate who, on the day they moved in, said “What the hell? I asked for another Asian roommate!” in response to my white daughter introducing herself. It was the last time her roommate spoke to her all semester!
      Until….sullen disappointed roommate was carried home passed out drunk by some coworkers after they’d gone out drinking to celebrate the end of finals and the start of Christmas break.
      And that night sullen disappointed roommate rambled on all night long about how my daughter was the BEST roommate, and she really loved sharing a room with her, and she wished she’d never started this stupid not talking thing, and please don’t switch rooms at the break!
      She totally switched.

      1. Enough*

        Had mother of first college roommate tell me her daughter wanted a new roommate on the day we moved in. Apparently daughter had run into a girl she had gone to high school with 2 or 3 years earlier and wanted her as a roommate. They didn’t get along. (Big surprise)

  44. AKchic*

    I had a boss who was socially inept. He was older, and generally a nice guy, but if he wanted something he could be a manipulative jerk, but when it came to social stuff and jokes, he didn’t always understand double meanings, suggestive meanings, puns, or just jokes in general. It made for some awkwardly funny incidents once in a while.

    Non-Commercialmas incident, just to highlight his ineptness: he called my cell phone (not an unusual occurrence) while I was off the clock (that was unusual). I answered it in case there was an issue (I lived two streets away and could see the admin building from my bedroom window and once in a while the managers locked themselves out, or an alarm would get triggered and I’d be the first on scene to assess whether it was real or not). I could hear idle chit-chat and laughing. A pocket-dial. No biggie. I hang-up. The next day, I jokingly tell him he must have butt-dialed me. He is confused. I explain what a butt-dial is. Innocently, he says “but I keep my phone in my front pocket…” not even aware of what *that* could have suggested.

    So – annual holiday party. We have about 100 staffers on-hand. He is the 3rd in command for our company. We did a “goofy gift exchange” (Pretty much a White Elephant Exchange). Maximum $10 could be spent on the gift in question. Someone gave away a vibrating gag toy (looked like some kind of cat toy). He had selected it and was trying to entice others to take it off his hands, and I kid you not, as a way to advertise it, he says “come on, women love vibrating toys”. Silence. The company is mostly women. You could have heard a pin drop. CEO and HR talk to him. He was horrified once it was explained to him. He wanted to send out this company-wide email apologizing. He had to be talked out of it.

    4. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

      My jaw dropped on your second paragraph, and dropped further on your third. Good lord.

      1. AKchic*

        One of our board members was bragging about her new (and first) grandchild and was showing pictures. The baby, admittedly, had a very cute outfit on in one of the pictures. He commented on it saying “oh! Those look just like AKchic’s pajamas!”. Cue the weird looks as to why this Director of Operations would know what the senior administrative assistant/records clerk/HIS assistant’s pajamas looked like. *headdesk* Because he locked himself out of the admin building after hours a few times and I lived so close that I could see the building from my bedroom window, so he would call me to let him back in, and I wouldn’t bother changing out of my fleece rubber ducky pajamas to come let him back in. I just never thought he’d remember them 4-5 years later, or make mention of them!

          1. AKchic*

            Surprisingly – none. That company was somewhat gossipy, but I am weird enough, that *that* kind of gossip, and with *him* would have been so out of the realm of “plausible” that it wouldn’t have worked. Add in the fact that he was minimum 40 years my senior that even if someone had tried to start the rumor, it wouldn’t have gotten far at all. We’re talking a Santa Claus-looking 60-something with someone under 30.
            I left the company a year ago and am still friends with the majority of the C-suite and some of the board. If only non-profit work could have paid better.

        2. Ali*

          Not party related but reminds me of a meeting I was in where a co-worker apologised to the group for being tired saying “Ali was moving around so much in my bed I didn’t get much sleep” and everyone looked at me with “that’s news” looks. I just sit there and the first person realises what she said and clarified “My daughter, my daughter’s name is Ali”

  45. The Principal of the Thing*

    We had a teaching assistant who would count all of the gifts from parents which we put in the cubbies we used in place of lockers. She would brag to anybody with less gifts than her that the parents liked her more than them, over the whole two weeks leading up to our last day of the year, and then complain that anybody with more gifts than her should share, ‘because obviously that gift was for everybody’.

    With the gifts which parents gave as collective ones for all of us, we put numbered tickets on all of them, and drew tickets out at random, with a rule that you had to swap if somebody chose something they couldn’t have, like nuts or wine or so on.

    Annoyed that I had an individual gift from a parent she wanted, (a cute candle lamp which you could pick up for maybe $15), she took the gifts I got in the raffle out of my cubby to keep for herself, and left the ones she didn’t want. A box of nut chocolates and a jar of peanuts.

    I’m allergic to nuts.

          1. The Principal of the Thing*

            She’d received a warning earlier in the year (which I hadn’t known about) for ‘joking’ that since there was no such thing as allergies she would add ground nuts to a meal at our winter pot luck to prove I wasn’t allergic, so when I complained I was advised that due to the seriousness of the incident and her previous warning, I should report her to the police for attempted murder, and then they did nothing else because I wouldn’t make a police report.

            1. SKA*

              Oh GOODNESS!

              I have a mild/non-fatal nut allergy and I would’ve been tempted to hold eye contact with her while taking a big ol’ bite and proceeding to vomit in front of her.

              1. The Principal of the Thing*

                I hadn’t known about it at the time – HR felt that could create a hostile work environment. Which uh… obviously already existed.

                Although to be as fair as possible: I don’t think she wanted to give me an allergic reaction when taking my bottle of wine and gingerbread, I think she wanted to leave me with something I couldn’t eat to punish me for getting that cable lamp.

            2. LSP*

              Um, wow. What a terrible HR department. Why is the onus on you to launch a full police investigation (that’s tenuous at best) rather than firing her ass?

              1. The Principal of the Thing*

                She was well known in the local community for being a litigious beast. And to be fair, when she was later fired for gross misconduct, she lived up to that reputation.

  47. Anon (for reasons)*

    I once worked for a family run plumbing shop. Holiday time rolled around, and I received an invite to the annual holiday party. But my co-workers were constantly muttering and complaining about it, so I did a little asking around trying to figure out the problem (so I could figure out how to extricate myself if it was going to be awful).

    Technically, the boss invited all the employees, SOs, and plus ones, because it was a small business, and he was usually pretty gracious. But his wife wasn’t interested in party planning, and she wasn’t part of the business, so he just wrote the bonus checks and paid the bill. The office manager handled the invitations, scheduling, reservations, etc. And she was mad with power. If she was upset with you, no extra invite for your spouse/partner/etc. If she didn’t like your partner, also no invite. If she wanted to go to a restaurant that wouldn’t take a reservation big enough for everyone, she’d cut people. She also revoke invites she’d already issued right up until people were walking in the door. (Apparently, one year it was at a very nice restaurant, and one of the service techs showed up with his wife, who was drop dead gorgeous and wearing the same dress as the office manager. His wife was refused entrance to the party.)

    But most importantly, two years earlier, someone got upset about all the nonsense (and the fact that his wife was never allowed to come) and flat out told the boss what was going on and that he (the employee) was no longer attending any of the parties. The boss asked around, found out the extent of the problem, and office manager was reprimanded big time and lost part of her bonus. She retaliated by framing the reporting employee for time theft. He was fired, and she resumed her nonsense the next year, uninviting three people after the boss sent invites himself. No one complained because they didn’t want to get framed and fired. Thus, the year I worked there, only ten people attended (the boss, his wife, the office manager, her husband, her two adult kids, our two salesmen, one service tech, and me). It was grim and silent, and the boss was pretty angry. Finally, I got tired of being stuck at a table where everyone was glaring and making cutting comments, so I dragged the service tech off to the dance floor for a pine. Then we moved to the bar. And I repeated this with both salesmen. Then the boss and his wife joined us at the bar. We salvaged a lovely hour or so, had drinks and dessert, and left her alone at the table with her family. She then waged a hate campaign against me until I left, but since she was the only participant, it didn’t take.

    (Years later, after attending many more years of school, I was a finalist for a fabulous, important, building block to big places job, that insisted on contacting all prior employers for ethics/security reasons. They were intercepted by the office manager each time they tried to reach my former boss at this place. Finally, since she always said the boss was too “busy” to be a reference for me, they asked her if she remembered anything about my work. Even though I’d left to go to grad school, she said I was fired and nearly arrested for theft, but the boss had let me off the hook due to a “special relationship.” I lost the job offer, and only found out years later why. Some people are too awful.)

    Ever since, I’ve avoided work holiday parties like the plague.

      1. Anon (for reasons)*

        It was a family business. She was related to his wife (cousin? SIL? I don’t remember exactly how anymore).

    8. Samiratou*

      “I lost the job offer, and only found out years later why”

      Damn, I assume enough years had gone by that the statute of limitations had run out on defamation? How horrible.

      1. Anon (for reasons)*

        Well past. But it did lead to an interesting round of story time when the hiring manager for that job eventually realized there was no possible way that story could be true based on what he know knew of me (it’s not that big an industry). And I learned the story so I could sufficiently CYA for all future job offers.

  48. Lumen*

    During the white elephant portion of one holiday party, someone had brought a set of cookbooks as a gift. One was for cooking with breastmilk. The other was for cooking with semen.

    I worked at a preschool.

    Teachers are insane.

    1. Snark*

      “……someone had brought a set of cookbooks as a gift.”

      Me: well, that seems reasonab-

      “One was for cooking with breastmilk. The other was for cooking with semen.”

      Me: There it is.

          1. Anion*

            They didn’t. They’re self-published (I’m familiar with them from years ago when they made the internet rounds).

          2. Foreign Octopus*

            Well know, allow me to introduce you to this little gem.

            The Jewish-Japanese Sex and Cookbook and How to Raise Wolves by Jack Douglas.

            I really want to know where old Jack has been and what he’s seen to write such a book.

            2. O'Bunny*

              Um, I have a copy of that book. It’s actually (as I recall, not having read it in years) pretty funny, dealing with a mixed-race marriage and personal social upheaval. He also wrote “Shut Up and Eat Your Snowshoes”; both books (and a few of his others) are about living on a fairly remote Canadian island.

        2. Lumen*

          I try to warn people. Teachers are the hardest-drinking, filthiest-joking coworkers I have ever had. And the younger the age group they work with, the more they will make your eyes bug out when they finally let loose.

          The funniest part is that these are also some of the best role models and gentlest nurturers I ever met. Really great teachers, wonderful parents, but hooooooooooooooo boy. When they party, watch out.

          1. starsaphire*

            I wonder if it’s a similar phenomenon to health-care-provider gallows humor. Nurses, doctors, EMTs, and even cops and firemen… all of the ones I’ve known tell the most shocking stories and jokes, possibly as a form of self-preservation.

            * Pro tip: Never, ever, EVER eat lunch at the table next to the table full of EMTs. Just, don’t do it.

            1. Naptime Enthusiast*

              Engaged to a Firefighter/EMT. Can confirm, don’t start work talk if you are easily offended and/or grossed out.

            2. Lumen*

              It absolutely is. You spend so much time and so much energy on the children you work with, and in most places (especially preschools) there is low pay, crappy benefits, lots of out-of-pocket expense, and sometimes outright abusive behavior from administrators, parents. It’s very emotionally exhausting work even on good days, not to mention the endless things kids say or do that you can’t laugh at in the moment.

              So then someone pours you wine. And it allll pours out. It’s physiological release, bonding, and yes absolutely: survival.

            3. Annie Mouse*

              That was my thought as well!
              I work in EMS and it really is a coping strategy. We see some really dark, horrible things and the dark humour and conversations that would be inappropriate in your average workplace keep that at bay. Most of the time.

              And yes, the conversations between a group of EMS workers can be… interesting. Sorry! When you regularly go from dealing with a patient with a stomach bug, or a major bleed, to lunchtime, your level of what is too gross to talk about over food changes rapidly.

            4. Anonicat*

              We (biologists) went out for dinner at a conference once and found out that the servers were referring to us as “the weird table.” As I recall, one of the topics discussed was how to get a semen sample from a bat.

            5. Candi*

              I learned this at my first First Aid/CPR class.

              The teacher was a firefighter/EMT who was very good at instructing. We were a collection of students and students-to-be going into nursing, paramedics, and various hospital positions. (Every position had to know this stuff, even if all you dealth with was paperwork.)

              Oh, the stories.

              After the one about poor Shishka Bob (18 wheeler, driver, accident, long thing pipe, impalement injury) he said words I’ve never forgotten about why they tell the stories and make the jokes:

              “If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.”

            6. another Liz*

              I’m married to a police officer, his best friend is a paramedic. I once had to kick them both under the table at a nice restaurant because they were trying to figure out which profession saw worse things. People were staring.

          3. tigerlily*

            As someone who works at preschool, I can absolutely attest to this fact. After a long day of telling tiny humans to use their words, you just have to let out some of the crazy.

      2. Candi*

        Okay, the advice to not eat or drink anything while reading AAM, or at least look away while actually consuming food and drink?

        DOUBLE for anything Snark posts. What a talent. So few words, so much amusement.

      2. many bells down*

        That’s a … very niche cuisine, right? And how much more so if you’re giving it as a gift?

        I have some very inappropriate friends and yet I cannot imagine a single one of them that would think a semen cookbook was hilarious. …Actually, no, I can think of one guy. I don’t particularly like him but he’s an old friend of my spouse’s. He’d probably be amused.

        1. Lumen*

          I think it was definitely picked up as a ‘gag’ gift, but… yeah. It was ACTUALLY making me gag.

        2. Incantanto*

          Somebody donated the Anne summers cocktail book to a library I worked at. I was 15 and sorting the books when I found it. Naked woman one page, cocktail the other. There are some strange books out there

    6. This Daydreamer*

      I’m glad I didn’t see this before our holiday party.

      I just got home, with a pair of crazy cat socks, a snowman figurine, a chain craft store gift card, and an unexpected small bonus check. Scooooooorrrrrreeeeeee

  49. Wannabe Disney Princess*

    At my previous job, my boss loved to go all out. We’d have the restaurant next door cater and he would bring in whatever alcohol for the cocktail he picked (we were a specialty food type store and he was a former chef). However, we were also encouraged to bring in our own alcohol of choice. This was not the wisest of decisions.

    Why? One year everyone, except for me and another coworker, got falling down drunk.

    As the party was wrapping up, it became increasingly obvious that nobody could drive apart from me and SoberCoworker.

    I had to drive my boss’s car to a fellow coworker’s house (because his daughter was watching the boss’s kids) to pick them up in order to get them home…while SoberCoworker drove the boss and his wife home first because neither of them could drive. (I don’t remember WHY this was the solution………just that it was.)

    SoberCoworker and I also had to split up our coworkers and drive them home. Fortunately, we all lived within 10 minutes of the store so it wasn’t a huge hassle. Before getting my crew in the car, one coworker knocked his Christmas present onto the floor of the store. Which was a bottle of bourbon. He shrieked that Christmas was ruined and then dove to the ground to drink what had puddled there. This was our first inkling that he had a problem…and the LAST time we were allowed to bring our own alcohol.

    1. JB (not in Houston)*

      Wow, that sounds exhausting. It seems like banning alcohol was a good decision for that group!

  50. sub rosa for this*

    This isn’t a terrible story, just an annoying one, but here goes.

    I didn’t attend LastJob’s holiday party the first year I was there, because everyone was talking about “playing Bingo.” I loathe Bingo, for lots of childhood-related reasons I won’t go into here – but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to waste a December Friday night in the City to sit around and play Bingo.

    I found out the next year what the Bingo game was all about. You see, apparently the company didn’t give holiday bonuses. So rather than give us each $100, which we could have used, and send us home early, which we would have enjoyed…

    …the company spent a huge pile of money renting an expensive venue in the City, plus deejay and catering and alcohol… and then bought a bunch of electronic gadgets, for which we were expected to compete. And the owners would sit back and watch us as we competed for these prizes.

    Yes, the Bingo game was for Kindles and iPads and vacations. Which, sure, sounds pretty awesome. I mean, it’s an evening out with drinks and you might win a prize…

    …but then again, you might not. And how awful is it, if you worked super hard all year long, to go home with nothing but indigestion, while your slacker co-worker gets a new iPhone and a cruise for his holiday bonus?

    You can guess how many times I went to that holiday party…

    1. Lumen*

      Ugh. I do not get the impulse to ‘make it fun!’ while ignoring what would actually make people feel valued and happy. Work event first, social event second.

    3. Kittyfish 76*

      Oldjob was kind of like this. There would be some stupid game and you picked a gift bag. Ranging from $25 gift cards to $100 cash. The one girl who worked so hard, at the party and at work, and could really use the money, got a $25 gift card to some place she couldn’t use, while some guy who made $100 an hour doing part time IT as a side job for us got the cash. Plus he was a jerk. Nice.

    5. stitchinthyme*

      A company I worked at did a raffle for various electronic gadgets and other goodies at our holiday party; they handed out the tickets as you walked in and then had drawings for the winners. So my husband and I (who both worked there and naturally arrived together) were handed tickets with consecutive numbers, which makes sense. And *of course*, the number just before and the number just after our two both won prizes. We did not.

    6. I was a Jimless Pam*

      I know I’m super late with this but I am totally getting flashbacks to the time I worked as a receptionist at a corporate law firm… at the holiday party, which was held in the middle of the day (and some people couldn’t handle the wine flowing from the managing partner’s sister’s catering company, but that’s not the story here), we played Dirty Santa with prizes the firm bought. These prizes ranged from the totally sweet—Visa gift cards worth hundreds of dollars, TVs, iPads—to the not so sweet. And the lawyers and partners all tumbled ON TOP of each other competing for the good prizes, leaving the support staff who literally made one-tenth their salary with mugs and bottles of Yellow Tail wine. It was brutal, and I was in my early twenties and was too worried about not having to move back in with my parents to let my developing class consciousness get too riled up. Now I work in arts in culture where no one makes any money and am so much happier for it.

  51. Kim*

    I was visibly pregnant for our white elephant exchange one year, and the present I opened in front of everyone was an assorted box of 40s (40-oz bottles of malt liquor beer). I’m not usually a teetotaler, but that was a disappointing gift since I had intentionally avoided the obvious bottles of $10 wine. Gifts of alcohol have been banned ever since, and the gift exchange has gone way downhill.

    2. Lumen*

      That’s a bummer. At last year’s gift exchange there were bottles of mead and wine and so on, but when pregnant coworkers got those, the person running it would just immediately offer to let them pick something else if they wanted to, and the people with bottles of booze wouldn’t then try to steal from them, forcing them to take alcohol. And sometimes the pregnant coworkers wanted to take bottles home anyway, to spouses or for after they gave birth. No ban necessary, just thoughtfulness.

  52. Toodles*

    One year the telecom that I worked for held a luncheon outside of the office for the first time in the three years I’d been there. There was nice food, and everyone was enjoying themselves until the CEO stood up to make a speech. It was your typical “Thank you for your hard work” spiel, with a heavy emphasis on belt-tightening. Our party favor was a leather-bound portfolio, the type you use for your resume when interviewing. I took the cue and found a new job that April.

  53. Happy Hollandaise*

    The CEO of our wholly owned subsidiary had a Christmas party at his house for upper management. The first year I attended (as a plus 1) he took some of us on a tour of his mansion. The first stop was a large guest bedroom, about which he said (and I am NOT making this up): “It sleeps three and f***s six.” I dropped out of the house tour at that point.

  54. NW Mossy*

    About 5 years ago, my department decided to have a company holiday event at a local bar/billiards club. Which would have been fine but for the teammate who caged an excessive number of drink tickets, proceeded to shoot pool while very drunk, and ended up bouncing the cue ball straight off the felt and into my shin. His “apology” took the form of making a clumsy pass at my visibly pregnant self.

    Needless to say he doesn’t work here anymore, as he was fired for repeatedly calling in “sick” the day he was due to return from scheduled PTO.

  55. Temperance*

    I shared this last year, but one of Booth’s former coworkers brought an escort as his date to the company holiday party. She worked as a stripper for her day job and was kind of dating said coworker. She wore her work clothes, including a pair of giant Lucite heels, to the party.

    She walked into the room and it was like someone deflated a balloon, because this was a very conservative company. We found out later that they had apparently gotten into a huge fight during the day, and as payback for whatever he did, she decided to put on stripper wear for a corporate holiday party. I now find it hilarious.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      I remember that story.

      Did they meet at the party? Cause I think if I went to pick up my date and they were dressed like that, I would have come to the party solo.

      1. Temperance*

        They did not! He actually brought her dressed like that.

        He is an incredibly … strange dude, so before we knew more about the situation, we honestly thought that he bought her services for the night.

        1. Detective Amy Santiago*

          Follow up question – is he a former coworker because of this incident or because Booth left that company?

          1. Temperance*

            It’s actually because Booth moved on! Mark is still there, and apparently, last year, he brought his friend as well as a few other strippers (dressed in stripper gear). I’m actually kind of impressed, ot be totally honest!

  56. LKW*

    This won’t be in the top stories but after college I shared an apartment with a friend. Friend turned out to be my worst (and last) roommate. She would tell me how she was failing all of her classes but she was making the right contacts so she would be getting a very important job after she graduated. Didn’t clean up after herself, ate my leftovers, wouldn’t clean up after her cat. Would disappear leaving me to deal with said cat. The normal bad roommate stories. I would regal my office mates with my frustrations.

    Lease was up, we went our separate ways. Later that year at the Christmas party I am moving through the buffet line and I look up and there is the roommate, serving chicken at my office holiday party. I said hello and she stammered out that she was there helping out her friend, the caterer, who didn’t have enough servers and needed a favor. I said that these things happen and took my plate back to my table where I just said “Remember crazy cat roommate – she served your chicken.” And all of my table mates were gawking and going “oooooooh!!!! no way!!!!” It was quite obvious. I did not care. No one finished their chicken.

    2. Candi*

      I believe that it has been discussed here on occasion that when a mutual contact puts you in line for a job, the hiring manager wants you to, you know, be able to DO the job.

  57. Ramona Flowers*

    Haven’t read the others yet but suspect these are tame in comparison.

    In my first media job someone bought the boss a pair of nose hair trimmers. He wasn’t happy. Nobody was brave enough to own up to that one.

    Junior staffer was fired close to Christmas for very good reasons (nasty sexual comments, terrible at his job) but allowed to still attend the Christmas party – where he smashed a glass against the wall and yelled: “You’re all w*#kers”. He had two days left to work and came in the next day with no recollection of what he had said. He had been horrible to me. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy reminding him.

    At one well known UK magazine company two men got into a fight over a woman that ended up with someone being fired for glassing the other in the face.

      4. Candi*

        Eh, a lot of the stories so far aren’t funny.

        But they’re still incredible, and a good warning.

  58. the work fairy*

    My husband works on cargo ships as a mate, and a few years back his company decided to have the Christmas party on some local antique boat that would be driven around on Lake Union for the duration on the party. Very nice boat that is (I believe) run by volunteers, perfect place for a company party. It was super neat until it was time to go back, and the person driving the boat rammed it into the company dock, with such force that a lot of people fell over, there was a large dent in the hull of the ship and the dock was damaged.
    There is nothing quite like having a bunch of professional (drunk) merchant mariners commenting very loudly about how inept the volunteers were… i felt bad for them but it was pretty funny.

  59. DeeShyOne*

    This event happened at my husband’s Christmas work party 26 years ago on our first official date. The company in question is a large automotive group, and every level of employee was there from the Owner, sales people, mechanics and support staff.
    One of the high performing sales guys showed up with a woman about a decade younger than himself and wasn’t his wife. Pretty Woman was a popular movie at the time, and what this young lady wore was an ode to the main character. People were already buzzing about his appearance with Pretty Woman and the amount of brass balls he had to do so in a work setting, as most of his immediate coworkers knew his wife.
    Both Sales and Pretty Woman started at the open bar and walked away with two drinks each, and frequently went back. When dinner was served, Pretty Woman flirted with the server which resulted in Sales snarling at the poor guy to “Watch himself around my woman”. Pretty Woman was not interested in her food and started throwing it around to others at their table and surrounding tables. Sales laughed.
    Shortly after, Owner approached the table and buzzed something in Sales ear. Sales stopped laughing and quietly said something to Pretty Woman. She spent the rest of the dinner quiet, pouting and drinking wine like water while shooting dirty looks to the owner.
    We forgot to observe these goings on when dinner was done and the dancing started. The room moved onto the Christmas festivities and everybody appeared to be having a good time. When the evening was winding down, Sales and Pretty Woman got into a fight. Pretty Woman had Sales backed into a corner, screaming at him about how he wouldn’t want people to find out about “All of his extra money, Mr. Nose Candy!”, or “How you like it up the ass, you f*cking perv!” and a few other potentially incriminating statements. Sales was looking around in a panic and saw the Owner was waiting with his wife, watching this whole dynamic play out.
    We didn’t see how it ended, our cab was there and we were leaving.
    My husband advised Sales didn’t return to work the following week, and it was announced shortly thereafter he wasn’t returning at all.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Woooooooow

      Okay, so I have to ask – how did you and husband end up going to his work holiday party as your first official date? That sounds SO incredibly awkward.

      But at least it was entertaining?

      1. DeeShyOne*

        I ended up going with him because of degrees of separation…my friend was dating his friend. We really hit it off and have been together since. And yes…it was awkward and entertaining. I just asked my husband if he remembered and he started laughing. :)

    2. Anon Accountant*

      Wow! I wouldn’t have returned either- how could he have?

      What a scene that all must have been.

    3. Anonicat*

      I like how he has no problem flaunting his side piece to workmates who knew his wife, but God forbid the mistress be indiscreet.

  60. Teapot Jeffries*

    A few years ago back at my toxic job, morale was fairly low, but we got an email for an all-hands afternoon meeting. Said email looked like an invite, had festive red and green, was in a invitational-type font, so we all assumed it was a holiday get-together. Nope. It was a meeting to determine why morale was so low, with managers basically sitting there and asking us to start telling them the problems. Since most of the problems were due to horrible management, everyone just sat there in awkward silence until management begrudgingly left the room. So then we spent a couple hours that we thought would involve snacks and socializing detailing all our issues with management, workflow, etc. Good times. It became known as “The Christmas Party That Wasn’t.”

  61. Construction Safety*

    Circa 2003 held a fall meeting where all the staff would come in from the sites & we’d have some group training and then an awards/holiday dinner. We had a good year, everyone was festive. After dinner the party moved to the bar, where after copious alcohol & some encouragement, one of the wives put on a striptease on one of the tables.

    The next year, same venue, same group, one wive slept in the hall b/c she was too drunk to get in the room & her hubby wouldn’t let her in (they divorced later that year) and the above referenced couple were later charged for their bedding.

      1. Construction Safety*

        Well, I don’t know.

        In a strange twist of fate I took the call from the hotel when I got back to the jobsite. It’s the only reason I know what little I know.

  62. Decima Dewey*

    Some of my holiday workplace stories:

    *The Cluster Meeting in which the second half was a Christmas party. And people couldn’t leave until their branch staff had pictures taken with Santa. Staff present included Muslims, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and atheists.

    *Last year my boss asked me if I could eat ghee, because she wanted to give me something homemade. Her gift turned out to be a lump of ghee that she had made herself. I thanked her and disposed of it. If I want ghee, I’m buying it at the Indian grocery or the health food store.

    *At a previous branch, one year a coworker gave me a gift and wished me a Happy Hanukkah. As it happened, Hanukkah was over a couple of weeks before. I thanked her and asked why she wished me a Happy Hanukkah. “Fergus said you were Jewish.” Fergus chimed in “No, I said she *might* be Jewish.” I have no idea how he came to that conclusion!

      1. spock*

        I mean, unless he based it off of “she sure lines money, huh?” I don’t think it’s a big deal to wonder if someone is Jewish assuming he’s not basing all his interactions with the maybe-Jew on that assumption. Maybe Decima shares a last name with some Jews he knows or has expressed a dislike of shellfish in the past, idk. As a Jewish person, I don’t have any issues with people taking the time to consider that some people might be Jewish.

      2. Marthooh*

        I assume it went something like–
        Coworker: I’m a get Decima a Christmas present!
        Fergus: You don’t know, she might be Jewish.
        Coworker: Oh, okay then…

    3. Manager Mary*

      99% of the people I encounter each year assume it makes sense to wish me “merry Christmas” and none of them bother asking anyone else first. I think you should be grateful to have coworkers thoughtful enough to consider everyone’s culture, even if they got yours wrong! :)

    5. Candi*

      That first one -what is it with people who don’t realize they’re messing with protected class, and that can bite HARD?

    6. Betty*

      “The Cluster Meeting in which the second half was a Christmas party. And people couldn’t leave until their branch staff had pictures taken with Santa. Staff present included Muslims, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and atheists.”

      …and Christians? Commerical Santa is really NOT part of Christian Christmas, and possibly even more offensive to Christians if you really think about it because now “Christmas” is all about Santa and not about the baby Jesus. At least for other religions, Santa isn’t overshadowing something more important about Christmas.

      /senseofhumourfail

  63. floyd*

    Within an office at a small religious institution there was secret santa party one afternoon. Limit – $10. Many years ago. A young staff person bought for their chosen person a holiday ornament with the institition’s logo on it from the gift shop.

    Surely safe, non-personal, this was a religious institution. Lunchtime, in the office, no alcohol involved.

    An older staff person (who I always thought was the sweetest kind lady) opens it and loudly exclaims in front of everybody:

    “What the h*ll am I going to do with this!”

      1. Candi*

        Write “Be polite when receiving gifts” on it. Hang it somewhere where it will be seen every day, preferably multiple times. And APOLOGIZE.

  64. Susanne*

    Several years ago, I attended an office party at a restaurant. Our group had a private room so we had to walk through the restaurant to get there. Normal, expected, festive holiday venue.

    We couldn’t help but see a man, sitting in a banquette next to a mannequin. She was dressed with fairly heavy makeup and a revealing, dressy outfit. He had his arm around her and was caressing her face. The waitress serving us said she knew all about him. He was a regular and he and “Jackie” show up at least once a week. He would say to the waitress, oh, Jackie’s not eating tonight, and then just order his own food. They’ve been “married” for 10 years. He travels with her. He brings her in to the restaurant in a wheelchair. When he left briefly (presumably to use the men’s room) she tipped over a bit.

    We later did some sleuthing and realized that this guy had been on one of the sleaze talk shows (I think Jerry Springer) with “Jackie” and demonstrated how he cared for her, cleaned her (I don’t want to think about it), and how he would dress her for the day and prop her up as if she were doing a crossword puzzle or whatever and then leave for the day. There was also YouTube footage of him taking her out and about to the zoo, buying her a stuffed animal. It was funny – but also very, very sad. Aside from this – which is a pretty big aside – he came across as a regular guy with a steady job.

    So Alison – what do you do if your employee wants to bring his partner to the company holiday party – you’re all so excited to meet Jackie, you’ve heard she’s amazing at crossword puzzles — and she turns out to be a mannequin?

      1. No Parking or Waiting*

        So I started this at the bottom and am reading up. I can’t help but skim the comments first. I saw yours and knew I had to read this. Feeling that kind of second piece of chocolate cake or stayed up to finish that book kind of regret, where I’m just disappointed in myself after reading it, because I cannot help but think of this very disturbed man as WTF, dude? Just WTF?

    4. Snark*

      “Aside from this – which is a pretty big aside – he came across as a regular guy with a steady job.”

      This strikes me as a “But how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln” -level aside.

    5. Anion*

      OMG was it Davecat?

      He’s done several of those “Men and their RealGirl Dolls” shows. He seems like a sweet man and has a bit of a sense of humor about the whole thing, and eh, he’s not hurting anybody. If that’s his thing and he’s happy, good for him.

      He and “Jackie” both have Twitter accounts, too.

      Wow, you saw Davecat IRL!

  65. Rosie*

    Some years ago I had a weekend job in a men’s accessories store. I did not like any of my colleagues, but when the owner insisted I had to go to the Christmas party, I said what the hell, free drinks, how bad can it be.

    It was held, for reasons I have never been able to fathom, in the private dining room of an very exclusive restaurant in the gay part of town. The owner brought his wife, who clearly hated everyone in the room. The gift I got in the secret santa was racist. And it turned out all the other employees were old school friends of the owner who had never liked his wife, that I had been hired because the owner fancied me, and his wife knew it.

    After the owner and his wife left, the tension went out of the room – but unfortunately so did we. Five of us ended up having an argument in the street about where to go for one final drink – which was made difficult by one of the colleagues being in literal tears because we were in the gay part of town and since he was so handsome he was sure to be raped. We finally convinced him that my feminine presence would scare away all the lurking gay rapists and went into a bar.

    Where I learned that the bloke I’d worked every weekend with for six months had a partner of six years, who he did not ‘allow’ to be seen in public with him, not since she had, five and a half years previously, touched the leg of one of his friends once in front of him. “I can’t allow a slut like that around other men, who knows what she will get up to.” The detail with which he recounted this sin of hers was horrifying – literally all she had done was slap the dude’s knee after hearing a funny story.

    I handed in my notice on my next shift.

    1. Nant*

      This story is just like a car crash you can’t stop watching D: I hope that last guy’s partner got the hell away from him!

    2. DeeC*

      ….’which was made difficult by one of the colleagues being in literal tears because we were in the gay part of town and since he was so handsome he was sure to be raped’…this is GREAT. Isn’t it sad for one to be so handsome or beautiful that one will surely be raped by all the gays?!

      Sweet Peter.

    3. DeeShyOne*

      Omg…”lurking gay rapists”

      Luckily, their kryptonite is the female presence! You’re a hero!

      1. Candi*

        Well, there’s a story on one of the previous holiday threads…

        Wait, you might want a cushion for your jaw.

        So the commentator had gotten a new job at a reasonably-sized company, and as the holidays approached, asked if they did any kind of Secret Santa or whatnot.

        People got very, very quiet when asked this.

        She finally learned that Secret Santa was banned, nope, not happening, scorched earth never again approach.

        Apparently in her department a few years before, there had been exactly one black person in the department. At the Secret Santa that year, his gifter had given him… a children’s Black Sambo book.

        Secret Santa and all gift swaps were banned forever answer.

        (To those who may not have heard of Black Sambo: It is incredibly racist. I can’t even express how racist. All the bullpie cowsh.t. Giving a child’s book to an adult for his present is part of the problem with the package, as well.)

  66. someone101*

    I worked for an independent family business with 10 members of staff including the big boss lady. Normally we would all have an informal get together in the evening with lots of alcohol, music and food. However last year boss decides we are not having out christmas party because she doesn’t like one member of staff and ‘I don’t want to spend the night looking at that ugly pig’. Anywho she told everyone the reason why there would be no party so we all decide to go to a bar anyway without her. When she found out we were going out she was furious, called us all ungrateful fucks and kept all the tips to herself that day. She also decided to show up at the bar and tell us how boring our party was when in actual fact she killed the party vibe by sitting there making horrible remarks about the member of staff she didn’t like so she could hear. She wasn’t drunk when any of this happened, she just thinks she’s a ‘realist’. That was the final nail in the coffin and after Christmas there was a mass walkout.

      1. someone101*

        Honestly I would never work for a small family business again! The bad always outweighs any good!

    3. ss*

      Would have been a nice christmas present to file charges for wage theft for that day that she stole your tips.

      1. someone101*

        In the country I’m in tips are not compulsory they are discretionary. So we make minimum wage and any tips made are a bonus. However although it’s not law it’s considered good practise that wait staff keep their tips or divide them evenly at the end of the night. Bosses are not supposed to receive a share. Kind of like gifts flow downwards etiquette. However boss lady would dip her hand into the jar throughout service and take notes and when they were divided out at the end of the day for every 1 we got she gave herself 3. So technically we didn’t lose wages although from our point of view its a real kick in the teeth as we had a brilliant customer sevice reputation and made a lot of tips in a country that generally doesn’t tip well, if at all.

  67. Mortified*

    Mine is more of a cautionary tale, and I’ve learned my lesson the hard way: don’t drink too much at your partner’s holiday party.

    My partner works in the private sector, and their holiday party is a huge affair; it includes a reception, a sit-down 4-course meal at the heritage hotel in the city, wine on the table, music, dancing, door prizes, and taxi chits for anyone at the end of the night. I’ve attended this party for at least 5 years, and always have a great time.

    One year, I arranged for everyone at our table to be picked up by limousine, and driven to the party (using a Groupon). I also brought sparking wine into the limo, so everyone could have a small drink while driving around. Then, when we got to the party, I had a cocktail or 2 at the reception. Then, I had wine at dinner. Then, I had more cocktails while dancing. I seriously overdid it, and didn’t really realize how much I had been drinking – and neither did my partner. When I finally stood up from our table at the end of the night, I couldn’t walk in a straight line, I kind of stumbled diagonally through the hotel. Apparently, I still didn’t realize how bad it was, I thought I was walking straight. I found out the next day that I had been completely smashed. My partner said the whole table kind of went “Oh” as they saw me.

    I was mortified, and still cringe when I think of it. At our table were my partner’s coworkers, and their manager was nearby, not to mention the executives. I didn’t know these people super well, but I hate to think of the impression I left.

    1. Samiratou*

      I would say if nobody knew you were smashed until you stood up, that’s not too bad. Embarrassing, sure, but note that nobody is here sharing a story of a coworker’s wife who got up wobbly from the table after the party… I’m sure none of them even remember!

    2. Elizabeth West*

      This happened to me once. The company held the party at a local amusement park and fortunately, I wasn’t drinking before we rode the roller coaster. Unfortunately, I had a glass of champagne before having anything to eat. I can still remember the feeling of horror that crept over me as I realized I was slowly becoming intoxicated. Never again.

  68. Nervous Accountant*

    LOL!!!!!

    I got notoriously drunk at my last xmas party.

    Yet somehow I made it in to work the next day in time and energetic (or partied always held on a week night).

  69. PaperSnowGhost*

    Many years ago at a holiday party, it was revealed that one my coworkers (Ross) had been sleeping with another (Rachel). We all found out about it when Ross brought his new girlfriend Julie to the holiday party and Rachel got really drunk and threw her shoe at him during dinner.

    1. Murphy*

      Just laughed out loud. I don’t know what I expected at the end of that sentence, but not “threw her shoe.”

  70. RussianInTexas*

    We are having a Christmas lunch on a Friday, in a Chinese buffet (my company is cheap). Families of employees are welcome. One coworker sent a “reply all” email saying his wife is asking about dress code.
    Chinese buffet. On Friday.

    1. Murphy*

      Actually, I have a theory on that. Wife probably asked her husband in passing “How should I dress for this?” given the occasion/setting and he said “I’ll find out.” She probably thought he was going to just ask someone what was typical.

      1. JB (not in Houston)*

        Yeah, if I were the spouse, I would ask my husband what the dress code was. Since it’s technically a work event, I wouldn’t feel comfortable assuming that I could dress the way I would if I were going to a buffet on a Friday with friends.

        1. No Parking or Waiting*

          Oh crap! That’s going to be an awesome conversation.
          “Hye, my work christmas dinner thing is Friday Dec. X. Spouses included.”
          “ok. What kind of thing? What do I wear?”
          “I’ll find out.”
          forgets.
          “oh, that christmas dinner thing is at some chinese place.”
          “what.do.i.wear?”
          Hopefully he just sends her one of his multiple responses to his massive forward, reply all insanity.

          1. Emi.*

            “some Chinese place”

            That doesn’t help! What kind of Chinese place? Do I wear jeans, or do I put my hair up and drag out my heirloom cheongsam?

            1. FD*

              Do I wear jeans, or do I put my hair up and drag out my heirloom cheongsam?

              Bwahahaha, that’s hilarious.

      3. Anion*

        I just had this very conversation with my husband regarding his office Xmas do next week! His old workplace had formal parties–like, I wore a ballgown. But at a new place? Do I wear a party dress? A regular casual-type dress? Jeans?

        And he asked them.23 I wouldn’t be surprised if it he did it by sending exactly this type of email.

        It’s at a Dave and Buster’s, so I’m going with cigarette pants and a nice button-down shirt.

  71. Hook a duck*

    Years ago I worked for a family run company (never again, but that’s a different story!) and there was one sales lady (I’ll call her Holly) who had suffered a stroke in the past and had a limp because of it, she had also broken her foot about 6 months previously but she never made a big deal of it, as far as she was concerned she wasn’t going to let anything hold her back.

    Well we’re all sitting in a fancy restaurant for the company meal and start doing the Secret Santa and everyone’s got nice presents that have obviously been chosen well, until Holly opens hers and it’s about 3 dirty vegetables and a tiny bit of rolled up bandage that’s obviously been taken from a first aid kit and the card said ‘to the most accident prone person in the company’. It had clearly cost way below the limit and was really upsetting.

    The whole room became silent and the owner of the company was the only one laughing, it was from her. She said the vegetables, (I’m not sure what they were but they were covered in dirt) were because Holly liked cooking. It was really really weird! And the owner never thought that it was strange or insulting.

      1. Hook a duck*

        In my experience family run business owners are on another planet to the rest of us. This same owner got really upset one day and demanded to know why none of the employees had taken it upon themselves to come in early and clear the leaves from the parking lot. We were all office staff, why would it even cross our minds to do that?

    4. Artemesia*

      Now see, it could have been a shiny new home first aid kit and everyone would have laughed and the recipient would have a nice shiny new first aid kit. What a maroon.

  72. Murphy*

    We had a holiday sweater contest (I don’t think it was specifically “ugly” sweater.) In the end, it came down to a long time employee who had decorated her own sweater with lights, etc. and a guy in his 20s wearing a “World’s Best Grandpa” sweater. It was a tie and they somehow had to split a gift card.

    1. Queen of Cans & Jars*

      We had a holiday breakfast for our production staff where some folks decided to have an “ugly Christmas sweater” contest. An employee made a comment to one of the older managers about how great her ugly sweater was. But of course the older manager had no idea there was a contest. O.O

  73. Akcipitrokulo*

    I’m on the social committee, and had worked really hard on the christmas party which, for various reasons, looked like it was going to be a flop. Knowing there wouldn’t be many people there, my manager made sure he attended to give moral support; I found out later he did this instead of going to see Rogue One on its release date!

  74. Menacia*

    Last year, an email came out from the Director of our department that no one could buy gift cards for our Yankee Swap….um, why the hell not? I don’t think anyone listened to him because we pretty much never do, he makes no sense, ever.

  75. Manufacturer*

    These stories are so nutty! I can’t believe companies still do these over-the-top parties. Our Christmas party comes in shifts, where we each get 35 minutes to eat a free lunch and seating is assigned. It’s silly how regimented it is, but at least no one’s making a fool of themselves at the chocolate fountain.

    1. H.C.*

      I’ve had the Christmas party/lunch in shifts too (no assigned seating, however); probably not the most jolly way to go about celebrating but I def appreciated that setup as a former caterer (as opposed to dealing with a stampede of people at the start of party, and doing the calculus of whether you have enough food to serve the latecomers when the early birds are already asking for seconds.)

  76. selina kyle*

    I probably AM someone’s story. A couple years ago, my then-boyfriend and I broke up right before Christmas. His work had a holiday party with RSVPs and he had said he’d bring a plus-one. So even though we were split, I ended up going (it was an amicable enough split, we’re still friends now).
    So as he introduced me to coworkers at the dinner, he would say “and this is my ex-girlfriend, Selina”.

    1. Master Bean Counter*

      Oh My. Was there an open bar at least? I’m thinking Alcohol would be necessary for a night like that.

  77. Lynca*

    My mother once brought home a small blown-glass pickle ornament from work one year. Apparently people had brought in small items for as a White Elephant gift exchange. The thing was passed around and ridiculed by so many people apparently. So my mom took it, commented on how much she liked it, and that’s how we ended up with a pickle for a beloved Christmas ornament.

    1. Archi*

      The pickle ornament is an old german tradition. You hide the pickle in the tree and whoever finds it gets a prize/treat/etc.

      1. Goya*

        My mom has 4 of them of all colors/sizes (the smallest is from an old swizzle stick, so it’s as big as a fingernail). It’s a big deal in our household – and we’re not German ;)

      3. Mockingjay*

        Yep! I hide it in our tree late Christmas Eve. Whoever finds it gets to open the first present.

      4. NB*

        I don’t know why that is supposed to be a German tradition. Nobody in Germany does this and most people have no idea what you are even talking about if you mention it.

        1. Goya*

          From Wikipedia:

          “There are a number of different origin stories attributed to the tradition, including an origination in Germany. This theory has since been discounted, and it is now thought to be an American tradition created in the late 19th century.”

          Like I said, we’re not German, we just adopted it because it was fun for us. But I too believed the Germanic history story.

        2. Izzy*

          In the German pavilion at Epcot in Disney World, there is a Christmas shop. They have a whole bin of pickle ornaments. This is why I also thought it had German origins. I guess I should not expect authenticity from Disney, but the pavilions at Epcot are staffed by people from those nations. Next time I’m there, I’m going to ask them about it.

        3. Susan Calvin*

          I like to imagine it as an “I tried to bullshit my way out of an awkward situation*, and it was a bit too successful” kind of thing that got WAY out of hand.

          *a pickle, you might even say

    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      My former bf’s mom bought me one of these for Christmas one year. It had an explanation on it and everything, but wowee, did it look…well, like something you’d rather not get from your bf’s mother. I kept it for a couple of years after we broke up but eventually I threw it away because I’d rather not have a phallus on my Christmas tree, thanks, particularly one that reminds me of my ex and his weird mother.

  78. Sleepy Coder*

    Not my story, but a very awkward cousin’s and his employees and friends. For the sake of privacy, I’m going to call him Mark.

    Mark is the Founder and Ceo of a small business. He only has three employees that help him out with social media and interacting with the public, with other duties distributed evenly. Because their so small, they share an office building with a company of about fifty or so people. They are known for being a very high maintenance group with poor management, but Mark was able to set very clear boundaries about who’s part of the build was who’s.

    From what I know, a couple of months prior to the Christmas party, the other company hired an avid brewer and former bar tender, and he was more then willing to cater the drinks of the event. The party had just started by the time that Mark and his employees had left the building, and it was very obvious that there would be a mess on their side of the building in the morning, because people were already drunk enough to start stumbling around and breaking anything that wasn’t nailed down. Unfortunately, Mark would realized a few hours after he got home that he had left some important paper work in his office. Upon returning and entering the building, Mark found himself running into an elderly woman that he recognized to be an accountant from the other company. She was completely wasted, and promptly started hitting on him using a variety of math puns. Slowly working his way to his office with her clinging to him, he passed one of his very irritated and drenched employees who stormed out without any word. Once he finally made it to his office (the woman got distracted by something else at one point) he opens it to find two people passed out and covered in silly string. One of them was apparently grumbling in his sleep about there being a war and all he could remember was neon pink and yellow. At that point he got the papers, dragged the other two out of his office and locked up everything he could then he got the heck out of there.

    1. Meagan*

      “…hitting on him using a variety of math puns.” I’m glad I’m out of coffee, because it’d be all over the screen right now.

      4. Ramona Flowers*

        Oh dear goodness, you’ve just reminded me of a very socially awkward friend who once joined me and some workmates in the pub. He kept saying “I have physics jokes.” (He was a physicist. He didn’t say anything funny.)

  79. Dawn*

    I worked at a bar that was owned by a 26yo bro, his dad bought it for him. He was actually a great boss to have. For our Xmas party we invited some of our regulars to be the bartenders, which was hilarious. The most insane part was from one of my fellow servers, she was a super co-worker, and everyone thought she was great. Well we all get hammered, and she informs a few of us fellow servers that there is a dance move called an “ass clap” that strippers know how to do. We are in the pool room in the back, and she lifts up her dress and shows us this… The pool room has cameras, she had to go to the owner and explain that she really needed this tape destroyed. “Ass clap” became the code name for the pool room for years.

  80. Neosmom*

    I attended my first holiday party with my software company employer – it was at a nice venue in a big metropolitan area. I put on my bright red dress with the unique front criss-cross straps and headed to the party. One of my direct reports was in the exact same dress – in black! We had not discussed what we were wearing – total coincidence.

  81. Amelia*

    The office Christmas party a couple years back, where conversation was dying out a bit and food was winding down. And then someone asked the new faculty member about Christmas traditions back in his previous country. And in that silence that falls sometimes in large groups of people talking he began earnestly explaining Krampus and all those traditions including the blackface helpers that now pass out gifts but used to drag the children off to be beaten. He was in Sweden? It was awkward on multiple levels.

    2. Queen of Cans & Jars*

      Google David Sedaris’s “6 to 8 black men.” Even better if you can hear him read it aloud.

  82. IT is not EZ*

    Back at the turn of the century, the call center provider I worked for hired a Karaoke Drummer as the holiday entertainment. It was a huge venue, the stage could easily hold the Rockettes, but there was just this one guy on the stage, behind a drum set and a karaoke machine.

  83. RJGM*

    I attended Mr M’s Army holiday party this year. (Warning that this is not a very funny story…)

    For those unfamiliar, a major part of this party is The Grog. A representative from each group within the unit* contributes something (usually alcoholic) to a bowl, and people who commit “infractions” during the evening have to go up and drink the disgusting mixture. To give you an idea: this year’s included milk, champagne, sardines, expensive whiskey, and eleven pennies. It really is a punishment if you have to drink it — which will be relevant in a minute.

    The MC of this party is, apparently, kind of a weirdo. He thinks he’s hilarious, but most others aren’t too fond of him. Add in two bottles of wine BEFORE THE PARTY EVEN STARTED, and his MCing was…not great. But the worst part was his idea of entertainment after the dinner…

    He made a PowerPoint. (Strike one.)
    With fake Tinder profiles of the leadership. (Strike two.)

    Said leadership includes three men and one woman. The three men’s profiles were a little odd, but not too bad; naturally, he “swiped left” on all three. Then he got to the woman. Her profile wasn’t terrible, but he “swiped right” on her — and “sent” a fake message with a bad pickup line — and “received” a fake reply! Her reply was something along the lines of “I don’t date dorks.” But remember: this is a PowerPoint. That he made. That she had no say in.

    IT GETS WORSE, FRIENDS.

    PowerPoint ends. He calls her up. Asks her, “Why would you send me a message like that?! Why don’t you want to date me?!” AND MAKES HER DRINK THE GROG. FOR HIS IDEA OF WHAT SHE’D SAY IF THEY MET ON TINDER.

    People laughed. I did not laugh. I’m not sure if I’ve appropriately captured The Uncomfortable in this scene, but I honestly felt like I was witnessing a #MeToo in action.

    Happy ending, at least: I happened to mention to another woman that I felt uncomfortable during “the Tinder thing.” She said, “Well, you know I’m in charge of all of them, right?” (I did not!) “And I’m also in charge of [the sexual assault awareness/prevention program] and [equal opportunity stuff].” (I did not know this either!)

    So I explained what happened, she nodded, and she later spoke to the woman who was targeted. Mr M told me that later that the next day, the MC apologized to his target specifically and to everyone in general for how the night had gone.

    *Apologies if I have my terminology wrong; he’s in the Army, not I!

      1. RJGM*

        Oh gosh, I forgot the Before part:

        While we were in line for food, some of the other soldiers and +1s and I were looking at the guy’s desktop, since he had it projected on the big screen. One of the +1s noticed the file named Tinder, and asked a soldier whether MC was married. Answer, they thought, was yes! Awkward.

        Said soldier called MC over and asked about the file name:
        “Aren’t you married?”
        “Well… a couple of weeks ago, she decided she’d rather be single. So, uh, if it were up to me, yeah, I’d be married.”

        AWKWARD.

    4. Mananana*

      Our Army unit’s holiday party is tomorrow – we no longer do the grog because of the attendant stupidity. (And you did great with the Army terms.)

      1. RJGM*

        I’ve been to one other event with grog, and it wasn’t nearly so bad. I’m sure it depends on who’s in attendance — at the other event, some of the Big Big Bosses were there, and people were a little calmer. This time it was only one Big Boss (the woman to whom I complained) and she showed up late. (And thank you! I’m learning, hahaha.)

      1. RJGM*

        Somebody did make him drink right after that — he had said himself that you’re supposed to show “pious reverence” or some other BS while drinking the grog, and he was accused of not doing so — but he REALLY did not need any more alcohol in his system…

  84. anonforthis*

    A few years ago a former coworker got absolutely smashed at the holiday party. She had enough sense not to try to drive home, but she didn’t have enough sense to get an Uber or plan out some other way home. As she was wandering around, obviously drunk, a cop stopped her.

    From what I’ve heard, the cop was actually going to help her home. Or at least he was going to help her home until she bit him. Right through his jacket. Breaking the skin.

    The cop had to go to the emergency room, and my former coworker was arrested and fired.

  85. MashaKasha*

    Ohhh I have one. One year, an OldJob had our holiday event at a party center next door, 4PM-7PM, appetizers and two drink tickets for each employer provided by the company. At 7PM, no one was done partying and a bunch of people drove down to a bar 10 or so miles away for an afterparty. Two coworkers, a woman who I knew pretty closely and a guy I’d only met in passing before, asked me for a ride, because they were no good to drive. All the way to the bar, Guy Coworker (whose name was Fergus, of course!) complained about my driving and I was like, wtf? can’t you just be thankful? When I parked in the upscale outdoor shopping center where the bar was located, the truth came out – Fergus had to go real bad, and could barely hold it. We started walking towards the bar, but halfway there, Fergus gave up, unzipped, and started peeing on a wall over by a bank entrance. The other coworker and I stood guard. Sure enough not even a minute later, I saw a group of four well-dressed old ladies walking straight towards us, probably after a girls’ night out – they looked to be in good moods. I ran towards them and stalled them until Fergus was done. They probably thought I’d lost my mind. “Excuse me, could you tell me what time it is? Can you say it again? Did you say eight AM or PM?” and so on. And then they went to wherever they were going, and the three of us went to the bar. The end!

  86. Nant*

    I worked in a mixed faith university volunteer group, and one holiday season we were given a team building exercise where we had to learn about a particular winter holiday and present something on it (supposedly to make us learn more about other people’s customs). For example, I was assigned to a team which read up on Hanukkah, which was great because I was Jewish. It came to the day where we presented our works, and most people had been quite sensitive with their work, and had bern asking around to make sure it was accurate.

    Except one team.

    One team was assigned the Wiccan interpretation of Yule. We had two openly practicing Wiccans in the office that had twice offered to help them, but were ignored. The team’s presentation was quite literally on commercial Christmas – it was filled with photos of Santa and Rudolph, of Christmas lights and of major Christmas events around the world. When someone brought up the fact that it didn’t seem very Yule-y, the team threw a massive wobbly and stormed off.

    Our Wiccan coworkers were none too pleased.

    3. Anon-ny-non-non for this*

      Yeah, I wouldn’t have been pleased by that whatsoever. And probably would have started lecturing. Loudly.
      A couple years ago, I had to point out to my boss that the manger scene in the public area of the office shouldn’t be a thing since it was a government facility. There was much grumbling about “pagans and heathens” (I’m only somewhat open at work). I finally brought in a tiny pine tree, some pine cones, a menorah, etc, to make it at least inclusive. No one would admit to owning the manger set, although I suspect many didn’t realize what it was (clearly homemade and, er, somewhat abstract).
      Grandboss was very unpleased to find the next culture survey was negative on religious inclusion. He never said out loud what he practiced or believed, but his parents were from Mumbai and he was pretty firm on keeping things secular.

  87. Cassie*

    My work potluck was yesterday, and at least 1/3 of the dishes brought were insanely spicy. I’m guessing the best stories will come from the night janitors.

  88. KK*

    When I think of strange holiday office stories, I just think of every Christmas party in The Office. Especially the episode where Michael brings an iPad to the gift exchange. :)

  89. Hannah*

    At my last place of employment, we were at the CEO/President’s house for the annual Christmas Party – not “Holiday,” the CEO was very anti-political correctness and made sure we knew it.

    Someone in sales was a few weeks/maybe a couple months pregnant and hadn’t told anyone – pretty standard, right? Well, when she refused a drink, the VP of the company (her supervisor) decided to yell “ARE YOU PREGNANT?”, and she was so caught off guard that she just turned bright red and essentially answered the question without saying a word. The VP continued to yell “oh my god OH MY GOD,” so everyone in the room heard the news.

    VP then pressured/forced her pregnant report to tell the CEO about her pregnancy.

    Then they fired her after her maternity leave.

    :)!

    Glad I’m out of that shit hole.

    1. Murphy*

      Oh man. I would have been so pissed.

      I don’t know why people have to make such a big deal about other people’s drinking habits. Some people don’t drink. Some people don’t feel like it right now, who cares?

      2. whingedrinking*

        Like, off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen additional reasons why someone might not drink, and most of them are very personal. (“I have a bladder infection”, “Alcohol interacts badly with my medication”, “I’m a recovering alcoholic”, “I have an upcoming medical test”, “Booze triggers negative psychological episodes for me,” etc.) Just let people be!

    2. R2D2*

      Ohhhh man. For her sake, I wish she had accepted the drink and discretely “forgotten” it on a table later on. People are so rude!

    3. Candi*

      Please tell me this was: After FMLA and other protections became a thing, and: she had enough hard evidence for a lawyer to write some entertaining yet useful letters.

  90. Red5*

    My previous workplace had two major “mandatory fun” events each year: a summer picnic and a holiday party. Putting these events together not only included the actual planning meetings, but also coordinating multiple fundraisers (think at least 1/month) to reduce the cost of the tickets and cover door prizes. My very first year I was voluntold to be on the planning committee for both events. Figuring I was the FNG, I did as I was asked, even though I hate these types of events and rarely (if ever) attend.

    Fast forward to the next year when I was voluntold again to be on the committee for the summer picnic. After talking with several of my coworkers about how this duty was assigned prior to my arrival, I found out that my supervisor had historically only assigned women to these mandatory fun planning committees.

    I went ahead and did the picnic committee, but told my supervisor up front that I was not going to participate in the holiday party committee until everyone else in our office had a turn. He half-jokingly said, “Well, I could make it a part of your annual objectives and then you’d have to do it.” I replied, “Go ahead, but you’re just going to make more work for yourself because I’m STILL not going to do it, and then you’ll have to write me up.”

    Ironically, he ended up on the committee himself because of the pushback he got from the men in the office. (One of them actually said, “This is chick stuff.”) It was all I could do not to roll my eyes, but at least in my remaining 3 years he didn’t ask me to be on a mandatory fun committee again.

    2. CMDRBNA*

      I think we need to have a separate thread for “forced fun,” committees, and being voluntold for stuff. At my first job, only contractors, who were overwhelmingly female and office admin-type staff, were asked to be on the Christmas party planning committee. I ended up recusing myself after our horrible coworker tried to claim that us sending around the (front office mandated) sign-up sheet for food and baked goods amounted to violating the rule for asking for donations from coworkers in the office (which was rich, considering that he had passed around literature asking for cash donations for his wife’s charity, which is legit a violation of ethics rules).

      I also got bounced from a social committee, which was fine with me, because I said that I didn’t think asking Weight Watchers to come to the office was a good idea. Apparently everyone else on the (all woman) committee just loooooved Weight Watchers (which is weird because I was the smallest person by far on the committee, you’d think they would figure out that Weight Watchers wasn’t working for them).

  92. Tech Comm Geek*

    I started work at a small investment firm. Under 80 people, and they hired a crop of new graduates every year. EVERY new employee was REQUIRED to participate in the mandatory skit at the booze-fueled and fancy pants party. If your spouse/partner didn’t show up, it looked bad. The director I worked for had missed the party the previous year, so he was required to participate in our skit. We had to come up with an idea, a script, and costumes! It was incredibly awkward and no one over the age of 25 enjoyed it.

    The amount of drinking was also impressive. The company was very good about safety. They hired car services to take anyone home who needed and reimbursed a cab back to the location to retrieve your car. If you chose to take a cab to the party, they reimbursed that. Keys were taken away if anyone felt that someone had too much drink. Despite all this, one of the young analysts managed to get out of the party with a spare key to his car. He attempted to drive home, ended up going the wrong way on the interstate at 95 miles an hour. He hit another car and killed the driver. He was in the hospital for months. I was laid off before the next Christmas party, so I don’t know what changed.

    2. Turtlewings*

      Oh my gosh. Nothing says holiday spirit like killing an innocent stranger. That is so terrible.

  93. JHunz*

    During my first Christmas party at my first job out of college, there was an open bar that was taken advantage of more be a few select individuals than was probably appropriate. Which is how it came to pass that one of the employees hired at the same time of myself was photographed riding the ice sculpture of a reindeer.

    There were no more ice sculptures at the parties after that.

    2. Rebecca in Dallas*

      I hope that didn’t end with him getting stuck to the ice sculpture (a la Christmas Story!)

      1. Candi*

        Considering that if he was riding it astride, what the resulting contact would have been -I REALLY hope not!

  94. No Parking or Waiting*

    My friends and I were shopping this weekend and we talked one of the guys out of buying a (very nice, high quality) poop emoji ornament for his office ornament exchange. Just no. My exact words, “don’t be that guy.” Not everyone will get it, so no.

    1. Longtime Listener, First time Caller*

      But if you stop him from being that guy, who will write into these posts and make me snort laugh at my desk? Do it for the children!

      1. No Parking or Waiting*

        I did get a picture from him at work. A coworker had him try on a character onesie she was planning to give her adult son. So I’m thinking I misjudged the culture there!

  95. Bow Ties Are Cool*

    This one isn’t so bad in the scheme of things, but it’s the only story I’ve got!

    During the recession, when I was suffering through ToxicJob to pay the bills (this was the large company that had a “team member network” for Christian employees, but for no other religions, which gives you an idea of the corporate attitudes towards anything not straight, white, and conservative), and also I was still vegetarian. The building had a cafeteria, so every year there would be a holiday lunch there, and also most teams/departments would do a separate celebration.

    The holiday lunch was always uniformly awful for vegetarians, with a bonus cringe for non-Christians. It would open with a prayer of the heavily Jesus-y variety from one of the execs, and then the buffet line would open up. It was always a lavish spread of roast turkey, roast beef, mashed potatoes with meat gravy already artfully drizzled atop, corn also with meat gravy on it, Caesar salad with the dressing already tossed in (anchovies in Caesar dressing, if you were wondering why that’s a problem), a vegetarian entree, white rolls, and cookies. The vegetarian entrees were dreadful–one year green peppers stuffed with partially cooked Spanish rice (it was CRUNCHY), another year a stir fry of just onions, carrots, and broccoli in a mere hint of sauce, another year roasted vegetables so overdone they’d become goo, and all of these served at room temperature because the meats and meat-topped sides were using all the serving stations with the little burners underneath.

    On the departmental side, my vegetarian coworker and I were treated to two holiday meals at steakhouses (hellooooo, salad bar), one at a seafood grill (which had the added benefit of being impossible for our coworker who was allergic to shellfish), and finally the year when we didn’t go out, but the boss ordered lobster rolls for everyone, and then gleefully ate the two that were left over because my coworker and I didn’t eat ours. Oh, and he refused to let us go acquire our own lunch, so we sat there in the conference room watching everyone else eat and sharing one small bag of kettle chips that a sympathetic coworker sacrificed out of her own lunch.

    I should add that all of these events, even the ones out at restaurants, were strictly alcohol-free.

    1. EddieSherbert*

      That last line might be the saddest, because I would definitely a drink in that situation. Your boss was BEYOND insensitive!

    2. JeanB in NC*

      I got stuck on the gravy and dressing already added to the food – who does that? And who puts gravy on corn? (Not being a vegetarian, roast turkey and roast beef sound delicious, but I like to control how much dressing or gravy goes on my food!)

      1. Bow Ties Are Cool*

        It was just a pretty little drizzle over the top, for presentation, I think. There was also a serve-yourself vat of gravy which I didn’t mention.

  96. Construction Safety*

    At we had our 25th anniversary part at a very nice venue, formal attire very nice, rooms supplied. Another company in the next was having their party and the DJ must have been bad, because their guests kept filtering over to our dance floor. It wasn’t too bad until Mustang Sally arrived. Shoeless MS was really, really into the music, swaying to the rhythm and hiking her up-to-THERE!-slit even higher.

  97. Kali*

    Not one I witnessed, but….

    The first office Christmas party I attended was held at a location far from the office. Apparently, we’d been banned from the hotel across the street because one woman had been caught on camera having sex with two men – consecutively – on the hood of a random car in the hotel carpark, which had dented. We were back in that location, but I don’t remember much of it past me asking a coworker “how alcohol is champagne?” and him replying “hardly at all” before we downed five each.

  98. Master Bean Counter*

    My strange office story:
    I work with Sportsball guy. He’s an avid fan of his college teams. His keyboard lights up in school colors. He ordered his new car to be one of the school colors and has mascot magnets attached to it.
    I really didn’t think much of it when he put up a little tree decorated in the school colors. It was fairly tasteful and not over done. In other words not his style at all.
    Three days later a stuffed mascot and a smaller action figure of the mascot show up in Sportsball guys office. He has placed these toys in the office chair that would normally be for visitors in his office. Now because this alone isn’t weird enough, he pulled the chair up to his desk. This is so, and these are his words, “The mascots can enjoy the tree better.”
    If you have to go into his office you have to move this chair back so you can sit in the other visitor chair or stand there the whole time. I ask him to come to my office on the rare occasions I need to talk with him.

    2. Master Bean Counter*

      Okay I just walked by his office. There are now 4 stuffed mascots and a stuffed monkey enjoying the tree.

    3. SAHM*

      Am I the only one goofy enough to think this is kind of silly-sweet? Makes me wonder if Mascot guy has kids/nephews/nieces who would love this sort of thing? As long as he jumps up to clean off the chair for a visitor (which idk if he’s doing), I’m having a hard time not finding this absurdly adorable.

  99. AnonaMama*

    While not the worst story ever, it does stick out to be about the perils of not taking office holiday parties seriously.

    My husband works for a large grocery chain. They have yearly regional holiday parties – your basic dinner and dancing at a hotel ballroom – for all full-time and management position employees. Based on the distance to the party location, the company usually pays for a hotel room for the employee as well, so they don’t have to drive home late after the party. Due to the nature of the company, a majority of these full-time workers are on the young side, mostly in their early 20, and just learning how to be retail managers. The regional manager’s wife helps to plan the event (which is a total “first lady” role that makes no sense to me. Why is she planning her husband’s work event?? But that is not the point) and he makes a big speech thanking everyone for their hard work this year blah blah blah.

    A few years ago the event was in a major city, and the hotel where it was held happened to be across the street from a well known bar. A large group of new managers spent the entire cocktail hour and most of the dinner planning their trip to the bar and basically ran out of the ballroom as soon as they could. The actual work even was a ghost town and everyone knew it was because a bunch of managers had decided to go get drunk across the street instead.

    According to the husband, the regional manager was not thrilled and a lot of these new managers were given stern talking tos and I think one or two were actually fired soon after. Not for leaving the party, but because they were more interested in partying with their employees on a regular basis than actually managing them.

    It always boggles my mind when I see stuff like this happen. Just because it is a “party” people somehow forget that these things are still work events, where you boss is present, and you still have to behave like an adult.

  100. Reasonable Facsimile*

    At my last job, my boss was notorious for planning mandatory “fun” activities, which she thought improved department morale. For our holiday party, she booked an afternoon at a national restaurant chain that has arcade games, bowling, billiards, etc. In addition to a couple of drinks and some appetizers, we each received a bunch of game tickets to use after the “team building” portion of the party. Except the team building lasted the entire time we had rented the space – 3 hours – and we all got kicked out because the place had been rented for another private event. On the bright side, at least we all just got to leave and didn’t have to go back to the office.

  101. The Claims Examiner*

    At job #1 someone pooped in an attorney’s trash can one year during the office party. I heard about some make-out sessions, but they were never validated. And there was an attorney who always sang with the band after he got a few drinks in him.

    At job #3 I heard about a Halloween party with a pumpkin carving contest that happened before I joined. Apparently my coworker spent a really long time carving these elaborate designs in her pumpkins (she showed me; they were amazing) and the pumpkin that won was made to look like it was taking a beer bong in its ass. Classy. Needless to say our branch didn’t participate in any contests after that.

    And one year I was “that guy” at my husband’s Christmas party. Some random guy I was sitting next to wanted to talk about husband’s ex-wife and we weren’t married yet, so I sort of threw a hissy fit in front of his coworkers and friends until I was allowed to leave. It was pretty embarrassing, but I was so young and didn’t have a good retort for his comments.

    Thankfully I work with sane people now. We all pitched in and got a Christmas tree together this year and we’re going to do a gift exchange and have a luncheon with just the 6 of us.

  102. Rebelina11*

    The dreaded Elf on a Shelf got passed around the different departments. At the end of the day, someone from the department that had it last would go to another department and pose the elf. For the most part, it was okay: cute poses with rubber duckies, a little bathroom humor (the elf pooping a Hershey’s Kiss), that sort of thing… until my department got it. He was snorting hot cocoa using a $1 bill besides a naked Barbie doll. I work in HR. The department that left it was Legal…! I don’t work there anymore and I’ve banned Elf on a Shelf from my current job.

  103. RabbitRabbit*

    Forgot another one that’s tangentially related – at the holiday party, we would get our bonus checks in sealed envelopes. My direct coworker/job partner got something insulting like $25; I only knew because she was mad enough to tell me. She was a hard worker but our department admin seriously undervalued our division. I made several hundred dollars but had been there a lot longer; the disparity was still very unfair.

    I left for another job, kept in touch with her. She kept wanting to quit. I ended up sending her a link to “The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck” by Sarah Knight (a not entirely satirical self-help book on setting good work/life/relationship priorities, rather than on being a jerk as you might think from the title) and she bought it on the spot. Since then she’s quit the old job, loves her new one, is working on an advanced degree – and that old division has turned into a dumpster fire because they kept hiring crap replacements, and is getting audited hard.

  104. JenniferK*

    I have three:
    1) First job out of college, most departments at my company went out and did something for the holidays. Nothing big, but something silly like bumper cars or the like. My department did a lunchtime party, catered by the cafeteria in our office (so the same food we all ate every day). The fun was trivia about our managers and karaoke. We were all stone cold sober.
    2) Second job out of college, the company was a younger company that had the whole “we are all family” thing going on. At our Christmas party, one of the women in the compliance department got drunk and started giving her boyfriend a lap dance in full view of everyone. It was… awkward.
    3) At one tiny startup I worked at, my boss (our CPO) was a pretty douchey guy. He had recently hired a new PM (a younger woman just a few years out of college) who did not like him. However, unlike the rest of us, she decided to make her dislike known during our holiday party after she had a few drinks. She spent the whole time loudly talking about what an awful person/boss he was. There is still debate over whether she was fired or resigned the next day.

  105. KayEss*

    Once upon several jobs ago, I was strong-armed into being on the holiday party planning committee one year by my director–I was a new, very junior employee, and there was a shortage of volunteers. Hoo, boy.

    I wound up burning my limited social capital with that group putting my foot down on issues like “no, we can’t hold the party in that room, no matter how quaint you think it will be–the fire code limit is 150 and we have 200+ employees,” and “having each assigned-seating table create and perform an improv skit is not a good activity for a company of adult professionals, even if no alcohol is involved,” meaning that no one listened to me on the question of “actually, people would probably rather we spend our budget on a limited number of door prizes that are actually halfway-desirable instead of every single person getting a prize/gift that is cheap junk.” The lady championing the latter approach went on a crusade of combing the clearance tables at Bed, Bath & Beyond and TJ Maxx for 200+ dirt-cheap tchotchkes, and then was SHOCKED and OFFENDED when people were not thrilled to unwrap $3 faux-crystal vases (among other pieces of absolute trash) and left them behind on the tables when the party was over.

    I was not invited back to the committee. Apparently I had a negative attitude.

    1. Turtlewings*

      On behalf of everyone everywhere, I want to personally thank you for nixing the improv skits.

      1. KayEss*

        Other activity suggestions included “Jeopardy.” I inquired how we were going to coordinate Jeopardy for 200 people at a 2-hour party. There was no response.

        We wound up doing a table-teams version of “The Price is Right,” which went over… a little TOO well. Turns out no one actually knows the rules of The Price is Right, but will get very heated about what they think the rules are/should be. So maybe it was for the best that the prizes were plentiful and worthless, as it kept the game fairly low-stakes?

    2. Samiratou*

      And thank you for providing a template for others on how to get out of social committee obligations in the future!

    3. EA in CA*

      OMG that was me at on last year’s party planning committee. We have a larger percentage of our staff that are young professionals, most 1-5 years right out of school. They couldn’t understand why it was a terrible idea to set up beer pong as one of the activities at the family friendly Christmas event.

    4. Lowercase Holly*

      Ugh we were forced to play Deal or No Deal one year at the holiday party (for cash!) but we were a small company.

  106. NoMoreMrFixit*

    I only had one bizarre experience with office holiday parties. I was in my late 20’s at the time and had been working at a community college. At that time the college offered a Hospitality program that has since been shut down. All the chefs and servers were students. Our whole department goes to the student run restaurant for lunch at Christmas. A slightly built fellow came walking past us a minute after we sat down with a tray loaded with complimentary glasses of hot apple cider. As he passed behind me he tripped, dropping the contents of the tray all over my back. Soaked from neck to waist. I should mention here that I’m a big guy. A bit on the short side but broad shoulders and pretty heavy. I love food :-)

    He stood there frozen in fear for a few seconds. I managed to not scream after being baptized with hot cider but stood up to go to the washroom and rinse out my shirt and sweater. Unfortunately he thought I was getting up to murder him and he proceeded to dash into the kitchen, where he stayed until we had finished lunch and left. The people in charge apologized profusely and I was a good sport about it as I wasn’t burned thanks to wearing a sweater that took the brunt of the spill. After all, accidents happen. Never saw the poor kid in there again. I think he dropped out after that.

  107. Christmas Anon*

    We had a product launch followed by a Christmas party. The product launch included dancing beds and a group massage (turn to the person on your right type thing). At the party on of the managers got really drunk. He picked up a girl by the neck and held her against the wall. She was dating one of the owners. He was no longer employed.

      2. Christmas Anon*

        Imagine a stage with two metal bed bases (no head boards). The music and lights start. The head and leg areas of the beds start raising/lowering, somewhat in time with the music.

        Basically they’d just launched an electric bed base, like a niagra bed, and got them to dance

    3. Turtlewings*

      I like my coworkers, but any of them trying to massage me will not be getting their hand back. And that’s not even touching (ha) Mr. Assault and Battery. o_O

  108. Anon for this*

    My team is having a combination staff meeting/holiday party next week. Complete with an (optional) white elephant exchange. The issue is that we work for a global company, and my team has people located in 2 different US states, as well as in a European capital city. I’m not quite sure how a gift exchange over VTC is going to work.

    There’s also a “workspace decorating contest”. This one will probably be easier to do, just send pictures. But, right now, our area looks like a christmas warehouse vomited all over. (One of my counterparts in the other US location said, without seeing our area, that he thinks we’ll win, as “there is no holiday spirit in this building” (his location))

  109. Gandalf the Nude*

    You know how for Secret Santa exchanges, participants will make a small list of suggested gifts so their Santa has an idea where to start?

    My friend got one of those today with two items:
    1) expensive silk socks
    2) the very specific brand and style of underwear the guy likes

    2. Bow Ties Are Cool*

      If I were your friend, Underwear Dude would get a pack of Target crew socks and a little note that this was the closest thing in the event budget.

    4. Decima Dewey*

      At one Secret Santa I drew the Department Head’s name. She had two items on her list: dark chocolate disks from Specific Candy Store a few blocks away or postage stamps.

  110. Thornus67*

    I sent this to Alison a few weeks ago, but the audacity of it is just too strange to not mention.

    As quick background, I used to work for a small business. The two owners had a son together, about 22 or so, who worked part time at the business in a general support role. The son’s wife worked there a few hours a week as a part-time receptionist. The female owner’s mother also worked at the business in a general support role. There were three other unrelated people who worked at the office – a full-time receptionist/office manager, a fellow professional, and me.

    The owners did not follow the “gifts do not flow upwards” etiquette. Presents from the workers to the bosses were expected on birthdays, Christmas, and Boss’ Day (there’s a whole separate boss-throwing-a-tantrum-story about Boss’s Day). One of the related employees, either the son or the owner’s mother, solicited contributions for gifts. Talk about coercive.

    My last six months there were quite rocky due to some egregious labor abuses on the owners’ part. That final Christmas, I walked into the office on Monday, and the son immediately approached me and said “Everyone is giving $40 for each boss for Christmas. Will you be able to contribute?” As I was planning on quitting come the first work day of the new year, I responded that I would have to check my finances. Three hours later, he came into my office and handed me a list of presents that were going to be given to the bosses. “Here’s the list if you want to look at it. Everyone is giving $50 for each boss.” (Yes, in three hours, the expected contribution per boss went up by $10). As a sidenote, in the past, expected contributions per boss was only $10.

    While I knew I shouldn’t and didn’t care about having any bridges (I had already burnt them while still on the island rather than escaping to mainland first), I decided to contribute $5 per boss just to have the right to sign the Christmas cards.

    The day before the office Christmas party, held the Friday before Christmas Sunday, I overheard the son and bosses talking about how they had a $5 or so limit on Christmas presents among their shared family. No presents over $5. This made me think that the son was using the workers to subsidize his presents to the bosses.

    At the five minute office Christmas party, the son handed over the Christmas present baskets to the bosses. Each basket had a signed Christmas card and was filled with personalized presents like blankets, socks, personalized books, wine, spa gift cards, etc. All throughout, the son kept making comments about how much he thought each boss would like the personalized gifts. Comments like “Well I wanted to get you [ITEM IN BASKET].”

    After the bosses were given their presents, we were dismissed. In the past, the bosses used this party to give out Christmas bonuses and Hickory Farms gift baskets. This time, they were not given to the employees (although I suspect everyone else was given a bonus and I wasn’t due to me raising a stink with the government over the labor abuses). The only presents given were from the workers to the bosses.

    The office did not close early, and we had to work until 6. We did not have first business after Christmas Sunday off as a paid holiday. And I was never given the Christmas cards to sign.

  111. zora*

    This is pretty mild compared to most of the ones above! But it’s my only awkward holiday party moment.

    Was working at a small nonprofit with very little money, so our holiday party was very low key, a small selection of apps and one round of drinks at the bar downstairs from the office, anything else we had to pay for ourselves. Which was pretty normal, none of us were big drinkers, company happy hours were usually a couple of rounds over awkward small talk and then everyone went home.

    However, the Director of Communications, who was a pretty socially awkward person who had never really partied much, got pretty tipsy pretty fast, and at about 10pm, just as most of the group was starting to say goodbye and head out, she gets it into her head to that “We should do shots!!!” She goes up to each person hectoring us with “NO! You can’t leave yet, we are doing SHOTS! You have to, you will RUIN it if you leave before doing SHOTS!” And being nonconfrontational nonprofit types, everyone gives in and agrees, fine one shot, and then we’re leaving.

    The Instigator then yells to the waitress (before I can intervene) with “What shots should we get!!????”, and then of course the waitress suggests some fancy $10 shot, and immediately leaves to go get them. She comes back with the hugest ‘shot’ drink I have ever seen, it was definitely over 2 oz. But the Instigator is now yelling “SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS” .. most of us sort of pretend to do a shot, but really only drink about half, and she notices and starts yelling about how we didn’t do it right! Ok, folks are rolling their eyes but brushing her off and getting ready to leave.

    Then… the waitress hands Instigator the bill…. she opens it and tells everyone, ‘Ok, $10 each’… Everyone STOPS and gives her pointed looks, somehow this gets through her drunkenness and she gets big eyes, looks around and says, “Wait, am I paying for this?!!!” Now people are getting pissed. I respond “Yeah, that’s how shots work.” And she gasps “OMG, my husband is going to kill me!! No, everyone needs to pay!” She is kind of laughing but no one else is finding this funny AT ALL. We get paid very little, $10 is a LOT of money to most of us. She and I go back and forth a few times, with me trying to firmly but nicely explain, “When shots are your idea, you are offering to pay them, that’s how that works” and her frantically looking around trying to get everyone to pay. Finally people grudgingly give up and start reaching for some money, so I say, everyone put in what you can, I’ll help cover the rest. Instigator and I ended up covering about half of it, and a few people put in a few bucks here and there. But wow, people were not happy.

    Beware drinking with people who have no social life and don’t know the etiquette of how these things work. Sigh.

    1. JB (not in Houston)*

      Wow, drinking etiquette has changed since my younger days. Back in the middle ages when I was younger, you didn’t pay if you suggested it. You paid for yourself, and anybody who opted to join in paid for themselves. Anybody who didn’t want to pay just wouldn’t join. I would have had no idea! And it’s not that I don’t have a social life, it’s that my social group doesn’t do a lot of shots these days. I kinda feel bad for her!

      1. Karo*

        The suggester paying for it is pretty standard from my experience…Even if the participants are enthusiastically up for it, but especially if you’re haranguing people who’d rather just go home.

      2. zora*

        That makes sense if you are just letting people who want to join, but if you are insisting that EVERYONE has to, AND you are part of top leadership and there’s an added power imbalance, it should be obvious that you should either pay or leave people alone.

        I mean, I did sort of feel bad for her, but she was being extremely pushy about it and just was NOT picking up on the obvious vibes that everyone was super annoyed and she would not let it go. It was super cringey.

        1. JB (not in Houston)*

          I think it should be obvious that you should leave people alone about their choice to drink more alcohol, power imbalance or no! But it wouldn’t be obvious to me about paying.

          1. whingedrinking*

            Slightly long story, but one night I wound up at the third bar of the evening with the six people I shared a house with. When I went to get my bill, dreading what it was going to be, the only thing on it was the Manhattan I had ordered when we arrived. I looked inquiringly at the bartender, who said, “Your buddy over there is the one who keeps ordering the shots without asking anybody if they even want them, so I figure he can pay for them.” She got a very nice tip. (I would have protested more if this particular housemate weren’t the only full-time employed member of the group while the rest of us were grad students.)

    2. Adlib*

      UGH. I used to work with a lady who would go out with us for casual drinks after work and then “forget” to pay her tab, leaving the rest of us hanging. She claimed she was used to paying at the bar so would just forget. I called her out the second time it happened (liquid courage there a little bit), and she never “forgot” again. She keeps bringing it up when I see her like I should be embarrassed, but I’m not bothered; she was the one who was behaving inappropriately and is embarrassed she got called out.

      1. zora*

        oooo nice work!!! That is amazing, I’m so proud of you!!! And wow, that is super gutsy of her to keep bringing it up, as if it’s your fault! jeez.

        1. Marthooh*

          Yeah, that’s some chutzpah right there. If she does it again, try saying “I was happy to help!”

  112. Corporate Cynic*

    Forced holiday “fun” is the worst. A few years ago, my division’s VP (who’s an arrogant jerk) hosted the holiday party at his house on a Saturday night. While at least half of us lived in the very walkable city where the company was located, he lived over a half hour away in an area not accessible without a car, so it was convenient for only him.

    The worst part – in the invite, it stated that we should all bring our favorite beverage. Not bad itself, but then we received two reminders leading up to the party (“Don’t forget to bring a beverage!”) which I just found crass. I brought a cheap bottle of wine and left as soon as it was remotely acceptable.

  113. Harmonic Penguin*

    The strangest most uncomfortable Holiday party I attended was during the making of an indie film. The film was a vanity project, and the lead actress’ husband had put up all the money for the film. They were also from a country outside of the one we were filming in, and gift giving customs were very different.

    Many people were interning on the film and not getting paid. Budgets for each department were tight, and we did not seem to have a lot of money to go around. One week all our paychecks bounced, and one Producer left after it was revealed the reason they had bounced was him using the account to buy his boyfriend a first class round trip ticket across country, and put him up in a fancy hotel for the weekend. That being said, the holiday party had an open bar, and very good food served buffet style. Everyone was enjoying the chance to relax, and get free food and drink, when suddenly they announced the gift giving section of the night. Names were put in a hat, a prizes drawn out.

    The prizes on this tight budget movie? Ipod touches, iPods, and money in envelopes – $500, $750 and $1,000. Names were drawn and people “won”. The $1,000 went to a day player who’d been on set twice. There were about 3 of the other electronic prizes, so out of a crew of about 60 people, only 9 or 10 people won anything. The interns who weren’t getting paid were not among them. The mood went downhill quickly, and the trips to the bar for free alcohol increased dramatically to try and make up for it. In the weeks following, whenever the budget was too tight for something, this holiday party was brought up accusingly, and the Powers That Be couldn’t understand why we weren’t grateful to have had a chance at a gift, but had to tighten our belts now.

    I gave the iPod touch I won to my parents, and they still use it!

    1. Candi*

      Ooo, I remember you mentioning this before. Including All The Checks bouncing because they used All The Money for the party and gifts!

      1. Candi*

        Found the link, for future interested readers.

        ww.askamanager.org/2016/12/weird-office-holiday-stories.html#comment-1298944

  114. DM*

    This one isn’t too outrageous, but gives us a chuckle. We have a wonderful holiday party every year. My company does it well: It’s on a workday, in the middle of the workday, and it is paid for by the company (or CEO, sometimes). The company gives out little Christmas ornaments at this party. One of the coworkers, after having a few drinks, thought the ornament must have something inside it, and he proceeded to tear it apart in front of everyone.

  115. Turboman*

    There was the guy that got wasted on pre drinks before our Christmas party, then went up to the CEO of the company (who we all only knew from his picture on the once a month emails he sent out) and started talking AT him about 3 inches from his face in a really over familiar way and introducing him to people like he was an old friend. Then on the way back to the hotel tried to start a fight – with himself!!!

      1. Turboman*

        A fist fight. I wasn’t there but apparently he was walking a bit behind a group of people and they heard him shouting ‘do you want a fight, do you want some’ but there was no one else there and he was sort of drunkenly swinging his fists around and shouting threatening stuff to no one. And he was a big guy who was into bodybuilding so I wouldn’t have liked to have had to deal with that!

  116. RB*

    The second example from Alison’s post sounds like an awesome party and I kind of wish I worked there just for the parties, if that one is any indication of the way they party.

  117. BlueFairy*

    A few years back I was working for a nonprofit. Semi-notable for the story: the nonprofit worked on children’s issues, so it was a family-friendly kind of place. The end of the year is a busy time for nonprofit fundraising, so one year they skipped December, held a “holiday” party in late January and called it Chinese New Year. They decked out a conference room in red and gold and ordered decent catering.

    This would all have been fine, except that the kind, well-meaning HR person who purchased the decorations and party favors hadn’t been wearing her glasses when she’d done so. I happened to be the person who took a closer look at the colorful chopsticks she’d set up as a fun little take-home gift to discover that the paintings that decorated the tops of the sticks were prints of Asian paintings… of, shall we say, an explicitly adult nature.

    Once I stopped giggling, I pulled her aside and let her know, and she was mortified. She had to warn folks that might be offended or pass them off to their kids without looking at them. (Those of us who thought it was hilarious made off with most of them with her blessing.)

  118. MasterOfBears*

    I work in conservation biology which is not, shall we say, a field you go into for the fame and money. Everyone cares about what we do, but you get the occasional “Earth Warrior” types who care…maybe a LITTLE too much, and who tend to feel like they’re on a mission to single handedly save the planet from the evils of the human race and nothing could ever take precedence over the importance of our work…you get the idea. They tend to be young recent graduates who either flame out or chill out with age and experience.
    Sometimes, however, they get promoted into the admin role that approves all of our field work and data collection schedules for the year. Sometimes they are utterly horrified at our manager’s request to push some bird counts back a week so that everyone can go home for Christmas. A few of our permanent staff had family in the area or flexible schedules and wouldn’t mind coming in for a bit on Christmas Eve to count birds, but we get a paid holiday on Christmas and we don’t have the budget for a chunk of holiday overtime that big. Her solution? Insist that our seasonal Americorps interns, who don’t get paid holidays and live on a pretty bare bones stipend, be available at 4 am on christmas eve and christmas day to count birds in the freezing cold dark, while the much higher paid permanent staff took two paid days off with family. She seemed totally baffled as to why this would be, to use my manager’s terminology, “the dick move to Rule them All.” She escalated her complaints against the managers who pushed back on this decree all the way to the CEO, who fortunately is an awesome dude and told her to chill the heck out.

    4. Candi*

      Awesome manager! :)

      Did anyone ever explain to her that this kind of enthusiasm often comes across as fanaticism and makes the entire movement look bad? Which bites for all the reasonable people working at balancing human-animal-plant-etc.

  119. EvilQueenRegina*

    Our holiday party last year ended up in about 90 messages of arguing on Facebook before it even started. As Kathryn temporarily left around that time we were combining Christmas and her leaving. The date happened to be when Ruby was off, but Ivy had offered her a lift so it wasn’t an issue. A few days before the meal we all got a group message from Ruby saying “Change of plan, Pub A couldn’t accommodate us, we’re now going to Pub B”. Unfortunately, she had unknowingly picked somewhere Kathryn didn’t like. Kathryn is very blunt and Ruby takes things to heart, so when Kathryn said Pub B was shite it didn’t go down well. She was willing to go, but Aurora then weighed in saying she didn’t like it either and Jacinda tried to keep the peace by suggesting Pub C which Kathryn does like. When people started voting for Pub C, Ruby then got upset and said “I’m not going then, it’s not on my bus route”. Since NONE of the suggested venues were on her bus route and Ivy was taking her anyway, it just came across as a sulk over the venue. When Kathryn and Ivy then started arguing over something unrelated that didn’t need to be in the group chat, I turned my phone off to get away from the lot of them.

  120. Lady Glitter Sparkle*

    Wow. Reading all these stories doesn’t make me feel so bad. I thought my holiday office story was insane. The only strangest and awkward encounter I have dealt with at an office holiday party was having one of the head department’s wife go into lengthy details about how to keep your marriage alive. She proceeded to tell me “have lots and lots of sex. Don’t stop having sex. Keep it fun and exciting by having tons of sex. Sex is important.” because that’s what works for her and her husband (who ended up being my boss and I worked in his department). Let’s just say by Monday morning, it was too awkward to look at my boss because the mental image his wife provided me about their sex life.

  122. Scott*

    I had just turned of age, and I’m the oldest of my friends, so I never really celebrated at a bar like you normally do. I was working in a chain pizza restaurant in the kitchen, making min wage. We didn’t have a company sponsored party, but my manager payed for the majority of the alcohol. We went to two bars, and at the second one, he started buying rounds of liquid cocaine, which is insane shot with like 3 types of liquor in it, and gets me messed up any time I drink it (I don’t drink it anymore). I got kicked out of the bar, and my sober coworker had to drive me home. I then made a huge mess at home.
    But, I did learn from it. Now at any corporate event, I never have more than two or three drinks, and I avoid Christmas parties if I can. If I could go back to 18…

  123. Samiratou*

    We don’t have company-wide holiday parties anymore, but my department one is tonight and I’ll be sure to…

    No, who am I kidding? I won’t have stories. Because I work with lovely people and there will be food, drink, some silly games and prizes and nobody will need to go visit HR in the morning.

  124. Delta Delta*

    Husband’s Christmas Party at former employer about 10 years ago (law firm, run by horrible people). Somehow I get stranded at the bar and the spouse of a paralegal comes over to me. He doesn’t know how to start the conversation and opens with, “nice lipstick,” which somehow segues (in his mind) into a very involved discussion about model trains. During dessert – warm apple crisp with ice cream – one of the horrible partners gets up to make a speech. Only he hadn’t prepared. So, he rambled on for SEVENTEEN MINUTES (ice cream melting, since it was meant to be before we ate dessert) until finally someone cut him off when he somehow worked in, “I think we can all agree there’s no real ethical reason for stem cell research.”

    In unrelated holiday party mishaps, I have been insulted by my boss and have gotten food poisoning so severe I had to stop on my way home and throw up on the side of the road. (Not at all alcohol-related; I didn’t drink that night for some reason but did think ordering the fish seemed like a good plan)

  125. Can't Sit Still*

    December 2008 – I worked in HR for a large company, and at the time, there were about 40 people in our department. At our department holiday potluck and gift exchange ($25 gift required!), the VP of HR was asked to say a few words. She took the moment to inform us that not everyone in the room would be with us in 2009. She finished her um, inspirational speech with “Merry Christmas and dig in!” We had been told earlier that the layoffs were over, so everyone had gone all out to celebrate, some people literally with bells on. Needless to say, it cast a pall over the party, and it ended quickly.

  126. Annastasia von Beaverhausen*

    This one is mostly sad, but also awesome in a ‘Stare at the spectacle” sort of way.

    Yearly holiday party, partly pot-luck and partly catered (think sushi platters and cookies, etc) and all the principals provide cash to buy beer and wine, etc. This place had a very ‘We’re a family!” sort of vibe and people would hang out with each other outside of work.

    One year before the holiday, one of the (married) principals began an affair with his (married) student. He gets busted by his lab manager, huge scandal ensues, etc. Principal’s wife finds out, big uproar, but maybe they’re going to work it out, blah, blah, blah.

    So party rolls around, everyone is there, principal’s wife is there, and has 10 wines. She started screaming across the huge (public) atrium where the event was held ‘You’ve ruined my life your rotten bastard! I hope you and your nasty little skank bitch die in a fire, etc. etc.” Meanwhile he’s screaming ‘No! Sally! No! Please forgive me! She mean’s nothing to me!’ Meanwhile ‘nasty little skank bitch’ is there and she starts yelling ‘How could you! You said you loved me!’ etc, etc. The three of them had to be dragged away by bystanders to different parts of the building .

    It was…epic.

    2. Rachel in NYC*

      I read this to my supervisor and his only response was to ask if this was story was from a lab at our university.

  127. nonanon*

    Two years ago, I was in a position relatively new to the department and had almost no overlap in work so my amazing boss regularly tried extra hard to build camaraderie among us. She decided we’d do a white elephant exchange with a dollar limit considerably highger than the normal $10 or so (we all approved the rate).

    There was one person on the team who had a well-deserved reputation for being a grinch – kept to herself except to complain, was pretty negative in general, and made it well know she was NOT a fan of holidays. She had brought in a nicely wrapped box, but the designer logo was clearly visible. Exchanges go on and no one was willing to choose her gift because we all knew there was no chance in hell a designer anything was still inside that box. I finally picked it because I’m fairly minimalist and didn’t care for any more lotions/candles/whatnots regardless and figured I’d bear the horror for everyone else. Inside was, no joke, one half eaten oreo. As in, she had twisted it open, eaten the frosting, put the two slimy halves back together, dropped that bad boy in a box, and wrapped it. Jaws dropped all around with the exception of my boss who was noticeably unhappy with the situation. I just couldn’t stop laughing it was so bizarre. It was completely hilarious just how out of line she was with the entire department who had actually gone well overboard with their thoughtful gifts.

    Several things happened from this: she was shunned a bit by the team, gave me the rest of the bag of oreos (minus 3 others she had eaten in addition to the one I had received), and she eventually left the company.

    The joke was on my terrible coworker though. My boss felt so bad she gave me a gift card I could actually use, I didn’t end up with useless junk I wouldn’t have wanted anyway, and there’s an enormous secondary market for designer packaging and I eventually sold that box for $25.

    1. Turtlewings*

      I felt slightly less like biting her now that I know she at least gave you the rest of the Oreos, but holy cow! Was she just hankering to be hated or what?? That’s cartoon-villain levels of bad and I can’t stop laughing about it! Also kudos for making a profit off the BOX, of all things!

  128. Fiennes*

    My last job was really, really toxic, at least in my department, but I’ll admit they put on a good holiday spread. Tons of free, actually good food, an open bar, a quieter room with music from a grand piano (played by one of the senior execs, who was actually quite talented, and an all-out dance party in the room next door. The general revelry stood in stark, stark contrast to the daily dread and loathing of our department.

    Anyway, one year, one of our managers helped himself to the open bar very, very generously…and decided to share with us all his love of “Les Miserables”–by singing it.

    All of it.

    Or at least that was his intent–some friends managed to pull him away eventually, but he’d made it clear through to “Do You Hear The People Sing?” As they got him into the hallway, he began from the beginning all over again. I’ll never forget the elevator doors closing on them as he belted out “I am Jean Valjean!”

    Fortunately for all present, this manager turned out to have a superb singing voice.

    1. Language Student*

      I think this is my favourite. That’s hilarious. I’m actually pretty impressed – I don’t know anyone who manages to sing *well* while drunk.

    2. This Daydreamer*

      I’ll never forget the elevator doors closing on them as he belted out “I am Jean Valjean!”

      *dies laughing*

    3. Rebecca in Dallas*

      I think that actually sounds amazing, but I’m a huge Les Mis fan and probably would have wanted to sing along! (Though I do not have a voice for Broadway!)

  129. BlueWolf*

    What a coincidence, our holiday party is today. I’ve only been here a year, but our party was pretty tame last year. Just free food, beer and wine, and some dancing and karaoke that not many people participate in. It’s held at the office, which I think keeps people a bit more tame.

  130. accidental manager*

    There was a workplace where the Christmas party was a big buffet lunch with theme entertainment afterwards. We did have to pay for our tickets, but not too much. They kept adding more themes onto the most popular ones from previous years, like line dancing from the western one and leis from the Hawai’ian one. Also, there were once pinatas, so they kept doing those. The casino was so popular that they found more themes (Vegas, Mardi Gras, and I forget what other theme) that gave them an excuse to keep using the games of chance, which had mostly been custom-built on site. It turns out that it’s very hard to build a perfectly-balanced spinning wheel (like Wheel of Fortune or a crown-and-anchor wheel), so I would just watch for a couple of rounds to remind myself which was the favoured segment, and would then win more play-money playing the game of supposedly-chance than my colleagues who thought they were poker stars. And then there was an auction for all kinds of odd prizes with the play money, usually culminating in one of the male workers jumping out of a box in a costume. And did I mention that the play money all had the department head’s face on them, and there was a big discussion whether or not to reprint when we got a different department head, considering which of the department heads would be more offended not to be on the money.

    1. KayEss*

      That sounds like a beautiful, hilarious, good-natured disaster. I’m surprised and dismayed by how simultaneously surreal and extremely relatable the discussion about changing the face on the play money sounds.

  131. Incriminating*

    I worked for a movie studio in LA. There was a holiday party for the whole studio lot, which would involve hundreds or thousands of people. One year, they held it in a sound stage the size of an aircraft carrier (there were carnival rides inside). One guy had some libations and climbed to the center stage for karaoke. It was AWFUL. Mortifying, career-endingly embarrassing. In front of hundreds and hundreds of people. He was up there by himself having a blast and no one (friends? coworkers?) pulled him down. I didn’t know who he was, or what became of him.

    Another time, there was a smaller holiday party for just the finance division, of which I was a part. It was held at a bowling alley. Our little department had sort of an infamous VP, so that other departments would look upon us in pity. Our little department (“little” was about 24 people) proceeded to waaaay over indulge. We were the drunk nuts. And me in particular, I remember being tipsy and stunned at a coworker who was my age, who a complete polar opposite, politically. And I argued with him. And as the story goes, by the end of the night, I was sitting on the curb with my other drunk coworkers. Except I was the one pulling my shirt over my head, yelling I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN! I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN! I *think* I wore one of my nicer bras that night?

    Anyway. Let this story be a lesson for you. Don’t do drunk karaoke in front of your whole company.

      1. Anonicat*

        “Always wear clean underwear in case you get hit by a car and a nice bra in case you get hit by a Christmas party.”
        — Mum

  132. Casanova Frankenstein*

    At my 1st job out of college, I worked at a small transport-related company of about 50 employees that was privately owned by a couple. As the company was one of literally thousands of these types of companies in our large coastal city, the owners decided that holiday gifts to clients should double as marketing for the company. One year, the company handed out calendars where each month featured a photo of a different team member and hired a professional photographer to take the photos (thankfully, I was not chosen). December was Husband Owner in his Corvette.

    Another year, Wife Owner, who fancied herself an artist and would often sing in the office (her voice wasn’t terrible but it was still really weird), decided we should make a CD of employees singing Christmas carols. Keep in mind that we did not have a bunch of moonlighting Broadway extras working there. I felt pressured to be on the CD and ended having to drive 25 miles on the weekend (unpaid) to a recording studio. I did draw the line at doing any solos and only signed up for the multi-voice songs, where I desperately tried not to stand out. Fortunately, I got accepted into grad school after that and never had to witness any further embarrassing company gifts. Apparently, the gift ploy worked in a sense, as I have run into people from the same industry who laughingly remember this company despite the fact that 10+ years later, they are no longer in business.

    At the same company, during the same Christmas we made the CD, the owners planned an uncharacteristically formal holiday bash at a hotel. They invited all their important clients and business partners, with a total guest list of around 200 people. Things that happened at this party include:

    –A bunch of us, myself included, were made to the sing the carols live.

    –A group of women from the office were recruited to do a dance as entertainment. Many of them volunteered for this willingly and they decided to do a hip hop style dance to Britney Spears “Slave 4 U” that included a lot of suggestive hip and booty movements, as would be expected from the music choice. Wife Owner paid someone she knew to choreograph this and the volunteers used unpaid time outside of work to learn and practice the dance.

    –Wife Owner paid some people from the community ballet troupe she was involved with to perform some selections from “The Nutcracker” on a stage that was far, far too small. The selections that were chosen involved animal costumes.

    –Guests (anyone who was not an employee) were invited to bring their children and presents were arranged for the kids. But rather than get a bunch of some generic gift that would work for different sexes and ages, like Legos or crayons, the ages and sexes of all the kids were collected and individualized gifts were painstakingly collected over multiple trips to Big Lots and no extras were bought. Sure enough, the night of the party, someone showed up with an extra kid who did not get a present. All the kids were made to take photos next to the tree and in the slideshow of party photos made afterwards, there is a photo of a little girl without a present crying while standing next to a boy smiling from ear to ear with his present.

    So grateful I don’t work there anymore…

    3. Candi*

      “I have run into people from the same industry who laughingly remember this company despite the fact that 10+ years later, they are no longer in business”

      It’s like the resigning email rant; being remembered for all the wrong reasons.

  133. kible*

    I only heard about this later and it’s just vaguely holiday party related. So like, my workplace moved recently to a smaller office located about a halfie outside BigCity. Made commute worse for many people, new place is built a little shoddy, etc. We had a lunch with a higher up in the org who was visiting the new digs, food catered, everyone chatting. Someone comments that they “don’t hope this is the Christmas party this year”…without realizing Mr Higher Up was right next to them. He commented “well, we’re working on that…”

    While typing this, an email came in organizing a White Elephant…at least it outright said “$5-10, work-appropriate” gifts.

  134. Kimberly*

    1st year teaching. A couple weeks previously I had landed in the ER because a coworker grabbed my hand while eating granola that had peanuts in it. So at a staff meeting, the school nurse and I explained about the peanut allergy. So I’m walking into the teacher lounge potluck when the school secretary jumps up grabs me and pulls me out. They had ordered a fried turkey before the whole peanut announcement. She literally out 2 + 2 together when she heard my voice. The principal offered to go to a couple of nearby places and buy me lunch – and to cover my class after lunch.

    Kindergarten party – The teacher opened a gift from one of her students. It is a boob purse. A purse that looked like 2 naked breasts. Teacher thanks the kid and puts it out of sight. Kids have early dismissal and we have “staff development” but aren’t allowed to leave campus. She has angry parents showing up demanding to know why she showed their kids a porn purse and the parent of the gift giver demanding to know why she didn’t put all of her stuff in the new purse and use it right away her child’s feelings were hurt. At this point, we have a useless principal that agrees with both sets of parents separately and throws the teacher under the bus. Head of elementary ed had to get involved and tell both sets of parents to grow up the teacher did all she could do under the circumstances. Unfortnately she excuses the UP because he is new.

    A few years later Useless Principal wants to have 5 Guys (Restaurant that uses peanut oil and has warnings on their doors for people like me) cater holiday lunch. Head of the social committee comes to me and asks what I can eat there. I tell her nothing, but don’t worry about it I have no problem bringing something to eat. She says she’ll ask them. I tell her not to because they have a reputation for being very ethical and forthright. If she tells them a staff member is allergic to peanut oil, they won’t cater the event. She asks, and they refuse the job. Useless Principal throws a fit over the next few weeks. Even saying in a faculty meeting that I ruined the lunch because I demand everything be peanut free. Everyone is rolling their eyes because they know I don’t act that way. Head of social committee even argues with him that I had warned her not to ask and offered to bring my own lunch. He makes the comment if She (meaning me) would get right with the Lord he wouldn’t be punishing her. This is one of many HR complaints made against him. By 2nd semester they had people staying late on Wednesdays our faculty meeting day to take complaints. He ends up getting reported to the Freedom From Religion Foundation and other civil rights groups for other outrageous comments (examples 0nly True Christians TM should be allowed to be teachers, that girls being harassed by boys for being developed should dress more modestly. First NO the boys need to behave themselves. Second, he dictated the Uniform Dress Code only allow golf shirts in specific colors. The girls had NO choice in the type of shirt they wore. ) He gets laterally transferred to a campus less likely to make a federal case out of his behavior.

    Yes this was a public school in Texas.

    1. Bow Ties Are Cool*

      Whoa. Sounds like TX public schools haven’t changed much since I was a student there in the 80s. Except back then he probably wouldn’t have gotten transferred, just a “stern talking-to”.

    2. Woah*

      I immediately assumed the social committee head went ahead and asked BECAUSE she wanted to have a fair, non dangerous lunch that included everyone and that toad was not allowing her to do so.

      1. Edina Monsoon*

        I have a peanut allergy and I too have experienced people acting like I’m intentionally trying to ruin things for them by asking them not to put out bowls of peanuts at company buffets. Sure I could bring my own lunch, but if you just put out everything except the peanuts then I can join in with everyone else and wouldn’t that be nicer!

  135. anathema*

    It’s around 2007, and traditional/hierarchical company is having a dinner party-dance at country club for Christmas. There is an open bar. Not exciting, until the DJ starts the best dance moves contest. People do horrible moves and everyone cheers, until the unit’s warehouse general manager steps out on to the floor. He asks one of the ladies to assist him with his move. And I still don’t know exactly how he did this so quickly, he wound up holding her over his head and twirling her around like they were ah helicopter. One hand was on her neck and the other hand was between her legs. And then her wig started to shift (fortunately, it did not fall off). She was screaming the whole time. We were all horrified.

  136. Kali*

    Ooh, didn’t think of this one immediately, but…

    Sometimes, I volunteer at a homeless shelter over Christmas. I tend to work in the women’s shelter, which has several events, including a disco on Christmas Eve. One year, a DJ was hired who made inappropriate comments over the mic, left his decks while his songs were playing to dance with and hit on women, and was seen snorting cocaine in his car afterwards.

  137. GiantPanda*

    Several years ago our Christmas party was held at a club with lots of loud music, blinking lights, too much noise to chat, not enough places to sit. Most of us were too old for this place, not happy, and just waiting for dinner to be served so we could leave. Buffet was officially opened, people queued… and about one third in they ran out of food. I was right in the middle and got two slices of bread and one of the last apples.

    Don’t know how the rest of the evening went, but my company has never used that place again. All parties since have had plenty of excellent food.

    This year’s event will be tomorrow. If there’s something to report I’ll let you know, but probably not. We had a very good year, everybody is promised a door prize, employees from the remote office are bussed in and get a hotel room. Should be (genuinely) fun.

  138. Banana stand*

    I heard this second hand but here it goes: My division had our holiday party last night and our newest coworker got so drunk that she started beating up the bouncer who was trying to escort her out. My boss and another coworker had to literally drag her out of there but she fought with them and in the process she ended up falling on the ground and at one point she vommited. They had to take her to the hospital and she was out today. Everyone in our large division (200 ppl) saw or heard about it including the big wigs. This is SO out of character for the drunk coworker who is usually super professional.

  139. Snargulfuss*

    My brother works as a health aid at an assisted living care facility. This is hard, unappreciated work at low pay. Last year for the holidays, he received a card with $1 inside plus a worksheet on saving and financial responsibility. I was insulted and outraged for him. If you can’t give your employees a nice gift, even a small one, just give a card or set out a tray of cookies. Giving financial advice to low paid workers as a holiday gift is so disrespectful.

    1. Gabriela*

      That is really disgusting. Unsolicited advice is bad enough, but financial planning advice along with a one dollar bill is practically villainous.

    3. Chaordic One*

      This sounds like what some fast food restaurant (McDonalds?) did several years ago, although not for Christmas and not with a dollar.

    5. Candi*

      I’ve known a couple people in my life who would have been responsible for the large, anonymous poster in the break room a few days later asking, “Who sets the pay here?” with a copy of the worksheet attached. Possibly with a “Who Let The Dogs Out?” theme.

  140. KayEss*

    Oh! I forgot a weird story from the toxic job I’d overall prefer to forget… not a holiday party story, but holiday-related. (In hindsight I’m kind of shocked that the holiday party was as standard there as it was, given the toxic owner and overall office climate. For reference, when the owner’s annual summer barbecue rolled around, there was an entire week of staff strategizing around when we should arrive, how early we could leave, etc.)

    One of the owner’s holiday business traditions was to send a small promotional gift to the entire client and vendor contact list, in the form of a calendar with a funny photoshopped graphic featuring the entire staff on the front. Weird, but apparently a big hit in previous years. I (again the most junior employee) was given the task of researching and compiling the holiday dates to be printed on the new edition of the calendar.

    … the owner insisted that her birthday be included.

  141. JoAnna*

    Wow. The moral of a lot of these stories could be, “Don’t serve alcohol at company parties.”

    1. This Daydreamer*

      There was a letter a while back from someone who wrote in to complain that alcohol was banned at his office party, even if employees brought their own. That person should be grateful.

      1. Agnes*

        Yeah, I feel like the next time someone complains that drinking isn’t allowed at their company parties, we need only refer them to this thread.

        1. Rachel in NYC*

          It always comes down to how does everyone behave…and how long do the parties go for. My second to last party was this morning. Breakfast buffet- mimosa and ‘grog’ were the only alcohol served and there was a lot, a lot of food (grog b/c this year’s theme was Nordic holidays), plus it was only 3 hours long. You would have to try REALLY hard to get sloshed in that time period and at 8am. (Though…umm…travel coffee mugs hold 2 mimosas which can help get you through a long Friday)

  142. HigherEd on Toast*

    I work in academia, and at the last place I worked, we used to plan a small holiday party for some of the students who majored in our field and were graduating in December. One colleague was usually in charge of the food (because she was a control freak who didn’t trust anyone else to prepare it hygenically, but that’s another story). One particular year, she refused to tell anyone what she was bringing and insisted it would be “a surprise,” but also insisted that no one else bring a single scrap of food.

    The “surprise” turned out to be her fat, overfed dog dressed up in a Santa Claus hat and a harness that was covered with hanging cookies—that had been banging against her fur and were also licked and sometimes half-chewed by the dog where she could reach them. My colleague was expecting everybody to worship her dog and happily eat the cookies. Instead, everyone else went, “Um…okay,” and drifted off to the holiday party upstairs that had actual, clean, non-dog-tainted food.

    My colleague was bewildered.

    3. Artemesia*

      This is the best yet. I cannot imagine food being served on a dog and anyone expecting anyone to eat that. Seriously? Wow.

      1. Ramona Flowers*

        When I first read this I thought she meant people should eat the dog. The cookies were a bit of a relief in comparison!

      2. HigherEd on Toast*

        My colleague was incredibly obsessed with this dog. Away from the dog, she could be as professional and intelligent as anyone else, but when she was around her, it was like her brain just shut down. She actually gave extra credit to students who volunteered to walk the dog or put mentions of the dog in their essays- and acted just as surprised when I said WTF about that as she was when people refused to eat the cookies.

        All must worship the dog or despair. Or go upstairs to the other holiday party.

      1. HigherEd on Toast*

        Well, obviously her punkin-wunkin (literally, actually, what she called the dog) wouldn’t cause any problems with germs on the cookies! My colleague brushed her teeth every day! And a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s, you know.

        But yeah, other people might have allowed their kid to sneeze near the cookies or something. THE HORROR.

    6. Rebecca in Dallas*

      I actually think this sounds kind of adorable, but definitely wouldn’t eat the cookies!

    7. Pearly Girl*

      As the only holiday story of the thread involving a dog hung about with meant-to-be-enjoyed cookies, YOU WIN THE THREAD.

  143. Sparkly Librarian*

    Our systemwide holiday party was scheduled for tomorrow, but we’re all out on strike. I think there’s an optional outdoor potluck (so no electrical outlets, no running water, maybe no tables) being planned for tomorrow’s picket line. We’ll, uh, see how that goes.

    2. Sparkly Librarian*

      Well, it was actually very nice! There was a ton of food, a sister union took care of paper goods, and people picked up their own trash. The Union provided 2 tables and 2 chairs, there was a bench, and like 60 of us stood around talking to each other outside. Not as festive as usual, but a genuine spirit of goodwill pervaded the gathering.

  144. Party Planner*

    I work for a remote office of a larger company; we’re a small office, about 10-12 people. Most of us have been at the company and worked together for several years. It’s a good office – no cliques, all very collegial in a healthy way.

    We don’t have an office manager and somehow I ended up being the point of contact for the office, including organizing the holiday party. I definitely wanted it to be something everyone would enjoy, so I opened the floor for suggestions. Came back with some very nice suggestions of places to go for dinner. Ended up making reservations at a nice steak house. I will emphasize these words – STEAK. HOUSE.

    When we made the reservation with the steak house they told us that given the size of our group (+1s were included) we would have to choose a narrower selection of options from the menu in advance to order; I believe it was about 2-3 options per course. In addition we wouldn’t have the final menu to make the choices from until the week before the party, as they change their selections. All fine.

    There was one person at the office who was deathly allergic to shellfish. We all knew this because we went out to lunch together every Thursday (company paid) and he was always very careful to tell the waiter about his restrictions when he ordered. So when I made the restaurant reservations I explicitly told them about this. In addition there is no way that we would choose options for a shared table that were dangerous for him; this was a centralized choice that would go through me before it went to the restaurant. And there were definitely going to be non-shellfish and even non-seafood options – STEAK. HOUSE.

    About a month before the event the allergic person starts asking about the menu at the restaurant. I tell him what the restaurant tells me – that they won’t know until the week of the party. He asks me to call the restaurant and ask them if we could know now; I call, no go. The next day I get a message from the restaurant saying they had the same call from the allergic person – going behind my back – and of course the same answer.

    I get in to the Slack chat room for our office and tell the allergic person that I had the call back, and the same answer. He explodes. Yelling about how he won’t go to the party if he doesn’t know now(!). We’re trying to calm him down – all of this is in chat. He yells directly at someone in chat “ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME!”; the person who he was yelling at had a partner that also worked at the company who we all knew was about to go into cancer surgery and did not need the stress. This meltdown was in full view of everyone in this Slack channel. I pinged his boss to let her know what was going on and she signed in to the channel to see and try to bring him down. He eventually ran out of steam and declared he wasn’t going to go to the party. Fine.

    We ended up with a number of people going to the party that meant we could order from the full selection of the menu. And I repeat – STEAK. HOUSE.

    1. celiac gal*

      Honestly, I have Celiac, and I can understand the anxiety about going somewhere when you’ve no control over the menu you’ll be offered. Although I don’t understand blowing up about it, I can understand why your coworker would be anxious about it, especially since his reaction is immediate.

      1. Candi*

        I think it was the phoning the restaurant specifically about the party, behind Party’s back, and the blowup on Slack, that are the real problems. You just don’t handle these situations that way, ever.

        You can call the restaurant, on your own time and dime, and ask about their allergy and sensitivity policies. If it’s a chain, you can probably find it on the corporate web site or email them. You can research reviews.

        And you definitely do not go off the rails an event that isn’t close to happening yet (a month!), and you don’t scream and yell at your coworkers, including in text.

        But, um, Party, have you ever heard of Black Angus? Major steak house over here in my area.

        They have shellfish options, including lobster, and shrimp in two of their appetizers.

        The Big Keg, before it closed, also had several seafood options.

        So “steak house” doesn’t carry much weight unless we know which steak house.

  145. Mouse*

    A coworker was incredibly drunk at the company wide party circa 1997. She made a smart arse comment that our CEO looked great and that she was pleased that he was now in recovery from cancer.
    It took approximately 2 hours to circulate through the 3000 employees that our CEO had beaten cancer.

    1. Kali*

      I don’t get it. Was recovering from cancer a secret? Did the CEO not have cancer at all and this was just a bizarre thing to say?

        1. Artemesia*

          And if he did and it was not public, what a monstrous things to do. This kind of rumor can tank a high level’s execs career.

  146. Darth Brooks*

    We just had our holiday party this afternoon. We work for a government agency and don’t have a lot of funds for a party. They decided they can’t sell raffle tickets so they gave a certain amount based on when you bought your ticket to the party. It was $25 per person for a 4-hour party during work hours with no alcohol. The menu was turkey and ham with mixed vegetables, and it just wasn’t good. We were promised a variety of desserts but it ended up being cookies made by the upper managers.

    There were some fun games and good raffle prizes, but not worth the money, and the food was awful. I’d prefer an afternoon off.

  147. Librarygeek*

    Not too impressive, but definitely uncomfortable: I was the plus-one at a barbecue hosted by the manager at my partner’s exjob. Okay so far. Someone decided that “Cards Against Humanity” would be a good game. Less okay. The manager kept needing to have words defined for her… Like ‘centaur’ and, more worrying for the manager with a social work degree ‘genocide’. Kinda super awkward.

      1. Anonicat*

        I have had to explain what bukakke is while playing that game. Tip: don’t look it up on your work computer.

    2. Turtlewings*

      Oh my… I admit I love Cards Against Humanity, but I would never EVER play it in a work context! Or around anyone whose opinion of me matters, lol. And I guess everyone sees a word for the first time somewhere, but how odd that she would be missing so many fairly common words from her vocabulary.

    3. Candi*

      ….

      Okay, one of the first posts I read on this site last year was about playing Cards Against Humanity at work. Not sure if it was a post or comment.

      I told my son, because he’s played it and I haven’t. Him: NO.

      Last winter he found the Evil Apples app, basically cards against humanity by a different name played online, and oh, the humanity, in some of the stuff he showed me.

      When he wondered why they named it that, I explained that the name probably came from Apples to Apples, since CoH is copyrighted. He didn’t know there was a ‘nice’ version.

  148. M_Saurus*

    Two years ago I was working for small agency which provides counseling services to low-income children and families. At the Christmas party, the director went out of her way to name and publicly thank the admin staff and supervisors (about 5 people total) for their hard work, etc. She then paused and looked at the therapists -folks with Master’s degrees who were working toward licensure- and said “and thank you to the interns” (she knew all of our names but couldn’t be bothered, I guess?). This was followed by her dramatically handing out plastic net bags full of gold-foil-wrapped (low quality) chocolate coins; she said “now if you’ll count the coins in the bag you’ll see there are 18 because I am in talks with our funder to raise your wage to $18/hour!” (I live in an area with a high cost of living; the director was making approx 120k per year). One of the managers then stood up and made a tearful speech about how wonderful the director is, gave her a gift, and began to cry. They then encouraged all of us to applaud the director.

  149. Liz*

    This happened a couple of jobs back, and honestly, I’m so glad I can finally tell it.

    Back in 2011, Teapot & Sons got a new branch manager. Our head office was interstate, and we were the most productive office in the country even in the six months when we didn’t have a branch manager … so, of course, they hired a deeply eccentric, deeply unprofessional micromanager.

    We knew she was odd when she decorated our office for Prince William’s wedding. We’re in a Commonwealth country, but very few staff members were of English descent. It was … odd and confronting to walk into work and find the Union Flag hung (upside down!) and that we were expected to have strongly positive feelings about the royal wedding. But, hey, there were cupcakes, and Boss Lady told us (at length) about how she went to school with Diana Spencer — well, not with her, but they were at the same school at the same time, albeit in different grades, and Diana definitely made eye contact once…

    That was April.

    Some pretty major system changes were being implemented across the company, and Boss Lady nominated her “pet”, Jane, to be sent interstate and trained in the new system, which she would then teach us. Jane was a rock star, and I loved working with her, but even she suspected that Boss Lady liked her mostly because she had sleek hair and a posh manner. She was also a very confident speaker and advocate, which Boss Lady liked until … well.

    Cut to early December. Jane has been on a number of interstate trips, because she’s so good at training that she’s now rolling out the new systems in a third state. She’s not having a great time, though, because our company has very strict, parsimonious rules about meal reimbursements, and Boss Lady has just … stopped forwarding her forms to head office? Because Boss Lady doesn’t enjoy the conflict?

    So, next time she’s in town, Jane sits Boss Lady down and says, very politely, “The company owes me quite a lot of money for meals, and I understand the process is needlessly challenging, but we’re coming up to Christmas, and I really need that cash. Is there anything I can do to help you expedite matters?”

    (Note: I think she was owed about $300 all up? Not a huge amount, but I assume there was some kind of Guacamole Bob situation behind the scenes.)

    Remember how Jane is a confident speaker? She’s also very soft spoken and, like I said, kind of posh. Not at all aggressive or overbearing.

    But Boss Lady is extremely conflict averse. She bursts into tears, sends Jane home (we were paid hourly, mind), and calls HR to accuse Jane of insubordination and fraud.

    HR arrives the next day, in the form of a 24-year-old with half a business degree. She is, it turns out, the only HR officer for the entire company. (She was the CFO by the time I left a few years later. I don’t even know.) Jane is hauled into a meeting, where HR and Boss Lady berate her for over an hour, accuse her of falsifying receipts, threatening Boss Lady, and otherwise being a bad person.

    Shortly before lunch, Jane marches out in tears, packs up her desk and leaves. Specifically, she goes downstairs to the cafe next door, where we all go for lunch, and later — still crying — fills us in on what has happened. She admits that a part of her is slightly relieved — in fact, she had a new job lined up, and was waiting to get the formal offer before she resigned — but she’s also devastated and, well, confused.

    And that night … is the Christmas party. To which Boss Lady arrives already drunk, then consumes another bottle of wine and bursts into tears because it was just so HARD to fire Jane, and then she was so upset she had trouble putting her false eyelashes on, and why won’t I drink more wine with her? Let’s go out on the town after this!

    I declined.

    HR watched this whole conversation go down, but didn’t do or say anything.

    Anyway, this was the beginning of the end for Boss Lady. No one knows exactly what happened to her, but the rumour was that she attended a meeting at head office, got very, very drunk, and had sex with the CFO in a conference room. It sounds too ridiculous to be true … and yet.

    The important thing is that she was gone by Easter, and not long after that, Jane got a hefty payout from the company by way of settlement.

      1. Liz*

        It was weird enough that I’ve only just remembered the Christmas party shenanigans from my LAST job — the boss had too much wine and started to reminisce about her wedding, which took place in the ’60s. The age of the mini skirt.

        Now, she was standing behind me, and I was at BEC stage with her, so I was concentrating on my own (excessively full) wine glass, and missed it when she started to hike up her dress to demonstrate just how short her wedding dress was. But I’ll never forget the horror in the voice of my colleague as he yelped, “[Name]!” once underwear became visible.

  150. Red Shoe Diary*

    First of all, the party was a big, overly expensive corporate number. Most people were wearing suits or cocktail dresses. There was a lot of alcohol flowing. It was open bar, and there were also oxygen bars, which definitely mask how drunk you’re getting. And not enough food. So I was more drunk than I intended to be when I saw a Vision. It was one of the company execs in skin tight burgundy red leather pant/boot things -stiletto boot but it definitely also came all the way up like jeans.

    So I staggered back to my table feeling somewhat at odds with reality, only to have it confirmed that other people had also seen this. It turned out that he was doing it to raise funds for a rare disease research charity – sort of a dare. We all found this out on the company intranet after the party. I was disappointed, because I thought he was just living his life and doing his thing, and I was looking forward to getting a little bit weird myself at the next year’s party.

  151. Carbovore*

    The worst I ever had (and it’s completely mild compared to most of the stories here) is the year my boss was given the results of her 360 evaluation just a few days prior to the office holiday retreat. Of course, her boss went about the entire thing really badly. (He was a sweet enough guy but apparently not the brightest.) Instead of maybe taking a more general, “here is the general consensus among your employees regarding your strengths and weaknesses,” he decided to READ VERBATIM the things we’d written in answer to the set questions. (It was an anonymous online survey. Most were yes/no questions and others were comment boxes that allowed you to elaborate.)

    By him reading them word for word and/or saying “4 of your 5 employees feel that you don’t care about their opinions,” even though he didn’t name names (and we were a small team! There was only 4 of us at the time!), she easily figured out who said what just by the way we wrote things or how we said them. This might not be so bad, you might be thinking, if we only made mild to glowing comments about her. Well. Of course not. While our boss is generally very well respected in her field and I actually do believe she is quite good at what she does (when she focuses on it), she is unfortunately one of the worst managers I’ve ever had. She really has no business supervising or mentoring anyone and it shows. She’s an AAM post all on her own.

    How did my boss decide to handle this, you might wonder?

    She called me perhaps 30 minutes after her eval ended to scream at me, “I KNOW WHAT ALL OF YOU SAID! HOW DARE YOU! AND GUESS WHAT–IT’S HOW I AM SO YOU’RE ALL GOING TO HAVE TO GET OVER IT!” etc. etc. It made everything significantly worse.

    Cut to the holiday party a few days later which was particularly stoic and forced. She spent most of the time making passive aggressive jabs about comments people had made about her (“Yeah, SINCE I’M SO DISORGANIZED AND ALL”). It was basically an hour of us having lunch together, pretending we weren’t all faking being good friends and colleagues, and us hoping she wouldn’t fully snap and flip a table.

    The only bright side to my boss’ hairpin temper is that her mind is a sieve and she enjoys having a revisionist mindset–in other words, after a few days of seething, she came in and acted like nothing happened and put back on a saccharine, cheery facade. (“The honeymoon phase,” a colleague of mine calls it.)

  152. Kathyglo*

    My story illustrates the danger of after-the-holiday-party gossip. I casually mentioned to a co-worker the next day “I can’t believe Fergus got so drunk…” She told our boss, who hadn’t noticed at the time. Boss went and reamed out Fergus. Fergus thought I told Boss,and not wanting to out co-worker, I kept mum. Fergus then reamed ME out, and then did not speak to me unless necessary for TWO YEARS. My new motto: Loose lips sink ships.

    1. Turtlewings*

      Or Fergus could, y’know, not get crazy drunk at a work event and/or not blame other people for his mistakes. It continues to blow my mind that people will get drunk at office parties when that is so obviously a terrible idea.

      2. Candi*

        What Turtlewings said. Quit feeling guilty for Fergus’ behavior; the results are on him, and he should NOT have yelled at you.

        Return the awkward to him.

        It’s not your fault, anymore than it would be your fault if the Boss had noticed at the party. Fergus’ behavior is on Fergus. His choices are on his head and no one else -including you.

        Incidentally, there’s a name for this: emotional labor. Women in current culture often get slapped to do emotional labor when it’s the men who need it sent right back to their inbox. It’s one of the things many are working to change, but it is so, so insidious.

  153. Sunglow28*

    My husband’s company had a lovely holiday party, with food and entertainment. One year, it was a stand up comedian. He began and almost immediately, it became clear that he was racist, sexist, misogynist, homophobic… He pretty ably covered all the basics of horrible behavior. The entire company sat, still and mortified. No one knew how to shut him down or what to do.

    The next year, the company president opened the party by apologizing for the comedian by stating that “he could have eaten a case of alphabet soup and crapped out a better monologue.” It was true and the most sincere sorry I’ve ever received!

  154. Likeraccoons*

    My holiday party is coming up on Monday night. They just sent around a reminder email with a PS that basically says “remember you’re still representing the company at this event and dress codes and harassment policies are still in place.”

    It’s Mostly ok, but the venue they pick is a big, look how rich the owners/c-level suite are to rent this country club, and the main event is drinking, even through several employees are under 21, and they hold it on Monday to cut down on getting too drunk. They also do “door-prizes” that are drawn randomly, but people get bent out of shape that someone gets a $200 or $500 gift card, and they don’t get anything. The first year we had it there, the main alcohol-pusher was an owner who crashed his car into his garage after driving home. They now offer to pay for cabs.

  155. RB*

    I am going to bookmark this page so that I can come back here and read all these stories in the slow days to come. I can’t wait to see which ones Alison picks for the top ten. I don’t even know how you would narrow it down. You’d have to have some criteria in mind.

  156. cc prof*

    About 12 years ago, I attended a holiday brunch thrown by my wife’s employer, a small private design school. As part of it, one of the staff members had provided a long poem that she had probably found on the internet, mocking “PC culture” and straw-liberals. My wife and I read ahead with increasing discomfort, especially since she was calling on people to read one of the stanzas. And there were a lot of stanzas. I don’t know what we would have done if either of us were called upon to read; fortunately, we didn’t have to.

    People weren’t laughing, and the person who chose it kept saying defensively “It’s just fun.”

    1. Candi*

      “It was a joke.”

      “Why can’t you take a compliment.”

      “Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

      We ought to do a Sunday thread on these one of these days. Then we can link it as necessary.

  157. Welkikitty*

    At our faculty holiday party, my former principal drew names from a hat for small gifts like $5 Starbucks cards and cheap Christmas hand towels and such. He then said he had a “very special grand prize”…and then proceeded to draw names for three bottles of Snuggle fabric softener. He was very serious about this and it was clearly not a joke to him.

    Very weird, very uncomfortable, and no explanation was ever given.

    2. Karo*

      To be fair, if this had been Tide Original Scent laundry detergent, I would’ve been all over that.

  158. Lady Catherine de Bourgh*

    I worked at a small firm of about 35 people where several employees were the owner’s family members (his wife, his brother, his nephew). Let’s call the owner Fred. In our industry and area, it’s common to have raffles at the holiday parties, with often swanky gifts like an iPad or Beats headphones. The owner’s second in command (lets call her Lindsey) asked repeatedly, should I get the gifts for the raffle at the party? Only to be assured that no, Fred was getting them, it’s fine. Lindsey went ahead and got an IPad for one gift but left the rest to Fred.

    When she arrived at the party, she discovered that Fred’s gifts were a bunch of random crap he picked up at Costco. Literally, the prizes included a giant jar of mixed nuts (already opened!), a box of 78 granola bars, and a case of Kirkland brand sparkling water. Again, standard raffle prizes for this industry are in the “$75 gift certificate” ballpark. Each of the “winners” had to fake enthusiasm at these amazing gifts.

    And guess who won that iPad? Fred’s nephew.

  159. Newsie*

    I work for a news company. One year, we had a pre-Christmas buyout in which a good portion of the editing staff left. Those of us who stayed had to change up our hours to finish a few special sections planned for the roll-up to Christmas.
    Much to our surprise one afternoon, people came into the office and started setting up…. A mini golf course. The course curved through the various departments and actually spanned most of the building.
    It turned out the CEO offered up the space as a charity fundraiser, not realizing the diminished staff would need to be working during the party to make deadline.
    Imagine working while golf balls fly around your head. Imagine people setting champagne glasses on your proofs as they try to play through the ball that rolled under your desk. Did I mention the band in the atrium? The passed appetizers that weren’t for us? But mostly the golf balls, flying everywhere?

  160. Cedrus Libani*

    When I was a preteen, my dad transferred to a new workplace. They had a casual holiday party, during work hours, that families were welcome to attend. So my dad brought me to work that day.

    He took me on a tour of the building. We stopped in the doorway of someone’s office for a lengthy chat. Due to the tight space, we naturally ended up in a side-hug position, with our arms around each other’s backs.

    Then, from behind us, I hear a woman’s voice: “No, I’m going to say something. Wakeen, WHAT are you DOING?!” My ears perk up. “Wakeen! He has a FAMILY!” She’s now right behind me.

    So I turn around. And the woman’s jaw drops. As do the jaws of a half-dozen coworkers watching the show from further down the hallway. “You’re…not Wakeen. Who are you?”

    My dad gives them a raised eyebrow. “Uh, this is my eleven-year-old daughter.” The lightbulbs go on. Holiday party. There are kids here. The super-tall new guy has a Wakeen-sized kid, which actually makes sense. We’re going to slink away in shame now, enjoy the party!

    I was ever-so-slightly offended, until I met Wakeen. We were both about 5’10”, slightly overweight, with exactly the same hair (brown, shoulder-length ponytail) and nearly the same clothes (jeans, collared shirt, dressy sweater). It was like looking in a mirror. From the back, we were indistinguishable.

    Not sure if anyone told poor Wakeen, the accused home-wrecker with the backside of an eleven-year-old girl, why half the office couldn’t look him in the eye that afternoon. I didn’t.

    2. CM*

      “Wakeen! He has a FAMILY!”
      Dying. So the coworker assumed that Wakeen had seduced the new guy in the office, and they were flaunting their affair by engaging in a lengthy conversation in a coworker’s doorway??

      1. Cedrus Libani*

        Yep. To be fair, we had our arms around each other…

        For the record, this was a G-rated, innocent side-hug, totally reasonable for a proud father showing off his preteen daughter. But we were obviously comfortable in each other’s personal space, which is Not Done between middle-aged male coworkers, unless they’re sleeping together and don’t care who knows it.

  161. Little Ms. Strong*

    I started my career working at a small (5~ employees) Catholic school. Every Christmas party was at the rectory with the peiest, a couple nuns, and the few teachers. There was an elaborate Christmas dinner, gift exchange, and drinks. They all approved of me having drinks despite being underage. The first couple years were tame with everyone having a nice buzz.

    However, the year I became of age became a sloshfest all around. The priest had brought back a bunch of moonshine and homemade schnapps from his yearly trip to his old seminary. One of the last things I remember about that night is watching a 60 year old nun cheering on an 80 year old nun chugging peppermint schnapps out of a glass gallon jar wrapped in plastic Wal-Mart bags.

    It was always eventful while working there..

    1. Victoria*

      This is the one story in this thread that I can’t stop picturing. I’d love to see some pics of that party.

      As someone who married into a Catholic family, Catholics know how to party.

  162. Immutable*

    My worst Christmas party happened nearly twenty years ago now. I’d just met my partner (we’re gay which feeds into the story later on) and dragged them along to my end of year work do as significant others were included. We lived out in the middle of nowhere and my partner had agreed to sober drive to my party if I returned the favour at theirs. (In hindsight we should have done that the other way round).

    Firstly we got there and my boss said that a colleague couldn’t make it because her ride had fallen through and could we go pick her up. We said yes – sure, and dutifully drive to her house which turned out to be a gang house in a pretty seedy part of town. This is New Zealand so seedy isn’t as terrifying as some places abroad, but for us it was still pretty nerve-wracking knocking on that door!

    On the way back to the party a colleague who had come with us for the drive remarked that it was really nice of “my friend” to sober drive and that they wouldn’t do that for their mates at a work do. My partner looked at me and said – I thought they knew you were gay. Cue hysterics from the back seat. When we got back to the party my colleague stormed in and yelled – Did everyone here know that Immutable was gay? (They did) Why did no-one tell me? To which my boss responded – think of some of your comments – you have been rather a dick. My colleague proceeded to rant for the rest of the night to anyone who would listen about how it was so unfair because no-one would tell her anything.

    But it got better. The place I worked was owned by a family and as the night wore on they got progressively more drunk (and we felt progressively more sober). They got so drunk in fact that I think they forgot it was a work do and thought it was a family reunion. The uncle flashed my partner his penis, right before an Aunt got her breasts out and showed off her boob job and offered everyone the chance to have a feel and see how “natural” they were. We obviously took that as our cue to leave but the night did not end there.

    The evening culminated in dropping home (yet another) drunk coworker who repaid the favour by peeing in my partner’s car.

    I’m still with my partner though I left that job not long after the Christmas party. And I’ve gone to every work Christmas party alone since.

    1. Ramona Flowers*

      “and thought it was a family reunion”

      And that led to

      “The uncle flashed my partner his penis, right before an Aunt got her breasts out and showed off her boob job”

      I lack words

  163. NYC Weez*

    Back when I worked in television news, the holiday party was always a sore point for those of us on the night shift. While the party was held within walking distance of our station and we were allowed to have a drink and some h’ors devours, we only could spare maybe 45 minutes before we had to get back to work. The 11pm newscast comes on every night, regardless of holiday festivities!

    What made it so irritating though was that just as we were trying to put the finishing touches on our daily work, the day shift would come stumbling back in and want to drunkenly chat with us. One year, one of the couches in the edit bays was “christened” by a particularly drunk coworker. The poor editor had to not only finish his work, but ended up having to clean the couch and babysit the drunkard.

    He got his revenge though. Whenever any of the day shift sat on the couch, he’d let them get really comfortable, then he’d say things like “Isn’t it amazing how you can’t even see the puke stains there (pointing to wherever the person was sitting) anymore??” Needless to say, the number of drunk visitors dropped dramatically the following year!

  164. EH*

    For my first job out of college, I worked in a very small office (3 people). My boss threw a holiday party at his house for the three of us plus spouses/partners, and we did a gift exchange with a dollar amount limit. I had found what I thought was a cool, cheap gift – a pocket-sized electric neck massager. When it was opened, everyone else kind of gasped and started giggling. I was flummoxed until they pointed out that it was … well, likely intended for more personal areas than the neck. I didn’t believe it and kept insisting it was a neck massager. No one would accept the gift, so I ended up taking it home myself, still scoffing at their dirty minds. Some years later I found it in a box and realized, yep, I brought a vibrator as a gift to my office holiday party.

  165. Flash*

    We had a photo booth a few years back — the kind where you choose some funny props, go into the booth and pose, then get your photos printed out as a memento of the evening. Well, this one got a little bit fancier and projected the photos above the dance floor where EVERYONE could see them. But either not everyone made the connection between the booth and the slide show, or some people just became wayyy less inhibited as the night went on. (Why yes, there was an open bar as well…) I don’t know whether the worst offender was the coworker who mooned the camera or the coworker who, in a sequence of four perfectly timed frames of poetic justice, pulled a woman into the booth, attempted to kiss her, got shoved into the side of the booth, and then left on his own for the final snap.

  166. Holidaypartytime*

    One year company held the holiday party at a country club. It was a standard dinner then dancing type event. It was a cash bar, but everyone got 2 drink tickets to use. One of the employees decided to sneak in their own booze and not be discreet about it (think Jell-O shots and alcohol w/beer bong). This was a buffet style dinner and about 1/3 of the 200ish guests had gotten through the buffet line when the country club kicked everyone out due to the outside alcohol. Literally they were taking plates out of people’s hands and refusing to let them get food, and not letting people who had gotten their food to finish eating. Apparently the company did not get any of their money back either.

    The next year, the party was relocated to a nice Italian restaurant which the company rented out the entire place. Luckily dinner service occurred without incident, but during the dancing portion the bartender refused to serve someone since they were so drunk. The employee got angry and threw their empty beer bottle at the bartender. Owner of the restaurant stepped in and kicked us all out that year as well. That employee ended up getting fired for their actions, but hired back since the offender from the previous year was not disciplined.

  167. Estraven*

    A few Christmases ago, I got an irate phone call from the wife of one of my reports. ‘What happened to my husband last night!?’ I was like, ‘I haven’t got a Scooby’. Last time I saw him he was enjoying our Christmas party and getting comprehensively refreshed. Apparently he had rocked up at home at 5am without various items of clothing, also without his wallet, with Unexplained Bruises, and wouldn’t tell her what had happened. I explained to the wife that my supervisory responsibilities did not extend to making sure that her grown-ass husband managed to catch the last train home, and that any explanation of the night’s activities should come from him. Husband came into work at lunchtime, hung very far over, and we never spoke of it again.

    1. Wakeen's Hanukkah Balls, Inc.*

      Clue me in here: What does “comprehensively refreshed” mean? (Or, do I even *want* to know what that means?)

  168. Remember the 80's!*

    Many years ago, children, when it was considered appropriate to engage in conspicuous displays of wealth, the leader of a medium-size firm in a coastal city hosted the holiday party at his swankienda. The food was catered by the most chic joint in town, the bar was open, and there even was a signature cockail for the event. If you didn’t know it was office-related, kids, you might have thought it was a pretty swell holiday party.

    After several cocktails the executive’s beautiful wife (who had a face and a bod to rival Charlize Theron) left the party and came back in the most incredible full-length sable fur I have ever seen. I don’t like fur, but even I could tell this coat was pretty nifty and likely was worth much more than I earned.

    As the wife circulated throughout the party, she said excitedly, “This is one of my Christmas presents from Frankie!” People oohed and aahed and, finally, out on the back deck overlooking the ocean, someone said to the wife, “You said presents. What else did Frank give you?”

    The wife opened the collar of the fur and gestured to a glittering, multiple-diamond necklace and said, “This.” She then dropped the fur, revealing that she was wearing nothing underneath, stepped into the hot tub and said, looking down at her impressive chest, “And THESE were my present to myself.”

    Believing that nothing good could come of staying at the party after that, my husband and I waved out goodbyes and departed. I later learned that several mid-level execs (all male) stripped off to join the wife in the hot tub, and that the husband, in an obvious jealous mood, got in, too. Business meetings were pretty tense after that and the following year’s holiday party was moved to a restaurant, where we had a sit-down dinner with assigned seats.

    1. Wakeen's Hanukkah Balls, Inc.*

      “with assigned seats” . That might be my favorite part of the whole story, oddly enough. (I don’t know why, but…)

  169. Dizzy*

    Basically, I work for a booking agency that focuses on party entertainment and body/face painting. They provide about 60% of our supplies, but the owner can be stingy with certain, more expensive supplies. Christmas parties are mandatory if you want to re-supply with anything “unusual” (rainbow cakes, true yellow, special glitter etc…).

    Last year the party was at the owner’s home. She actually had a pretty nice little spread, little bottles of iced coffee and a fruit-salad bar (no booze, as most of my co-workers are teens). But then she started talking about politics, and airbnb, and I mentioned gentrification and it’s maybe not great. She wouldn’t let me drop it.

    Then we had to play “reverse-charades,” when you act something out as a group and a single person has to guess it. Then Owner gave out
    (tiny) bonuses and pulled numbers from a hat to give out prizes/presents. I don’t think anyone was terribly happy when the 16-year-old single girl got a gift card for a date-night at a nice retaurant. My husband and I went home with a small bag of novelty popcorn. A night away from our toddler instead would’ve been nice.

    At least we finally got brown paint at the end of the night. For the first time in two years, we got brown friggin’ paint.

  170. Media Monkey*

    At my old job (small and friendly media agency) we had Secret Santa (where we pulled a name out of a hat in advance and bought for that person with a £10 limit). The MD got one of the female graduate trainees, and as was usual for him, left buying a gift to the last minute. On his way back from a meeting which ended 30 minutes before the lunch where the gift exchange took place, the only place to buy a gift was an upmarket supermarket that also sells underwear (sounds random but if you are British and know Marks & Spencer, it makes perfect sense!). Of course, he decides to buy knickers for the trainee. Silky sexy Christmas thongs. Luckily she took it in good part, so he decided to make this a new Christmas tradition.

    The very conservative Muslim (male) account manager he picked out the following year was less keen on the sexy satin thong the following year…

    1. Turtlewings*

      /facepalm. Dude, because you got away with it once without a lawsuit does not mean it should become a tradition.

      1. Wakeen's Hanukkah Balls, Inc.*

        Alison, do you give out awards for the best comments of the year?

        Because I’d like to nominate this!

      2. Serin*

        > because you got away with it once without a lawsuit does not mean it should become a tradition.

        That needs to be in needlepoint on the wall.

  171. anonymous poster*

    I attended a spouse’s Christmas party at Arnold’s restaurant in LA. Her boss brought his friend from England, introduced as The Corpse. A little rough around the edges and not familar with USA business conventions, a few awkward comments and actions. Reviewing the pictures later he could be seen in the background sitting at a table with his pants undone with “his business” in his hands. Yuck, don’t recall if I shook his hand or not, don’t like to think about it.

  172. Texas*

    Long story, that needs some lead up.
    We had a very inappropriate over-sharing kind of VP over another department. She went out on leave, in order to get a boob job. While she was gone, she emailed her departments daily, with things that ranged from why she needed a boob job to how things were going in her recovery. The entire corporate office was hearing all of this, and most of us were mortified at her complete lack of boundaries.
    She comes back to work in time to make it to our ritzy Christmas party, full of all the company bigwigs. She wears a thin, stretchy dress made of a sparkly knit fabric, with tiny spaghetti straps made of the same thin, stretchy fabric. It had a plunging neckline and showed off WAY too much of her new “assets”. By the end of the evening, those thin straps had stretched out until the dress was barely covering enough to prevent all out nudity, and every drunken twitch of hers would just pop one (or both) out of her dress for full display. She would cackle and say “oops” and make a big point of tucking back behind the tiny scraps of fabric that were still clinging to her and go on drinking.

    1. FD*

      While she was gone, she emailed her departments daily, with things that ranged from why she needed a boob job to how things were going in her recovery. The entire corporate office was hearing all of this

      /facepalm

      I’m confused as to why anyone thinks the entire office needs to hear this kind of thing. You want to get one, you can afford it, and you know the risks, fine, go for it! The rest of us don’t need to know details.

  173. ggg*

    Someone tried to schedule a building-wide holiday potluck, with the idea that people would go to different offices, sample food, and mingle.

    You would not believe the grousing, and refusal to participate, and snarky comments made, when this event was announced. It was nearly canceled, because people hated the idea so damn much.

    So the real WTF is: the event did happen, and it was nice. Many people brought excellent food, inter-office mingling was achieved, no one ruined it with Scroogey grumbling, and a good time was had by all. Pretty much exactly as I expected. What the heck were people so afraid of?

    1. Hey Karma, Over here.*

      It’s like teenagers who are afraid of looking uncool.
      “Hey, what are you bringing to the potluck?”
      “Are you kidding? They can buy me a pizza and not make me walk around the building to get a slice!”
      signed
      6 year veteran of the morale committee and master finder of space on the table for all the food “nobody” brought in.

  174. BananaRama*

    All of this from a company I no longer work at.

    For last year’s party, I heard that someone in leadership was getting folks sloshed at the open bar and trying to play match maker to the single folks.

    About two years ago, the CEO of the company and a front office worker exchanged dresses. I have no idea why – they just came out halfway through the party wearing the dress the other had wonr just minutes earlier. At the same party, after the dinner I was talking to HR and one of the office staff girls walks up to HR, in between us, grabs HR’s breasts and jiggles them! Not lightly either, like a “hello sailor” kind of way. I was mortified just watching. HR laughed and office girl laughed. Another one was supposedly after I left, a coworker got in a screaming match in the hallway with someone.

  175. Irene Adler*

    Every Dec my office has a holiday luncheon. As it is a small company (15 people) we simply make reservations at a nice steak house nearby. It’s a nice little outing for us.

    Every year at this luncheon the CFO hands each employee a Christmas ornament. Usually it is something box-shaped that holds a monetary bonus inside. We are not to peek inside the ornament until after the luncheon. The bonus is usually a couple of hundred dollars. Nice.

    I knew that each person receives a different bonus amount. This is based on rank and longevity within the company. So, I ought to get the same bonus figure as Fergus who is the same rank as I am. Fergus and I started work within a week of each other.

    Well, after last year’s luncheon, my boss pulled me aside. He informed me that management wanted me to know that, THIS YEAR, I was given the same bonus amount as Fergus. This was in recognition of the difficulty of my job (especially in dealing with Fergus). He thought I’d be pleased to know this.

    I was not.

    Immediately I wondered, “So in prior years have I received less in bonus than Fergus?”

    Also, not pleased to be compared to Fergus in any way. See, Fergus is a master manipulator that has management wrapped around his little finger. They are terrified of losing him as they value his ability to get people to produce in record amounts.
    So, they overlook his shortcomings (verbally abusive to his reports, bullies me whenever the mood strikes him, swiping copious quantities of office supplies, cleaning supplies and whatever else he wants including janitorial equipment-carpet shampooer). He’s a real piece of work.

  176. Candi*

    Yesssss, I’ve been anticipating this!

    Let us never forget Savannah’s First Christmas and the Hanukkah Balls given to her by her boss. (Savannah’s Jewish, and her boss was so far into offensive she was waving at the line from waaayyyy over there.)

    Unfortunately, I don’t have a particularly crazy winter holiday story. :( Will check back in later, though. Right now I’m at the Darwin Awards going through the 14th submission of the dolt in Wolverhampton who tried to make a mold of his head in a microwave. (Just… just Google it.)

  177. Tim*

    Last year our manager told us we wouldn’t have a budget for a holiday party. This didn’t go over well, mainly because people suspected it wasn’t true. But we’d supplemented our party funds in the past with bake sales, etc, and we had money left over from the past year, so we figured we’d work it out ourselves. Then it turned out that the manager had taken the holiday party slush fund – and when caught, claimed it was to buy us gifts for last year’s party. Which didn’t hold water, because 1) the money wasn’t his to spend, being the team’s fundraising efforts, 2) there’d been a couple low-value gift cards given out, but most “gifts” were things he’d gotten for free from other companies in the industry, and 3) nobody had gotten anything last holiday party, and then the gifts (minus the stuff it later turned out the manager had kept for himself) had been suddenly and inexplicably distributed in July.

    Everyone believed that he’d simply stolen the money, and complaints were made to the manager’s off-site boss. After three days of what was honestly the most enjoyable workplace drama ever (we were united in righteous rage), the manager called the main party-planner into his office and told her to name her price.

    I am no longer at that workplace, but the manager is, and last I heard he was trying to pull the same thing this year. They went straight to the regional manager, who was like “YES there is a budget for your holiday party, and I have already gone over this with him!” And so the party is going ahead once again…

  178. Morticia*

    Highlights from a company Christmas party I attended at a comedy club with a no heckling rule:
    * Employees started an argument with one of the comedians
    * Employee pocketed all the flameless candles he could get his hands on
    * Drunken manager loudly shouted the name of the company to all and sundry while the no heckling rule was being broken
    * Later, in the “after party” room, drunken manager is sitting in the lap of the young enough to be her son employee she is shagging.
    * Manager “oops” slaps said employee
    * Said employee punches a hole in the wall of the venue on the way to the bathroom
    * Manager makes out with different, married, same sex employee whilst being driven home by the only sober employee left.

  179. Lilac36*

    Its not really winter holiday related, but years ago, the company that I work for decided to allow employees to dress up for Halloween. My department at the time was filled with people in their mid-late twenties so we were all pretty new to the business world at the time. Most people took it in stride and those that dressed up came in uncontroversial costumes for the most part(think cat ears, a RAF airman, and a couple of benign superhero outfits). The managers also decided to have a department meeting that day and have the people in costume come to the front to take a little bow and get some applause. One newer male employee came in dressed in a short blond wig, with a plastic visor, coffee cup and what was clearly two tennis balls stuck down his shirt. For some reason, one of the managers asked him what he was dressed up as and he replied that he was a washed up Vegas stripper and then he proceeded to give a lap dance to a male co-worker that he did not know at all. It was one of those moments where you want to die of second hand embarrassment for pretty much everyone involved. Shockingly the washed up stripper was gone within 3 months of Halloween.

  180. KC without the sunshine band*

    I worked at a nonprofit where the office manager volunteered his home for the Christmas party. While everyone was having a lovely time, his dog bit the ankle of a volunteer. He attempted to ignore it until his sock was blood soaked and an employee who was an volunteer EMT noticed it. The EMT happened to have his bag in the car. They got the bite victim wrapped up and sent off to the emergency room, since it was still bleeding and he was on a blood thinner. Truth be told, my husband didn’t want to go to the party, but when we got in the car, he said, “Best Christmas party ever.”

  181. VermiciousKnit*

    When I was in high school, I worked as a low-level production flunky in a very small-market TV station. The director of sales there was an older lady who was very vain about her looks, and valued being tan in the time before sunless tanner was a thing. By the time I met her, probably in her early 60s, her skin looked like thick, wrinkled, orangey-brown leather. Said sales director was also a bit stuck-up and fancied herself too sophisticated for our rural town; this did not endear her to everyone else who worked there.

    At my first holiday party at this job, a mere month or so after I was hired, I was sitting at a table with one of our news producers who was absolutely blotto, completely plastered and slurring out absurd rants about the california raisins (it was the early 90s, they were still a thing.)

    The sales director comes up to our table in her gem-studded, fur-trimmed suit and fancypants gloves to say goodnight and happy holidays or some such. As she’s talking, blizted director blurts out “Don’t listen to her! She’s… she’s … claaaayyy-mashun!” and then falls off his chair.

    I know it wasn’t good form, but I was a naive teen in her first job, and I laughed til I cried and the sales director never again acknowledged my presence for the entire 3 years + college summers I worked there.

    1. JessB*

      I’m reading this while out to lunch and I’m nearly crying with laughter!! Thank you so much for sharing!!!

  182. Basiorana*

    My husband works in front line social services, so, overworked and underpaid.

    One year they had a holiday party and excitedly announced that this year food would be provided – no potluck! My husband doesn’t expect much, since, social services, but figures pizza or something.

    He gets there and the food is sandwiches. But not any sandwiches. Stale white bulky rolls on which there is a single slice of cheap bologna. No condiments or other options. Nothing vegetarian. Nothing suitable for Jews or Muslims. The meeting is mandatory and over the dinner hour.

    Someone asked where the food was from, and the admin happily said that she’d had them assembled by the mentally disabled residents of a group home they work with.

    The “sandwiches” ran out before everyone got one. There were 50 people there. She’d made 35.

    Then as they sat to eat a woman shrieked and revealed she found a bandaid in hers.

    My husband is the office rabble rouser and he stood up, called the pizza place next door, and ordered pies. They all split the cost. The admin was really hurt and wound up crying in her office.

  183. Yvaine*

    My first full-time job after college was at an extremely dysfunctional small business. They intentionally kept us understaffed so that they didn’t have to provide benefits meaning that during the holiday season we were all working more than 40 hours per week. All those extra shifts were “optional” (no they weren’t, but at least you could say no to specific days), off the clock, and paid under the table in *gift cards*. For every extra shift you worked they entered your name in a raffle at the company Christmas party (and yes, it was explicitly Christmas) to win a tv. I worked there for just under 2 years and both holiday seasons that I was there the same person, an assistant manager, won the tv.
    Because that’s not fishy at all.

    They also held the party at the owners’ other businesses, a not great restaurant, where one owner always spent the entire party treating the wait staff like dirt. I was seated at the owners’ table one year and got scolded by them for trying to leave a tip after ordering a beer. They said the server didn’t deserve it…

    Oh! And they held onto our tips all year long but only distributed them to people who had worked there the entire calendar year. The tips were presented to us at the party and anyone who wasn’t getting any had to sit there awkwardly.

    I’m so glad to be free of that place.

  184. Narise*

    Reading these stories reminded me of my senior year in college. One of our business professors would invite his class to his home for a holiday party. While there we were given a tour before dinner of his home including the master bedroom. He would leed us all the way in to show us the view. While standing there you became aware of the giant mirror on the ceiling directly above the bed. Amazingly no one lost their composure and no one got caught staring at it. Then we would all have dinner with our 62 year old professor with the picture of the mirror over his bed dancing in our heads.

  185. NowFreelance*

    At a company I used to work for, my boss sent an email saying he had two spare tickets to a black tie event that evening, and did anyone want to come? It was for an industry we were trying to break in to, and I hadn’t got anything on, so I figured it was worth going to show willing to upper management. Big mistake.

    We arrived, and it was clear that women just weren’t really invited to this thing. There were a handful of women there – maybe 10 in a room of several hundred people. It started badly when one of the clients on our table asked my colleague – with me stood next to him – if I was our regional manager’s girlfriend. When my (male) colleague said no and tried to introduce me and explain my role, the client interrupted him and said ‘well why is she here then?’

    Things got worse – just before (or possibly just after) the meal, they had a thing called ‘community singing’ – variously carols and random songs they’d changed some of the words to so they were offensive. I declined to participate.

    Then the after dinner entertainment started. It was a ‘comedian’. Whose entire set was akin to Jim Davidson on steroids. I have never sat through such sexist, racist nonsense in my life. I was mid/late twenties at the time and it was my first big corporate job, so I didn’t feel I could leave. I went to the loo and stayed at the bar till it was over.

    I got on well with my boss, so had a ‘what the hell?!’ conversation with him, he bought me several drinks by way of apology, and I expensed a taxi home. It was truly the most awful work do I have ever been to. The company did not buy a table again the following year.

    This was ten years or more ago, and whilst I no longer work there, the tale of that night has passed into legend amongst the colleagues I’m still in touch with.

  186. Anon for this*

    Technically this wasn’t a holiday event, but I think it’s in the spirit of the thread.

    I was working for a government agency, in a group of about a hundred people, spread across several states. We had a planning week where all the interstate people got flown to central office for a few days. While we were there, my team (~ 15 people, also across multiple states) had a dinner. Fergus showed up. Fergus was from another workgroup, not ours, but no big deal – he was just there to socialise, not eating, and he’d already done enough drinking for the evening. Oh, yes, he had.

    Co-worker Jane happens to mention that she has children. Fergus replies: “It’s great to see an educated white woman reproducing for once!”

    Several of us, me included, replied with variations of “and WHAT do you mean by that?”

    Fergus decided to dig in by explaining how people with Proper Western Values were in danger of being outbred by foreigners who Do Not Share Our Values and have religions whose values are Not Compatible With Ours; I won’t go into the details, I’m sure most of you have heard this kind of rant before. In particular, he latched onto polygamy as an example of the sort of thing that Threatens The Social Fabric.

    I am white, male, and quiet and conventional as far as my workmates are concerned. I was also in a polyamorous relationship, which was very high on the list of things none of my workmates ever needed to know about.

    Drunk Fergus [pointing at me]: “So, you and I, even though we might not be atheist, we share important Christian values. For example, you’re monogamous.”

    Me: “You’re assuming there, Fergus.”

    Drunk Fergus: “Yeah, but obviously you are…”

    Me: “No, actually, I’m not.”

    Fergus took a moment to process this, then shifted gears: “That’s awesome! High-five!”

    Gentle readers, let me assure you that fives were not exchanged, high or otherwise. I gave him my frostiest look, which apparently was completely ignored, because the next day he was trying to make jokes about swingers’ parties.

    So, that’s the story of how I ended up outing myself as poly in front of several co-workers, including my future boss, despite having no desire to do so.

  187. Kilowatt*

    My partner works at a museum, which hosts a fully catered staff party every year with drinks & dancing. Family & friends are welcome, so I always get to go. It’s usually lovely and super fun and hey free booze in a museum!

    But last year one of the security guards attending the party was sneaking drinks to an underage kid who also worked security. The kid proceeded to get drunk as hell, while they guy who snuck him the alcohol started chatting up one of the female curators with comments that were completely inappropriate (this incident I actually witnessed, it was awful.) Needless to say, she DID NOT enjoy it and reported him to HR.

    The guard was summarily fired and the kid given a warning. It was FIASCO. Luckily I didn’t have to go in there in Monday.

  188. Anon from Midwest*

    Over the course of my career, I have worked for a few companies that had crazy, interesting, or weird holiday parties…one place – an aquarium store that sold pet fish – would have a holiday potluck party in the warehouse part. So all us minimum wage employees had to bring our own food and then eat it in a cold warehouse next to the dead fish bucket. Yum. Another place, a non-profit, would have their holiday party during work hours so spouses were not invited, not was alcohol served – okay, no big deal – but the president would insist on ordering fried chicken, ribs, and jo-jos and buying generic soda to drink for everyone. It would have been one thing if the food was good, but was not, and I had to drive to the place, a shady spot in a not-so-great part of town, to pick up the food trays. I didn’t feel safe driving there and it was, second to pizza, the cheapest thing he could have bought. The office party actually lowered morale and we had to return to work afterward, or management would let us out “early” but it ended up being the “normal” time after party clean-up. The last place I’ll mention throws relatively normal parties, but the first year I worked there, I was told by the office manager (we are both women) that the person I bring to the party, must be the same guest I stay the entire dinner with. Apparently people were bringing hookers or their mistress as their plus-one and then going home and getting the wife/actual girlfriend. The same company also gives away large sums of money during their parties and one night, by the end, there were a few guys who had drunkenly gambled hundreds, if not, thousands of dollars away in cash.

  189. Horace Schemer*

    A former employer was known for their legendarily lavish holiday parties, with lots of alcohol and team-building (oh, my). The one year that I was there, during a presentation segment, a department head (whose pseudonym here will be Minerva), who had clearly already had a few drinks, got up in front of everybody to speak. She thank her team and did some “shout-outs” to her colleagues. She said something nice and goofy about each of the people she worked with until she got to a different department head, whom I will refer to as Edith. Minerva’s compliment to Edith was, “We’re SISTAS!” I looked over Edith, who was the only person not smiling and laughing. Edith was maybe one-and-a-half to twice Minerva’s age. Edith was a person of color. Minerva was not.

  190. Pamela*

    At a holiday party given by a vendor, I was one of about eight people at a candlelit table. The candles were very tall and in very high candlesticks. One of the candlesticks fell over, luckily landing on a dinner plate. We just stared at the candle for about ten seconds, watching it burn, before someone blew it out. Good thing the tablecloth didn’t catch fire.

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