let’s talk about unusual office traditions

by Alison Green on November 21, 2024

One of the most popular “ask the readers” posts last year was on unusual but fun office traditions. Here’s some of what got shared last year:

• We had The Team Plant. It was a nice ordinary office houseplant in a basket, and it didn’t belong to anyone in particular. Most of the time it lived on a credenza in the middle of our open space. But sometimes the team would just decide that you deserved or needed to have The Team Plant on your desk for a while. You might find it on your desk if you got a promotion or had a new grandchild, or if your car was damaged in a fender-bender or someone on your account team left the company, or if you had a cold and were dragging. It appeared on my desk the week my father died and stayed there for a while, and then one of my co-workers completed a difficult project and I passed it on to him.

• My floor has all of the lights off. We don’t like fluorescent lights. New people get a handful of poop emoji erasers to use as weapons to toss when you need someone’s attention but they have headphones on.

• I worked in a very casual workplace (shorts, jeans, basically anything goes as long as it’s not too revealing), and we would occasionally have a “Formal Friday” (like casual Friday, but the opposite, get it?). Some people would just dress office snazzy, some would wear something you’d wear to a cocktail party, and some people used the opportunity to bust out their 80s/90s apparel with shoulder pads and chunky gold jewelry. Good fun. (And, of course, totally optional.)

• We have interns who graduate into permanent employees after finishing their PhDs. We have a strange tradition of making people recite their thesis topic in iambic pentameter.

• I have just joined a team where people have huge adult terry cloth bibs to wear at lunch time. (The kind that can be bought in bulk for nursing homes.) Mine was bestowed on me this week and I am surprisingly happy about it.

There was a clamor to share unusual office traditions again this year, so have it at: please share in the comments!

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  1. 3-Foot Tall Inflatable Rainbow Unicorn*

    Considering the number of work shirts and dresses I’ve gotten grease stains on over the years, I’d love an office tradition of wearing bibs at lunch!

    2. Former teacher, forever educator*

      A friend got her aunt to make us some bibs after seeing one on her grandmother. I use mine in the car and call it my car bib. It has saved me from ruining a lot of shirts, as a chronic car-eater.

      1. AliceInFunderland*

        yes – I have a large cloth napkin in the car that I dub The Eating Towel! Reduces crumbs & stains!

      2. AnotherOne*

        I knit and I made my mom a “coffee cowl” basically a large, dark colored cowl that could be washed that was like a giant bib for when she drank coffee. Light weight enough to be worn year round. Warm enough for the winter.

        She’s notorious in our family for always wearing white shirts when drinking coffee and spilling on them. Especially when travelling so she’d taken to keeping dish towels in the car.

        For one project, I got over my hatred of doing nothing but the same stitch hundreds of times in a row.

        I’d admit that it works really well.

    3. Judge Judy and Executioner*

      I kept a few extra company tshirts I found in a supply closet at my desk for exactly that purpose. I ended up loaning them out more than using them myself, but they were so handy to have! Now I work from home and can just change clothes if I spill something on myself.

      1. Annika Hansen*

        When I worked in the office, I had a spare sweater that could be worn over something I stained. And I have lent them out in the past. Now that I work from home, I may just keep the stained shirt on if it won’t show up on camera/I have no on-camera meetings.

        1. Baked Alaska*

          I’ve had black animals – first three cats and then six dogs – for the last two-plus decades – and I own nothing light-colored, except for a marvelously comfortable off-white sofa that I bought before the black animal-having began. For a while it (and the bathtub) were the only spaces the dogs weren’t allowed on, but it’s currently covered in old red quilts and my small-medium black dog is taking over the whole thing, inch by cosy inch. Je ne regrette rien.

        3. Smurfette*

          We have:
          1 black dog,
          1 tan dog,
          1 brindle dog,
          1 grey cat,
          1 calico,
          1 tabby, and
          1 tan + cream cat.

          It doesn’t matter what you wear – you will have visible per hair / fur on your clothing.

    5. Nerd Fun*

      I worked at a company that made software. When the development team finished a release, and without notice to other staff, they would gather in the main hallway, gave a loud cheer in unison, then put on music and dance toward their work area to applause and more cheers. Extra points for the few developers who could walk some or all of about 40 feet on their hands. It was important to avoid installing a release at a customer until it was ready, but sometimes customers needed a feature in the new version. Installers could ask whether the new version “has been danced yet” to be sure it was safe to proceed.

    6. ProducerNYC*

      My office made bibs a few years ago for our whole department and honestly, they’ve saved so many of my blouses! We still chuckle when we wear them, but they are legit!

    7. Kali*

      We’re doing Thanksgiving at work today. I specifically did not wear a blazer that I wanted to wear because I was afraid I’d spill on it. (I’m wearing black instead.)

      I got a white shirt recently, and all my husband said was, “Really? White? On you?” Thanks, dear… but he’s not wrong.

      Bring on the bibs!

      1. Magc*

        I use that, plus I hang the shirts to dry (heat can set stains).

        Occasionally I’ll also put all my stained shirts in the wash, put in the full amount of Oxyclean for a load, and once enough there’s been enough agitation to thoroughly mix up the laundry soap and Oxyclean, I’ll pause the machine for at least an hour (sometimes more) so they can soak. I’ve been able to reclassify some shirts from the “only wear at home” category to “errand-running” category this way.

        The downside is that shirts might end up lighter, but that’s not an issue since I’m doing this with the shirts which are already stained.

      2. White Dragon*

        Cherry Bomb, by Zep.

        It can be hard to find, but I have managed to salvage shirts with years-old oil stains with some soaking and scrubbing it in.

        1. Jessastory*

          Using either regular dishsoap or a bar of Ivory soap has worked for me! even on stains I’ve sent through the wash a few times… It just requires some scrubbing.

          1. AngryOctopus*

            Yes, dish soap and then I use my utility toothbrush (for scrubbing things only, not teeth!) to work it in. Then just wash in the next laundry load. I’ve rescued a large number of oil stained shirts that way (because yes, I should wear an apron when I cook, but I don’t learn).

      1. LizWings*

        Awwww, my Nan used to call me Mucky Pup. I so rarely hear it in the wild. Thank you for the warm memory.

    10. goddessoftransitory*

      As a member of the Great Tracts of Land Club, count me in! I don’t think food has made it to my actual lap since puberty.

    11. another fed*

      Since working from home, I have been wearing an apron to eat more often to protect my clothes. I might have to bring one into the office when we get called back in by the next Administration….

  2. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    We had a small dinosaur figure – “the velocityraptor”. Whichever developer got the most stuff delivered (ie, had highest velocity) in every 2-week sprint got to keep it on their desk.

    When we closed the company down, the dev who bought it originally glued it to the side of the 15-story building we were in, around the 10th floor. It’s visible from the adjacent parking garage, and it’s still there 8 years later.

      1. Seeking Second Childhood*

        A bit Ozymandias, given that they shut down.

        “Look on my works ye mighty and despair.”

      3. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

        Yep. He had to do a little experimenting with glue types. Windows didn’t open very far, but he was a tall guy with long arms.

    4. MBK*

      We had a small nerf-like mini missle launcher that could be controlled by USB. I wrote a script that could take a developer’s username and fire a missle at their desk. We wired it up to the continuous integration server so anyone who checked in a broken build would automatically get targeted for a nerf strike.

  3. Medium Sized Manager*

    Pre-WFH, we had a tradition of getting Shamrock Shakes and people speak of it with the reverence of being gifted thousands of dollars for no reason.

    I also worked with people who hissed at the light, and it was my personal nightmare because I couldn’t SEE.

    1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      yeah the no light one would drive me nuts. I don’t even use dark mode on my computer.

      Before everyone jumps in with how wonderful it is, not for everyone. There are people for whom dark mode does not work. I am apparently one of them.

      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        Thirty years ago, I started a job, got there early, put on the lights. Scared two coworkers. They explained they used the natural light. The one wall was all windows. Oh, ok. I really don’t care. It’s kind of cool. Thirty years later, I’m in my living room, next to a window with track lights in the ceiling and a standing lamp next to me.
        So no lights in the office is a no go for me anymore.

        1. Artemesia*

          I think my vision is fine (my husband is visually impaired so it better be if we want to continue in our independent bliss). BUT turns out I need a lot more light to see anything now. In a dark office, I’d have a floor or desk lamp. Fluorescent lights are tough on the eyes and the brain.

        2. Ms. Eleanous*

          When I am Queen of the world, there will be no fluorescent lights.

          (also women’s clothing will be required to have pockets, and women’s trousers, belt loops)

          2. Not Tom, Just Petty*

            My best friend went shopping. I watched her kids. She came home with two night shirts she’d gotten for a dollar each. I picked one. The next week she asked if I’d worn it yet. “omg, yes, I didn’t want to text you because it was late!”
            Her son, “and?”
            We both said, “it has POCKETS!”

            1. Jen with one n*

              I have pyjama pants that I love because they have pockets. This morning my son (10 years old) noticed the pockets and then complained that his pants rarely have functional pockets.

              I just told him welcome to being a woman. :/

          4. Nanc*

            Can we make the caveat that the pockets shall be proper pockets and not chest pockets? Or at least if a garment sports chest pockets fashion law dictates it must also have proper pockets? ‘Cause, really, I don’t want to have to grope myself to retrieve my pen/keys/phone.

              1. TeaCoziesRUs*

                Not a designer, but I’m learning how to make my own clothing – pockets included. One thing I have found is that if you, like me, have a heavy phone because it doubles as your wallet, and no waistband to attach a roomy pocket to, then it ruins the whole line of a dress. This is ESPECIALLY true for knits. So that pretty maxi or princess seam dress that’s all one panel for the front? It sags horribly from the shoulder down. *sigh* I’ve also learned to use quilting cotton nearly exclusively for the pockets. it’s sturdy enough to hold my phone but not so dense it creates weird lines.

                Just a thought from someone who used to rag on designers for bad pockets…. then started to learn some of the legit whys behind it. Lots of it is cost/ time savings – because it takes me as long to make and seam the pockets as it does to see the entire PJ pants they’re going in… plus extra fabric cost when they’re operating on slim margins, etc. Some of it is aEsThEtIcS. SOME of it is, in fact, legit.

          5. Geriatric Rocker*

            Can I put my hand up for all packages coming with carry handles? Trying to walk up stairs with an oddly shaped or slippery parcel under your arm is the pits.

            Oh, and all spectacles should come with homing chips so you can track them down after putting them…somewhere. Thank you.

              1. OzDiscoDiva*

                Quilton brand toilet paper in Australia has carry handles on 24, 30 and 36 roll packs. This is one of the more popular supermarket brands, so others may also ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

              2. Wired Wolf*

                I’ve created carry handles for large TP/paper towel packs out of paracord for some of my pickup customers, and in such a way that they can be returned/reused without being completely undone. For some reason, I have yet to convince my manager that a spool of cord (I don’t use a lot, and not often) is an actual departmental need.

      2. Norm Peterson*

        Some dark mode things work better for me than others. I agree it is not the amazing thing some people act like it is!

        1. H3llifiknow*

          The ONLY thing I use Dark Mode for is Teams. The light mode is … I dunno unpleasant for me to look at. But everything else on my computer full bright!

          1. Mouse named Anon*

            Yeah I am Dark Mode on Teams only!

            However I do turn my screen down. Thankfully at work our fluorescents are dimmable. I don’t like darkness but I don’t like full blast fluorescent either.

            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Ours are too, which is very nice for “cozy but not pierce your eyeballs” evening shifts.

          2. Revenge of the Mailroom Clerk*

            To be fair, Teams is unpleasant, whether it’s in light mode or dark mode.

            (Yes, my company used to use Slack, why do you ask?)

      3. many bells down*

        Me too. Dark mode is physically painful for me to look at. Something about my eye/brain wiring makes white text on a dark background absolutely horrible for me.

        1. Boggle*

          Yup, I have two younger coworkers who use nothing but dark mode, so it’s always a shock when they share their screen. I hate it. I hate fluorescents too but in my office, they are turned down.

        2. The Prettiest Curse*

          I also can’t look at dark mode for too long because my eyes hate it. I was really surprised to hear that some people find it easier to look at. I wonder if it has to do with being a night owl or an early riser, since that seems to affect the way people see light and colour.

          1. Artemesia*

            my husband who is visually impaired has everything reverse color on his devices so the backgrounds are all black — it is one of the things in addition to being able to size text way up that lets him still read and write.

          2. Grizabella the Glaimour Cat*

            “I wonder if it has to do with being a night owl or an early riser, since that seems to affect the way people see light and colour.”

            Well, I am very much a night owl, and I can’t stand dark mode. Make of that what you will, lol!

            1. TeaCoziesRUs*

              I only like it for the games I play to unwind before sleep. Amber filter is always on, screen is usually fairly dim, but dark mode only for games.

          1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

            huh. I have pretty severe astigmatism in both eyes and keep as much on dark mode as I can because screens full of white make my eyes hurt.

          2. Moose*

            Same! The edges of the letters go fuzzy and I can’t read things well. If there’s a light grey on dark grey mode it works better for me than white on black, but basically everything is white on black :(

            1. Seeking Second Childhood*

              I got to use an amber on black monitor in the early 90s. (I think it was old then but I’m not sure.) It was easy on the eyes for writing, coding, and proofreading.

          3. wordswords*

            Yeah, astigmatism is a real issue for it! My astigmatism is quite mild and not generally a problem — a little bit of mild halo around lights can be quite pretty and rarely poses any difficulty — but around each white letter on a black background, it’s a different matter. My eyes start to hurt almost immediately, and I’ll get a headache if I try for long.

            I’m genuinely glad dark mode exists for the people who need or like it, but apps and sites with dark mode only are the bane of my existence. (At least with a website, if it’s mostly just text, I can use Reader View on Firefox to get around it.)

          4. Landrovan*

            Thanks for everyone saying that and that they don’t like dark mode. Can’t stand it, but when I say that, people look at me like I have 2 heads.

          5. iglwif*

            I believe you, but I am also a person with astigmatism and I like a lot of stuff in dark mode. Not everything! It’s hard to predict. But for instance I very much do not like bright white backgrounds (they hurt my eyes), so if I have control of background colour I will make it less white, but if I don’t, I’ll try out dark mode to see if it’s better, and often it is.

            1. Seeking Second Childhood*

              I’d be curious if you could identify a font or font weight that’s easier than another. I’m definitely finding serifed fonts easier to read than sans-serif fonts as I get older. I’d love hard data to show our very young design team and manager who are redoing doc templates.

              1. GlitterIsEverything*

                There’s quite a few fonts designed for readability, and some for dyslexics. Arial, Calibri, and Verdana are three of the most common, but depending on your purpose there are others that work well.

        4. GasketGirl*

          If I have to use Dark Mode for something, all I see are stripes when I look away. I really wish I could change my computer background to a nice cream color with brown tone fonts. That’s how I have my Kindle app set up for reading and it’s the least strenuous for my eyes. I wear non-prescription blue light blocking glasses at work which helps lessen the harsh brightness of the office lights, without it being dark. If I had my own office with a window, I would probably opt for the natural light with some floor lamps, at least on the sunny days.

          1. Elitist Semicolon*

            I realize there is no ? in your comment and therefore you are not asking for suggestions, but…do you have a setting that will let you shift your display towards red at certain times? On a Mac it’s called “Night Shift” and has a slider that you can pull towards “more warm” until the background is anything from a pale cream to almost orange. You can either set it to be always on or to kick in at certain times. It does screw up all the other colors, though…

            3. TeaCoziesRUs*

              Is called Eye Comfort Shield on my Samsung cell and it’s in the drop down menu where you turn on wifi, GPS, airplane mode, etc.

          2. TheEarlyCat*

            You can change your computer background and font to the colour you want. Follow Step 1 of this https://thegeekpage.com/how-to-customize-windows-text-colour-in-windows-10/. If it doesn’t work, there is Step 2 but you have to be comfortable to open up the Registry and follow the directions, just don’t touch anything in the Registry you aren’t told to.

            The first step, if it works, may not change it for all applications, but you can google ‘application name’ change background colour and font colour and see what comes up.

          3. stratospherica*

            Windows has a night light feature that you may enjoy! It turns the blue light down and makes any light that emits from your monitor much warmer. You can also set it to automatically turn on when the sun goes down :)

        5. JNel*

          Oh my gosh yes, dark mode always like imprints on my eyes when I look away! I think I’m the only person in my office who doesn’t use it!

      5. Person from the Resume*

        Very likely me.

        I open all the curtains in my house every morning, and I buy daylight bulbs. Some people claim my house is so bright. It is normal brightness for me.

        And, hey, I read a lot and at 50 don’t need reading glasses yet. Maybe all the light helps.

      6. Flor*

        I *do* use dark mode and it still hurts my eyes to stare at a lit computer screen in a dark room. I can’t imagine working in an office with the lights switched off!

      7. H3llifiknow*

        One of the large govt contractors I work with allows people to work based on their preferred comfort style versus just having functionals sit together. One office might be a “quiet office” one is lights off or at least very dim, one is lights on, some have cubicles, some are completely open for collaboration. When I toured the facility I found it fascinating. In one office people might be chatting and throwing ideas around, and then in the next one, absolute silence and dim lights. Seemed to make for a pretty happy work force.

        1. gwennian*

          I love this! It might not make sense in every situation (needing to sit with your department or whatever), but if that doesn’t matter, why not let people work in the surroundings that are best for them? Win-win!

        2. kicking-k*

          Grouping by working style! That’s genius. I endured many years in a noisy office with constant ringing phones and printers firing up, which constantly threw me off as I have ADHD, and eventually discovered I could ask for a quiet environment as a “reasonable adjustment”. I was moved into the room next door and it was much better.

      9. ArchivesPony*

        I ABSOLUTELY hate with a fiery passion dark mode. It is awful. I have bad eyesight and dark mode is just so painful for me. One of my pet peeves that I grumble about a lot is people having a dark background with light text on it.

        So you are not alone in that dark mode doesn’t work for them!

      10. Ineffable Bastard*

        As somebody extremely sensitive to light, the best of worlds would be having different offices with different levels of light so people could choose what suits them better, and a common room with cozy lighting for eating and chatting.

      11. Goldenrod*

        I didn’t realize how much I love light until we moved offices and my co-worker needed all the fluorescent lights off, or else she gets migraines.

        So we got facilities to remove all the bulbs – but then I panicked because I couldn’t see!

        Luckily, we are good friends so we managed to work out a compromise where I have lights over my desk and she uses a physical barrier to block it from her workspace.

        1. TeaCoziesRUs*

          I love natural light – I hate having an office in a basement or without windows around, and I hate blue-tinted lights. My current office is an aerie in the tops of the trees, and I adore it.

      12. Jshaden*

        I am also an old/uncool for whom dark mode does not work. I think it is my astigmatism, which was/is bad enough that even laser eye surgery couldn’t fully correct it. Slightly blurred dark letters on white is so much more readable that light letters on dark.

      13. AnotherOne*

        my supervisor and i used to share an office and we both get migraines.

        but we’re opposites re: light. i hate it when i have a migraine, where as he needs it. we were so excited when we got new light controls and could do this really low setting.

        our boss insisted that it was so low that with our door closed, it looked that the light was off. but we loved it- it was the perfect meet in the middle.

    2. amylynn*

      At one job I had a co-worker who had chronic migraines from a brain injury. We all (like two dozen people) agreed to turn off the florescent lights in the bay we were working in so this guy could function. Those of us who needed more light brought in desk lamps.

      I was very proud of my coworkers.

      (and before anyone suggests more reasonable solutions: 1) we would not have been sitting in that bay if our management wasn’t useless; 2) I left that job over seven years ago)

      2. Glitsy Gus*

        We did this in an office where we were shoved in the windowless basement. We all brought in a bunch of desk and floor lamps because the ceiling was low, which made the fluorescents even MORE irritating and obnoxious. It ended up being rather cozy in the end and pretty much everyone was able to curate their own personal lighting preferences.

      3. iglwif*

        Oh that’s very nice.

        I also once worked in an office with bad old flickery fluorescents that everyone hated, and we got permission to remove most of the tubes and a small budget for desk lamps for those who wanted them. (Even those with windows mostly did — there’s a lot of work hours without much daylight in the winter months where I live!)

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      UGGGGH I hate dim lights! Not so much in summer–we have big windows–but when the Big Dark descends I NEED some lights on–otherwise I get blinding headaches.

  4. Not Tom, Just Petty*

    25 years ago there was a department gnome (a four inch rubber/plastic doll with the crazy hair and his little bum showing.) that belonged to Ann. Ann went on maternity leave and gave it to the woman who was covering for her, Brenda. When Ann returned, Brenda was pregnant, so she gave it to Carol who would cover for her. Carol got pregnant. In less than two years, the Fertility Gnome had hit three (very happy about it) people. So yeah, women would take the gnome or run far from the gnome for a good ten years.

      1. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        we had a baby shower a year for from 2000-2008. And once double one. Even one for a guy in the department.

      1. Madame Desmortes*

        The kangaroo-society one is absolutely amazing — cool research, brilliant metaphor, amazing performers, impressively well-shot. Recommended.

    2. Owned by cats*

      I am also unreasonably thrilled by some of the European universities that present a sword to successful PhD defenses. I long ago decided the academic track wasn’t for me, but I’d be seriously tempted if I got a sword to keep!

      2. SarahKay*

        In the UK there is an annual Health and Safety award that companies, or individual sites within companies can apply for, given by the British Safety Council.

        Winners are awarded a sword.

        Because swords are well known for their safety features? No, I don’t know why a sword either, but it’s pretty cool. My previous site won one, and it was presented to the site leader and I at a big awards dinner in London for all the winners. We were all told very firmly that at no point were we allowed to remove it from its box while on the London Underground.

        1. Arrietty*

          Perhaps the logic is that only the winners of a health and safety award can be trusted with swords?

      3. Rock Prof*

        I’m so jealous of the sword. At least we still get the cool robes in the US (“cool” might be in the eye of the beholder, I’ll admit).

        1. AFac*

          As someone who roasts in one during commencement every May, it is anything but cool. At least as a woman I don’t have to wear a tie and collared shirt underneath.

          In 2021 we had commencement on the football field, which was the worst. My regalia isn’t black, but most of my colleagues’ were, which just made it worse.

          1. Jessastory*

            If it wasn’t completely non-breathable polyester maybe it wouldn’t be so miserable… But in my experience graduation ceremonies are always either on an extremely hot sunny day in an outdoor space with no shade or in an inadequately air-conditioned stuffy room.

            1. AFac*

              I’m also relatively tiny as people-sizes go, so it seems like they just cut the robe shorter without actually removing any of the volume. Sometimes I feel like those women who walked around with giant hoopskirts, except they sit around my bustline rather than my waist.

    3. Forrest Rhodes*

      Ditto on the heart-singing-like-a-bird, FG. This tradition made me think of the Ig-Nobel Prize awards ceremony—aren’t the Ig-Nobels awarded about this time every year?

    4. Artemesia*

      All of the traditions in the OP were charming. But this one most of all. (and thesis titles are always comically long so it works.)

      1. Nina*

        I was raised by a lit major so my (real, STEM) thesis title was in iambic pentameter. I didn’t mean to. It just sounded best that way. I only noticed just now while I was seeing if it would fit in iambic pentameter without sounding stupid.

      2. linger*

        My topic served to prove the oft-told saw
        that doctorates consist of learning more
        and more ’bout less and less until at last
        you know all about nothing. Still, I passed!
        (My simple goal: to tease out every cause
        when nothing’s marking a relative clause.)

  6. Never the Twain*

    I love the Office Plant one. It’s a beautifully low-key and non-intrusive way of saying ‘We know’ when times are good/bad or whatever.

    1. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

      We had an “Asbestos” award (not actual asbestos, and in fact, I think some sort of completely random item) for when you did “as best as” you could and still got slammed by something.

    2. Rage*

      One of our big departments has a tradition where when an employee retires, they gift her (it’s mostly women) a plant pot with cuttings from all of the office plants in that department.

      1. Admin of Sys*

        Oh, I really like that! I was part of the team that carefully detangled the many-cube pothos when we shut down the office after covid, and took a few broken off vines to propagate. I definitely would have loved clippings of the other office plants.

      3. RLC*

        Oh, I would have loved that! When I retired my office encouraged me to take all the smaller plants (ficus in a big pot not practical to move) and I did. When my father-in-law moved to elder care I adopted all his houseplants too. My sewing room looks like a Victorian conservatory; I bought antique plant stands for each member of the “plant family”.

      4. iglwif*

        oh that’s absolutely lovely!

        An old boss of mine did the reverse when she retired — everyone on the team who wanted got cuttings of all her office plants.

        When I left, I took a couple of my plants but bequeathed most of them to other people because my office had big windows and southern exposure whereas my apartment, not so much. I don’t know what happened to them down the line but i like to think of them continuing to thrive on other people’s filing cabinets!

    5. Tiny Soprano*

      Tangentially related, but I had an office plant who ended up with his own phone extension. IT would forward cold callers and telemarketers to “Frank”, the joke being that Frank was an office-famous African Violet and wasn’t going to get back to them.

  7. Firefinch*

    In two of my recent workplaces, we have an object to pass around to recognize who has done well in the past week. In my previous workplace, it was a wooden camel. In this one, it’s a Sato-Pan, which is a plastic toilet insert used in developing countries to increase the use of improved toilets. If you Google it and look for images, it’s the first couple that show up. So that sits on top of someone’s cube until it’s passed along.

  9. CTT*

    I work at a BigLaw firm in transactional law and we have a giant bell now. During 2020, in lieu of being able to celebrate in person after a closing, one of the assistants would take a picture of this little bell she had and say “I’m ringing the bell for you!” (Not sure why, but it was May 2020, we made our own fun.) This escalated into rah-rah emails for especially big deals sent by the partner to the department chair and C-suite in the vein of “Ring the bell! $120 million dollar 10-site loan for [Client] closed!” And then it further escalated into the CEO buying us a literal bell that is about 2 feet tall and has the words “Closing Bell” engraved on it. And now when we close a deal, the closer rings the bell to celebrate. It can be loud*, but it’s cool to celebrate whoever rang it, makes for a funny photo op for the clients who are into that, and sometimes hitting it can be VERY satisfying after a really frustrating deal.

    I always crack up when our office manager gives people tours and has to explain it; they are always flummoxed and I’m just like, I don’t really get it either! But I would die for the bell!

    *Some of this is taken from an email I accidentally sent to Alison mid-drafting, and then never had to resend – people used to REALLY clang that thing like a Victorian fire alarm and it scared the shit out of me since it’s outside my office, but now people do one quick clang and it is much less startling, so I never had to resend an email about bell etiquette!

    1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

      That is very cool. I’d be tempted to also do the nautical thing when the CEO visited the floor.

      “Ding-ding, ding-ding. Admiral, arriving!”

    2. Just Me*

      I am betting the assistant who started it watches Selling Sunset”. It’s a high dollar real estate show, and they ring the bell in their office when they close a deal.

      1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

        There’s a couple different fast food places around here (an Arby’s I think, I forget the other one) that have bells by their doors that say something like “ring if you had good service” and if you ring the bell the whole kitchen and counter team yell “Thank you!”

        2. Mad Scientist*

          On the flip side of that, at my local Renaissance festival, the bartender(s) ring a bell whenever they get a tip, and I’ve always loved that tradition (even though it’s more common to tip than not).

        3. tes vitrines infinies, tes horizons dorees, je veux m'en passer*

          The old Long John Silvers by my house had a “if it was good, thank the Captain and ring the bell” by the back door, highlight of kid-me’s trips there

      2. Ally McBeal*

        Or maybe they came from Wall Street and are emulating the opening/closing bell on the NASDAQ floor, which is a ceremonial thing that publicly traded companies can schedule for a big milestone.

        1. Anonymous(it's identifying)*

          a previous employer IPO’d during lockdown so our (very much not in New York) CEO got some of the techs to build a copy of the NASDAQ bell-ringing… podium… thing on the factory floor (essential industry, we were allowed to come to work but masked and distanced) and had the bell-ringing there in the factory with as many of the company as would fit with distancing.

    4. daffodil*

      I’m in academia, and have installed a tiny bell on my office coat rack for similar reasons — finishing a big thing in academia is usually some kind of clicking to submit a file, not very satisfying. So now I have a bell to ring, and invite other people over to ring it to.

      2. J*

        I’m in academia and we also have a bell, but it’s in the pantry in the middle of the office and we ring it whenever there’s cake.

    5. StartupWitch*

      My boss was gifted a giant gong for unclear reasons, and it became a tradition to ring it for sales closes. Recently, we implemented a smaller gong to ring when someone books a demo. These are referred to as “gong rips”.

      2. Mad Harry Crewe*

        We had a gong that the sales team rang for closed deals. It was part of the monthly all-hands meeting.

      3. Max*

        The president of my company had a gong hanging near his office that would be rung whenever a sale closed. We’ve been remote ever since 2020, but sometimes somebody still remembers to post a video of it on Teams at appropriate times.

    6. lupurcalia*

      We have a closing bell too! I work at an investment firm – we don’t ring it for every closing, but you can tell when a particularly frustrating deal closed by how hard the deal team rings it. Always fun to explain to new people!

    7. WellRed*

      Oh god, the bell. We had that for awhile for closing big ad contracts. But the people started ringing it fir every thing so it got annoying AND lost all meaning.

    8. Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling*

      The major hospital in my area has a similar bell in its cancer ward: not for staff, but for patients, who get to ring it when they finish their chemotherapy. My father rang it a few years back, and it was a great little moment.

      1. Petty_Boop*

        Yes our hospitals do that too! I’ve had several friends get to ring the bell at their respective hospital and it’s such a happy moment to catch on video!

      2. Ginger Cat Lady*

        Pretty much all cancer wards have them, and just this morning a dear friend of mine got to ring it! She sent me a picture a few minutes ago and I’m still a little teary eyed.

        1. Snoozing not schmoozing*

          Although, according to members of a cancer forum, the stage 4 cancer patients who are getting chemo wish the bell was somewhere where they couldn’t hear it, because each time it’s rung, it is a reminder that they’ll never get to do it.

      4. iglwif*

        I’ve seen a lot of that on social media over the past few years and I sort of wish the hospital where I was treated in the 1990s had had such a bell! Would’ve been very satisfying.

      6. Jellyfish Catcher*

        Yeah, I was outa my last radiation treatment, when they had me ring the bell; I teared up a bit, so grateful to those people.

    9. Damn it, Hardison!*

      I worked for a biotech that had a bell that was only rung when a drug product was approved by the FDA. Anyone who is familiar with drug development and the biotech world knows that getting drug approval is a long process. I was lucky that the bell was one once in the 8 years I was there; it hasn’t been rung since.

    10. George McGeorge*

      My old job had something like this for wins, but they went out and bought a hanging gong. Also, 90% of us were not on the sales team, so we’d randomly have execs rush out, ring the gong which echoed through the open plan office, and then either have to explain if we were on the phone with someone, or try to get focus back afterwards. I think they realized it wasn’t sparking as much enthusiasm as they’d hoped, since they changed it to be rung by team members (not just Execs/sales) at weekly meetings rather than as needed. When we moved offices it came with us, but I believe it’s still in a closet.

    11. Dog momma*

      When you complete your chemotherapy, you get to wring the bell! Nurses gather round , everybody cheers and applauds, even the patients. Its a great thing to see. And everyone is so happy! I rang the bell, July 12, 2022. I hope I never have to go back!

      1. Anon Again... Naturally*

        I rang my bell in December 2019. Looking forward to my next appointment so I can officially get my 5 year NED (no evidence of disease) status. Congratulations!

    12. Katie*

      Where I worked, there was a collection team (to vendors not people) and anytime they successfully collected a certain amount they rang a bell. People would clap for them.

      My dad bought me this awesome turtle that when you pressed it’s head or tail it rang. So I made it a celebration bell for my team and whenever they did something they felt celebrating they would ring the turtle. Them we would clap. We did that for several years until COVID.

  10. FashionablyEvil*

    My company had DOPE: Day of Perpetual Eating. It was part of an overall holiday celebration in December (also including a gingerbread house competition, ugly sweater group photo, and white elephant, etc.) DOPE was an all-day potluck with breakfast at 8:30, lunch starting at 11:30, and snacks all day.

      2. allathian*

        Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner, supper….

        I require feeding every 3-4 hours or I get hangry. I guess I’m a tall Hobbit at heart.

  11. KaciHall*

    We have a very relaxed attitude at my office. When my department moved to a different area of the office, the boys said she would need to get a slingshot or something to get out attention if she needed us. The next week, I was on Temu and was shown “cat toys” that were little guns that shoot out puffballs. I bought two (with like 40 puffs/ammo).

    Two years later, we now have 5 or six floating sround the office. I was sick a few days and came back to ~70 of balls all over my desk area. Slow days we might shoot each other for fun. Some days we actually do use it to get each other’s attention if we are heads down. (Even though we moved back to our original office space.) Currently most of the puffs are pulled into a precise pyramid on my desk until they get moved again.

    1. Roy Donk*

      This reminds me of the bank I worked at for a summer during college. There were very intense protocols around what might happen if a bomb threat or other sort of threat (“we’re going to rob the bank” etc) were called in. We were instructed not to hang up or alert the person on the phone at all, but to try to engage them as long as possible–while throwing a tennis ball at your nearest coworker so that they could then call the police and initiate the rest of the protocol. So everyone had a tennis ball in a desk drawer. One day while bored, I absentmindedly took the tennis ball and started throwing it against the wall of my office while I was on a prolonged hold with a vendor…. and initiated absolute chaos in my department. Oops.

      1. CaliforniaRoller*

        Rubber frogs!

        One of our sales assistants received a suicide threat from a customer. Things like that didn’t happen often (in fact, threats of suicide had happened exactly never in twelve years) so we weren’t prepared for it.

        Somewhere up the chain a discussion was held and everyone that took customer calls got a farting rubber frog on their desk. They were dog toys that someone happened to have from a child’s school project.

        If your caller was threatening themselves or others, you were to stand up, mute, fart twice, and the folks around you would handle it.

        The frogs were only used once in four years, and then only by mistake. French-Congolese caller, French-Canadian salesperson, some idiom didn’t make it across.

        One real event and one false alarm were enough that our next phone system had a double-bucky to blink every manager’s phone.

  12. Young Millennial*

    Simple but effective: Office Dilly Bars (ice cream bar on a stick) on the first summer day of the year. The “first summer day” wasn’t calendar based; it was more vibe based…as in when it felt like summer to our CEO in our very northern climate. CEO would go buy a bunch of boxes and hand them out. Being surprised at your desk with ice cream was half of the joy.

    1. Apfelmuse*

      We have icecream (because our boss likes ice cream) when temperatures are over 30 ° C (86 Fahrenheit). Somebody sends an email to everyone, and we gather in the kitchen for 15 minutes to chill ;) In August, we sometimes have icecream-breaks every day of the week. If somebody really wants some, but it’s not quite hot enough, past excuses are: it’s the 30th of the month, 30% humidity, it’s 3:30 pm etc etc :)

      1. Awesome Sauce*

        Pre-pandemic, one of the bosses would randomly stock the freezer with frozen treats for similarly arbitrary reasons during the summer. There was never any announcement, it was just word-of-mouth if someone saw him coming in laden with grocery bags. I kind of liked how low-key of a surprise it was.

    2. Mark*

      Yes our small office does an ice cream run on random really hot days in the summer and we sit outside on picnic benches for a while just enjoying the summer.

    3. FG*

      At an OldJob there would be a day or two in the summer where they’d get an ice cream truck to come park in front of the bldg & everyone got a free treat.

      Also several times a big project concluded, the dept that was the business owner of the project would host an ice cream social for everyone who worked on it. Ice cream and all the toppings would be set up in a conference room & Ice Cream Party would commence.

  13. Potato Potato*

    On the day after Thanksgiving, the emptiest day of the year, my office has a nerf gun war for whoever comes in. I’m remote, so I’ve never been. But it’s a big deal. All the in-office folks talk about guns and strategies leading up to it. It almost makes me want to come in!

    2. nonee*

      It’s funny how different we can be; this sounds like hell on earth to me, but it sounds like people can opt out easily enough by staying home. I’m glad you all enjoy it! Life is a rich tapestry etc etc

  14. Sean*

    It’s so pleasing to have a list of traditions that doesn’t make me cringe! I would be happy with any of these in my workplace, especially the office plant.

  15. Beth*

    I’m a civilian employee of the Air Force and I used to work in an office that was mostly made up of military personnel, so turnover was high. There is a large round wooden table in the office that was gifted by a previous military employee. It is a tradition that the senior leaders of our organization (think 4 star Generals) sign the table top before they retire and leave. They usually write a nice note as well. The more fun tradition is that when the employees rotate out, you sign underneath the table, and no one is allowed to see what’s down there until they leave. I left last year and it was so amazing to see all the names and the things people wrote and to join in the tradition myself.

    1. The Prettiest Curse*

      If you’re ever in the UK, you must go to the RAF Bar at The Eagle pub in Cambridge – you would love it! Almost every inch of the bar has been signed or marked in some other way by members of the armed forces, from WWII to the present day. One of the tables also has a resident ghost.

      1. CaliforniaRoller*

        No problem getting in as a member of the US Armed Forces?

        A friend of mine retired from the US Navy and moved to Britain. She wasn’t allowed in their local version of the VFW because she couldn’t come up with a NAVPERS form that hadn’t issued since before she was born.

        1. Peachie*

          It’s called the RAF bar in honour of the RAF members who would drink there, but it’s part of a pub which is open to the public

      2. Military Prof*

        Lots of World War II leaders of the US Army Air Forces have signed areas of the bar, walls, or ceiling. If you know your history, you’ll recognize a lot of names. I was there with a bunch of USAF officers last year, and we spent a few hours noting all of the famous signatures.

  16. Adverb*

    We had an office tradition to recognize people who went way above and beyond and refused to allow any barrier to prevent their task/project completion. The person was awarded a Honey Badger stuffed toy (from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg), though the original title of the prize was Sunny Badger for the first winner, Sunny, who single-handedly managed the logistics of moving a 70+ person company while keeping up with her contract work.

  17. MsMaryMary*

    We have an annual Souper Bowl party at my current office. It’s the week before the big American football game. Everyone brings in a crockpot of their favorite soup, and we vote on our favorite. People get very competitive. We make it a fundraiser for a different charity each year, so everyone pays $5, or $20 to receive a company-branded soup bowl. We invite clients and vendors. It’s a very popular event. The only problem is that no one can use the printer or microwave while dozens of crockpots are plugged in or we will blow a fuse.

    Well, the other problem is that once someone brought Brunswick stew made with squirrel meat and he is now banned from all office potlucks.

    1. epicdemiologist*

      As a born Southerner, I feel compelled to remark that classic Brunswick stew MUST contain squirrel. Whether that makes it a bad choice for a potluck is, of course, a different issue!

    2. Hlao-roo*

      Brunswick stew made with squirrel meat

      I’m curious about this–did people try the stew and like it? Hate it? Did they know it was squirrel meat before they ate it or only after?

      1. MsMaryMary*

        The Squirrel Incident happened before I worked here, but the issue was that no one was told they were eating squirrel until after the Souper Bowl was over. Per epicdemiologist’s comment, the person who brought in the Brunswick stew said using squirrel is traditional and people should have expected to eat game meat. The rest of the office did not agree.

        I also think if the game meat had been venison or duck people would have been fine. Half the office was upset about eating the cute little critters that run around their yard and the other half was upset to have eaten a rodent. It is purely a malicious rumor that the squirrel was roadkill.

        1. Hlao-roo*

          Thanks for the details! I’ve never eaten squirrel and would not be upset to find out squirrel was used in a dish I just ate, but I’m not surprised that other people took the “surprise–it’s squirrel meat” poorly. Too bad someone went so far to start a rumor it was roadkill :(

      1. Angstrom*

        Same. I worked for a company that had several hunters on staff, and had a game potluck every year. The game dishes were the highlight.

      2. Worldwalker*

        Yeah … why is squirrel meat less acceptable than, say, pig meat?

        I reminded the squirrel that has been raiding my bird feeder that he comes from an edible species.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          Probably because pig is a common protein source for people at all income levels, whereas squirrel isn’t common (in the US) outside of Appalachia, so it’s deemed hillbilly food and/or only for the most desperately impoverished people. Plus it’s easy to associate squirrel with roadkill.

          1. nonbeenary*

            I would assume it’s more because squirrel meat, unlike most pork, is unregulated and not subject to the same safety standards. Not discounting the classist bent of anti-roadkill sentiment, but it isn’t farfetched to say that roadkill, squirrel meat, and even venison (due to lead levels via buckshot) can have negative health effects.

            1. Strive to Excel*

              It’s generally recommended that any game meat have samples taken and sent for food safety testing. Game meat accounts for some of the biggest chunks of food-borne illnesses in the US, especially parasites.

        3. Jasmine*

          I remember my step dad shot and dressed a squirrel…. There wasn’t enough meat for one person to make a meal! you’d have to kill a lot of squirrels to make a stew.

      3. Artemesia*

        Squirrel brains have been implicated in deaths from prion disease (creutzfeld-jacobs). I don’t think the body meat has but I think I wouldn’t try that out of caution. Cooking does nothing to protect against this meat born illness.

          1. Arrietty*

            I’m a lifelong vegetarian so no expert on the topic, but I believe beef cattle is tested for disease. Squirrels, not being farmed, are not.

          2. Artemesia*

            Beef cattle are tested for prion disease. Yes there is risk. (mad cow about 25 or 30 years ago was a mini crisis in Europe) but farm animals are now screened. Squirrels — nope.

            It is probably not that risky for those who eat squirrels and avoid their brains, but no one should find out they are eating it AFTER they eat it. A dozen or so people contracted prion disease from squirrels in the US a number of years ago.

    4. FricketyFrack*

      I saw something about a Souper Bowl gone wrong on a recent AAM post, and I presented the idea of it (without the bad soup) to my coworkers, and they were all on board for next year! I’m very excited.

    5. Mouse named Anon*

      I worked somewhere that did a soup competition the friday before The Superbowl. The committee that put it on did not think to call it the Souper Bowl. I am still upset by that nearly 10 years later. :(

    6. Disappointing Aussie Office Gumby*

      I once took an escargot soup to a potluck. It was sooo delicious, and was nearly gone before someone asked me what it was. I told him. He paused, and discreetly did not finish his near-empty bowl.

      Word got around, and nobody came back for seconds… The fact that they were scarfing it down before they knew its main ingredient is a great compliment.

  18. Sleeping Panther*

    At my internship, on any employee’s first day back from parental leave, they’d be greeted with a full spread of pastries and other lovingly prepared by the staff at the on-site cafe for the entire office to share. Anyone who could get away from their desks, even for just a few minutes, would pop by to wish the new parent well.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Aww what a really nice way of being welcomed back. I’m imagining the transition from new frazzled sleep deprived parent to work-person coming back and trying to figure out all the routines and logistics around that, and how lovely this gesture would have been in that context. Like “you’re welcomed here”.

  19. StrawberryWine*

    A former workplace had a tradition of making all new hires perform a talent show at the year-end party. There were rules – the new hires couldn’t perform together as a group (but you could bring your partner in on it); if a person transfered to another office, they had to participate in the talent show at the new office; no video was taken, but talents were noted on a spreadsheet. There was even some controversy about what constituted a talent. One person made homemade beer and passed it around. Was that a talent in the same way as the person who performed an Argentine tango with their partner? Controversy!

    I’m a musician, so I had a talent that naturally lended itself to that sort of thing, but I felt for the people who didn’t have something like that to fall back on, and who were clearly uncomfortable performing in front of an audience. As someone who is in the performing arts, I take the view that it should always be consensual on both ends (as in, the person performing should consent to performing and the audience should consent to being there)!

    1. Stella70*

      Please take no offense, but I would honestly not accept a job offer if that tradition was mentioned in the interviews. I am not extremely introverted or without talents (does making a bowl of mac-and-cheese disappear count?), but I think that’s an overreach. I feel bad for those who would not want to perform in front of a group of people.

      1. LaurCha*

        I would also hate it. The things I’m good at don’t lend themselves to performance. I can teach a bitchin art history lecture, but I’d need slides and at least 20 minutes. Not really talent-show material.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          Yep. I mean, y’all can watch me knit painfully intricate cables for ten minutes if you want, but …..

        2. Student-Student Nurse*

          I think that should count and I would probably enjoy that more than some of the other things that definitely turn up in that sort of thing.

        3. Csethiro Ceredin*

          I’d really enjoy a 20-minute art history lecture at work.

          But I, too, would likely hate being asked to show off any talent for my colleagues. Nobody wants to see me draw a picture or recite random sonnets.

      2. Ally McBeal*

        I am right there with you. I have formal vocal training and sang competitively, many years ago, but I would neeeeeever perform in front of coworkers unless we were in a crowded karaoke bar (renting a karaoke machine unequivocally does NOT count). Bringing in a pie, though, I could do – and have done many times, although not for a competition. I’m just not a competitive person, and my job is to make other people look good – I have no desire to put myself in the spotlight.

      3. AnotherLibrarian*

        This would also be a deal-breaker for me. I agree with the idea of consent here and the inherent power imbalances in an office makes consenting to something like this really complex. Don’t get me wrong- my ability to recite the entirety of Subterranean Homesick Blues is a rare skill, but I just hate forced participation activities.

      4. Annie2*

        StrawberryWine pretty clearly says that they don’t endorse this and that they, too, “felt for the people who … were clearly uncomfortable performing in front of an audience.”

      5. goddessoftransitory*

        I agree (and yes, that is a talent, BTW.)

        I remember an old episode of House where he was in a mental hospital, and the patients were basically forced into a talent show. It really was grotesque to see grown adults being made to sing and dance in front of the staff and it sure didn’t seem therapeutic in any way.

        1. Wired Wolf*

          One summer in my youth I was sent to a residential summer camp for ‘troubled children’…that had a whole set of things wrong with it, one of which was a talent show among the cabins. Yes, each act was freely mocked by the other campers (and the counselors apparently thought this was perfectly fine). That instilled in me a deep disdain for anything of the sort.

    2. Rage*

      I might find this kind of fun, in a way – but I can also totally see how people might be uncomfortable with this sort of thing – so I would probably use my Power for Good and set up an MC situation.

      My talent? Well, this is a workplace so my talent is whatever part of my job I am good at. Buckle up, buttercups, we’re going to review the Microsoft Terms & Conditions/EULA.

    4. Prefer my furballs*

      Towards the end of my first week at a new job, they informed me that the tradition is that the new person sings a song (I’ve blanked on what it was…some sort of nursery rhyme I think). I laughed & made a joke about not doing that, & tried to move back to other topics. They pressed, & pressed. And I got less jokey & more flat “no, not doing it”, until I eventually just said I was going back to my desk. First of many, many, MANY red flags that appeared my first month in that job. Sadly, external circumstances meant I had to stay there several years, but I never was willing to go along with their crap (thankfully a federal job so I couldn’t be fired for refusing to sing a song or pretend that whatever personality test woo they were on during a given year was valid). Same office that was “…but we always have pizza & ice cream to celebrate!” even if the person being celebrated was a celiac with severe lactose issues.

      whenever I get frustrated with something/someone at my current office, I remind myself that a bad day/week here is still 1000x more functional than the best week there!

      1. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

        One of my professors had a rule that anyone coming in late to class had to sing to be admitted. Since we were all adults with families and day jobs in a city with terrible traffic and class started at 5, there was a steady stream of people being late. I don’t have a voice anywhere approaching passable singing and singing is genuinely painful for me. The thought of being forced to sing in front of my classmates terrified me, so one day when I realized I was going to be five minutes late I just didn’t go to class at all. I wasn’t the only one who chose to skip rather than sing.

  20. Oolie*

    My office held an annual Yankee Swap featuring all kinds of funny, kitschy gifts. One year someone got an ugly reindeer made of small logs and twigs. He tied the ribbon from the wrapping around its neck and kept it in his office year ’round. The following year it reappeared in the Yankee Swap. From then on, it became a tradition for the recipient to add some kind of holiday-themed accessory (jingle bells hanging from the antlers, a saddle made of wrapping paper, a small red bauble taped on like a nose, etc.) and leave it on display until returning it to the Swap the following year. Despite the prevalence of alcohol, gift certificates, and lottery tickets, the reindeer was by far the most prized gift every year!

    1. Dog momma*

      I bought 2 wooden reindeer like this and had them out for yrs at Xmas. I thought they were very different & got them at a very upscale craft store. I also have Xmas girl mice, dressed old fashioned dress & pouch bonnet, all felt on the outside with a Christmassy decoration. Very cute & quiet expensive at the time. A few yrs later, bc I was collecting them, flipped one over to see what the base was….a clothespin!! I was shocked. But I still collected all they had & still have them almost 40 yrs later.

  21. Juicebox Hero*

    The Birthday Scarecrow, one of those approximately 4 foot tall decorative ones.

    It started off as an innocent autumn decoration that one of my coworkers found in her attic and brought in because what the heck. Her officemate was freaked out by it (but wouldn’t admit it) so he’d keep moving it to random places. The rest of us would move it back, and the officemate would keep moving it. So it gradually became a competition to put it someplace weird and guaranteed to scare the daylights out of whoever found it. It was put in the (employee) restrooms, the records vault, every office, outside windows, the janitor’s closet. We had good fun until Thanksgiving when he got put away in the office closet.

    Then the admin assistant’s birthday came in late December. I don’t remember who came up with the idea of putting a sign reading “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU” on the scarecrow’s hat and surprising her with it, but it was my idea to put it outside her office window. She let out a yell then laughed her ass off. Then, of course, we had to do it for every birthday. Half the fun was distracting the recipient in order to plant it outside their window (small building, one floor) or sneak it into their office before they got in. It nearly got shot once, when it was outside the boss’ window and the police chief walked in and thought it was someone trying to break in.

    The scarecrow wore a mask during the lockdowns (we were essential workers so in office for the whole thing), one guy always tried to hide it right before his birthday then make a fuss over not having it, and I was the best at coming up with hiding places.

    Until the staff turned over and the tradition petered out, we got a lot of mileage out of the Birthday Scarecrow.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      As a really nostalgic person, there is something so sad about traditions waning with staff turnover

      1. Ally McBeal*

        I agree. At my company we have a small ceramic statue of an animal that is randomly deposited at someone’s desk at the previous recipient’s whim, and that’s sort of still floating around… but a few weeks ago a departing colleague snuck a random Halloween decoration onto my desk and no one left in the office remembers what the tradition is (I guess that colleague had had it for a long time), so I think I’m now the permanent owner of the decoration. Maybe I’ll hide it somewhere, instead of at someone’s desk, and start a new tradition… like the one at Applebee’s in the 90s where if you found the upside-down photo you’d get a free drink (does anyone else remember this?).

  22. ChaoticNeutral*

    I work for a company that doles out regular spot bonuses (good ones too–to the tune of a few hundred), an end-of-year bonus, and other financial rewards. I started in September a few years ago and several employees told me, just wait til Thanksgiving. Knowing about the end of year bonus, I thought maybe this company did it around Thanksgiving instead of the holidays. I was excited. I was ready. I got to work two weeks before Thanksgiving, and there it was on my desk. An envelope. With…a $50 Honeybaked Ham gift card. People were ecstatic. Apparently every year the company gives these out to every employee around Thanksgiving and I’ve never quite understood the reverence in which it is treated. Every year since my first year in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving the chatter about the Honeybaked Ham gift card starts, what are you going to spend yours on, oh boy do I love their mac n cheese. I feel like Ben in Parks and Rec with Li’l Sebastian.

    1. Ham without green eggs, please*

      If you like ham, it’s a fantastic gift! We often have a few of those gift cards floating around our office, and I always try to get one. They go to the senior staff only — but two of those are Jewish, and they promptly hand the cards on to one of the ham-eaters.

      2. H3llifIknow*

        Our company sends everyone a check from Butterball that can be used at any grocery store like a normal check, and doesn’t HAVE to be used for a butterball turkey. It just gets applied to your grocery bill like any other payment (and it comes with instructions for the cashier on how to process it, if they aren’t familiar with the program). It’s not a huge amount of money usually $50 but it pays for a turkey and some accompaniment AND there’s no exclusion for alcohol so that’s nice ;)

  23. YIG*

    Four colleagues and I started Stew Club – a week where each of us would bring in a different stew to share each day. Lunchtimes were so delicious, and the afternoons so sleepy.

  24. a scientist*

    We once had a coworker who was a young, single guy right out of college and living on his own for the first time. He always forgot to buy groceries, so he would bring really random things for lunch every day (one day he brought a jar of spaghetti sauce.) One of my coworkers brought him a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly for Christmas so that he could make himself sandwiches.
    Thus, the PB&J party was born. That was almost 10 years ago, but now right before Christmas, we all get together, reserve a room and everyone brings something. We have had fancy peanut butters, homemade jams and breads, and various other spreads and different foods-and we all sit around and eat PB&J.

  25. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Unless you’re a fan of Red Dwarf this won’t make any sense but – we have a stuffed Mr Flibble who has to be offered a share of any treat brought in.

    Because you don’t want to make Mr Flibble cross.

  26. Lolli*

    Blizzard Fridays. We used to have a tradition of getting Dairy Queen Blizzards on some Fridays. One of the help desk guys (David) would decide a particular Friday was a good day for Blizzard Friday and would send an email with the cost and the current flavors. People would place their orders and give him money and he would go in the afternoon and pick them up. We could expect our Blizzards around 3pm. It was awesome until a new boss in the department decided it wasn’t a good use of his employee’s time and stopped it (really could have seen that coming). David moved on to a different company, but later died tragically. We did one last Blizzard Friday in his honor and had a little memorial for him while we all sat around eating our Blizzards.

      1. Dog momma*

        …was a grinch . It was SOME Fridays not every Friday. and it made people happy. Maybe David skipped lunch and used that to pick up the Blizzards.

        1. beth b*

          A bit of fun and enjoyment goes a very long way to make employees happy. Too bad the new boss didn’t know this. Scrooge.

        2. Lolli*

          He would regularly work through lunch and he was amazingly quick at getting the blizzards. It was a fun tradition.

  27. CzechMate*

    There is a father and son duo that work at my university. For years, Dad would always make a loaf of banana bread to his office on Monday. Now Son works at the university in my office. Dad now makes two loaves of banana bread for them to take to their respective offices on Mondays.

    Banana Bread Monday has now become A Thing. When Son announces the banana bread is in the office, there is a mad run on the kitchen. He has to privately notify some folks in the office first so that they can make sure they get a piece before it disappears. The director of the department (this is a Catholic university, so he’s a priest) has informed Son that he expects Banana Bread Mondays to continue to be a tradition “in perpetuity.”

  28. Juicebox Hero*

    This one is just mine, and fairly minor. When I started my current job there was a small Christmas tree in the closet. I thought why not decorate it with office supplies, and part of that was a paper clip chain. Since the colorful plastic-covered clips looked the best, I started saving them and making the chain out of them, all year long, and just kept going.

    After 16 years, you can barely see the tree anymore :D If I ever get to retire I’m going to leave it for the next occupant so they can wonder about me.

    1. Meow*

      My husband’s office had one of these. Then one year it was announced their department was getting outsourced and their jobs were up in the air for a while. That Xmas, someone decorated the tree with pink slips.

  29. Foundation*

    I work at a foundation where a few times a year we have to send out slew of grant denial notifications. It’s really tough because we know the nonprofits well, believe in their work, and in a lot of cases the only reason they aren’t getting a grant is because there isn’t enough money available. It’s hard sending out a denial knowing that critical work isn’t getting funded.

    For a few years, it really was tough for me to get through the day mentally. Sending denial after denial was hard. My coworkers took notice and made a tradition we now call “Dips and Denials.” Everyone brings in a different type of dip and we munch all day. Our whole office is filled with a dozen or more different kinds of dips and snacks. It’s a really nice distraction from the day!

    Incidentally, the amount of cream cheese I consume in the day also helped me realize that I have a lactose intolerance.

    2. Grinchy Applicant*

      I’m really trying not to come across like a grinch, but from the other side? Picturing funders having a snack party to distract yourselves from the fact that you’re shutting down programs that keep people fed or in homes or able to access healthcare (or whatever your foundation supports) rubs me the wrong way. Maybe a rolling deadline? Better for applicants, and then you don’t have to do them all at once.

      1. Say Again?*

        They’re not celebrating. Didn’t you pick up on how badly the OP felt? Any tough job needs destressors.

      2. Harrowhark*

        When bad news is inevitable, it can be comforting to believe that the messenger is just as disappointed as the recipient, sure. But the foundation isn’t throwing a party to celebrate the denials — individuals are bringing in snacks to make a hard day less draining. Unless the employees are anchorites, I don’t think it’s necessary to self-mortify in the workplace.

    3. Vio*

      As somebody who has worked and volunteered for several charities who receive such notifications I’d like to note that while it is, of course, disappointing news, it’s still gratefully received. Much like with job applications there are so many companies who do not respond at all.

  30. Not me, please, I'm not a gardener! (anon for this)*

    One year, at a previous workplace, the rule for my department Secret Santa was that everyone would give a gift that started with the first initial of the recipient’s name.

    A beloved colleague with an oddball sense of humour picked a woman whose name starts with R. The gift she received was a tall, sturdy garden rake. She looked extremely puzzled – I don’t think she even had a garden. Many laughs were had by the rest of us. I’m not sure it was ever clear why the gift giver chose a rake, but it wasn’t the only practical joke that day (I got a terrible NSFW gift, which is a baffling story for another thread). For reasons that will become clear in a moment, I doubt she ever took it home.

    Everyone forgot about it until our virtual Christmas party in 2020, which involved a game where everyone would get a randomly assigned prize. The list of possible prizes was shared in advance – and there, alongside food, drinks and some pretty fancy items, was the Rake, back in all its glory! The office manager kept posing with it on the video call. The chat bursted with newer employees asking what the hell was going on. Old-timers fell over themselves to tell the whole story, and people kept posting jokes about how much they hoped or didn’t hope to win the Rake (I think the idea was that whoever won it in public would then be offered an alternative prize in private). It was delightful. Even more delightful was the fact that the Rake kept appearing at every other company party game for the rest of my time there: it was this wholesome silly story we always got a good laugh over. I left years ago, but hope it’s still thriving.

  31. Beth*

    Silly but fun: my first career was as a costumer in professional theatre. At my last workplace, years before I arrived, a tradition had started of formally naming all the sewing machines. This was fun and also very useful, because it really helped when you could say which machine needed maintenance or new needles, etc.

    The first set of machines had all been Singers — so they were named after great singers. The first two black Singers were named Marian Anderson and Billie Holiday. Then we got two REALLY powerful new machines, which were named Whitney Houston and Tina Turner. (It was the late 80s.) You get the idea. We also had one Brother machine, which was named Brother Rat, in defiance of the tradition.

    Then we got a new costume shop manager who thought the names were stupid and tried to make us stop using them.

    I’ve heard since then that many companies used to name their computer servers with distinctive names, for much the same reason.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      When my husband had an office with a network, all of the computers on the network had King Arthur names: Arthur, Merlin, Galahad, Percival, Lady of the Lake, and (inevitably) Brave Sir Robin. The company exists at our house now and everyone is remote, but we still have some of the computers networked because they have digital signatures on them.

      2. kicking-k*

        I used to work for Edinburgh University when several of the servers were named for characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Possibly only the vampires: I remember Spike, Angel and Darla. After a while, someone decided these names were silly and unprofessional and they were phased out, but for some reason Spike hung on for years after the others had gone. I did wonder how many people still knew why it was called that.

        1. Kuddel Daddeldu*

          In the early days of the Internet, there was no DNS, just the hosts file – a single, large, text file that linked IP addresses to names. Semi-quirky names were the norm (the Internet was mainly run by academics and engineers, decidedly not by advertisers, and nobody epected to make money with the stuff). Soon, the need for something distributed and thus more scalable was needed, and DNS was born. Still it was quite common to maintain local resources in a hosts file.

    2. MendraMarie*

      We name our home computers / network with Final Fantasy/gaming themed names! Personal computers are main characters, servers (when we had them) were villains, connected devices are locations, etc.

    3. blupuck*

      Very true! Our servers were all named after mathematicians/scientists (Fibonacci, Klein, Gauss) and our printers were college mascots (Husky, Wolverine, Boilermaker, Banana Slug).
      Once, we somehow received a printer that was a spanish language printer- after much debate- it was named Lobo.

    5. JA*

      I worked in technical theater in college and we named all the power tools on a whim one year. Occasionally it takes me a while to remember the common names of those tools (no one at the big box store is going to know Seraphina is a band saw, and yet…).

      1. Paint N Drip*

        Love it! I have a ton of experience using hand tools/power tools, and have an impossible time remembering their names. This would make it so much easier to communicate within the shop AND also impossible to communicate with anyone else lol

      2. Margaret Cavendish*

        I mean, of course Seraphina is a band saw! She’s hardly going to be a power drill, is she. *tsk*

    6. The grey cat*

      Yes, my dad’s company named servers based on the department they were in to help keep them all straight! One department had Simpsons characters, one had Seinfeld, etc.

    7. FG*

      Yup – OldJob servers were places in Scotland, country of origin of the server admin. It certainly is easier than trying to remember if you need to RDP to SP589-13 or whatever.

    8. Pyanfar*

      On a construction site once, the trucks and golf carts were named after wildlife (well, except for the Unicorn truck). Many were rentals that were all the exact same make, model and color and swapped out for new ones once a year, but, the names transferred to the new truck. So much easier to keep records (and ask for locations over the radio…who’s driving Hedgehog? is so much easier than who’s driving the white truck with tag ending in XYZ?)

        1. Roy G. Biv*

          “Are you suggesting that unicorns are domesticated?”

          Bwaaaaaahhh hahaha! (Why is that making me laugh so much?)

    9. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      We name almost everything that hits our home network, and usually in grouped themes. All my devices are Babylon-5 characters, my husband’s are historical scientists, the Alexae are Winnie the Pooh characters, the alarm sensors are all Disney characters with sub themes — the doors are all from Brave (locks are Fergus and Elinor, door-open sensors are Harris, Hubert and Hamish – my house is actually named Dunbroch), the water sensors in the basement are Little Mermaid and in the kitchen are from Finding Nemo, the smoke alarms are all named for cooks, the glass break sensor is Elsa, and the cameras are Quasimodo, Victor, Hugo, Laverne, and Frollo.

      1. Moose*

        I don’t think I’ve ever seen Alexae as a plural for Alexa before, but I don’t think I will ever call them anything else now. What would be a good collective noun, I wonder? Maybe a pod…

      2. Sharpie*

        That’s amazing. And here I just want to name my computer Adele. Because… It’s a Dell. I love themed names, though.

    10. KnittingAtTheBaseballGame*

      In my last company (biotech), we named our conference rooms after women scientists. Occasionally an external attendee would ask about the name and we’d get the opportunity to educate them

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        Love that! I go to a women’s health related medical facility where instead of numbers, the lockers (and matching keys) where you leave your stuff are named after famous women. The ones I remember offhand are Serena Williams, Frida Kahlo and Dolly Parton. Kind of cute, and distracting from whatever screening/procedure you’re there for.

    11. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      I worked in a manufacturing facility where all the equipment had to be set up in pairs. We named the first several pairs for duos. Management said no they had to have generic and boring names, but for years they were referred to privately as Calvin & Hobbes, Laverne & Shirley and Batman & Robin.

    12. Zelda*

      When I was in grad school, my preferred on-campus computing cluster had machines names after various deities. Which is great until you realize you’re checking your email on Set, Egyptian god of storms, disorder, violence, and death.

      My current work computer is Wakeen.

    13. Quinalla*

      Oh yes, naming servers & computers on our home network is serious business!

      I worked with a company that had amusing names for all their conference rooms, I wish I could remember one. We called our conference room in our office before the office closed permanently during covid lockdowns the Boiler Room as it had a repurposed boiler room door as the door and it also got SO HOT in there after 30 minutes or so if the door was shut :)

    14. Mike S*

      I worked at Shell in the 80s, and all of the workstations in the department were named after mollusks. When a new batch came in our director would go to the museum of natural history to get new names.

    15. Tenebrae*

      I had a friend who works at a university in tech support. One of her jobs used to be setting up professor’s laptops.
      She’d name them all after Pokémon; apparently she gave better Pokémon to people she liked.
      My boomer father bemused used a computer named Mewtwo for years.

    16. Randomly Chosen Name*

      We have crew quarters where each bedroom is officially named after different airplane manufacturers – Boeing, Curtiss, Douglas, etc. One of the bathrooms (the one that always seems to have problems) is unofficially named “the cockpit.”

    17. ashie*

      My office is next door to a blood bank and their bloodmobiles all have names like Mabel and Gertrude, prominently painted above the windshield. <3

    18. Thegs*

      If ever a one of the teams I supported needed a name for their server I would give it one from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, so we had our crop of Whiskyjack, QuickBen, and Fiddler humming along in the server room. Our infrastructure servers are much more boringly named though.

  32. Librarian*

    In our main library, there was an odd closet under the back stairs, which the children’s department used for storage. When Harry Potter hit big, it of course was named the Harry Potter closet (under the stairs), and we started confusing a lot of people by saying “go look in Harry Potter for the popcorn machine” and such. A circulation supervisor who was very sweet accidentally said aloud it was also known as the “frown closet” because when you needed to cry or frown it was a convenient place to hide, so it also got called the frown closet from that point on. Our internal lingo spread to other departments, like work orders placed for “the light in the frown closet is flickering” – getting to take the key to the closet and knowing where it was became a “you belong here” moment for staff. I am in a new building, and I have no frown closet, often wish I did.

    1. TK*

      I’m in a library too and we had a “Steve Martin closet,” with a READ poster featuring Steve Martin, that we had to similarly catch ourselves from referring to with outsiders who didn’t know what the heck that meant.

    2. Quinalla*

      Haha, we have a “closet” under our basement stairs (it’s access to the back of the entertainment shelf for the Projector and we also call it the Harry Potter closet.

    3. Cordelia Vorkosigan*

      Our storage room is dark and creepy-looking and is colloquially known as “the dungeon.”

  33. Not Australian*

    I accidentally started the tradition of the Emotional Support Horse. I had a Kinder Egg one day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise), which had a horse toy inside: you put it together from components and it stood on its back legs, about 3″ tall. Not knowing what to do with it after it was assembled, I just left it standing on my desk – where it was quite happy until my opposite number had a particular difficult phone call to deal with, when she sublimated her frustration by taking the horse apart again. From that moment on he was the official office de-stresser: the poor creature got pulled apart and rebuilt more times than was honestly decent, and when I eventually left there – due to stress, oddly enough – he was still on regular duty.

  34. Doomsayer*

    At my old job in public education, my office mate invented the concept of the 8 Weeks of Doom. This was defined as the period between New Year’s and Spring Break where it was dark and gray, there were few holidays, and everyone’s seasonal depression hit an all-time high.

    To combat the 8 Weeks of Doom, she started a tradition of making me a Doom Calendar, which is an advent calendar but for fighting the Doom. She’d include small fidgets, snacks, stickers, and fun tea, which I’d open whenever the Doom felt very high on a particular day. Eventually this turned into a standing tradition of us making each other Doom Calendars, and the concept spread to our whole department. We would eventually just start our department meetings checking in about how everyone was managing the Doom, and did anyone want to open a Doom Calendar door for a quick pick me up?

    Even though we’re not longer office mates, I still exchange a Doom Calendar with this friend every year anyway. It really does help with the Doom!

    1. LaurCha*

      At first I was like, but what about Mardi Gras? That’s before Spring Break!

      And then I felt all doomy and sad because not everybody gets to have Mardi Gras.

      Pro tip: celebrate it anyway. I used to have Mardi Gras parties when I lived in Kansas.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        When I was a practicing Catholic I loved Mardi Gras, no matter where I lived. One year I was waiting tables and the kitchen staff brought in a king cake and I was the one to find the baby (it definitely didn’t give me much luck in the ensuing year, unfortunately). One year my friends and I had a Mardi Gras party which was just an indulgent potluck, although in following years we moved it to a 4/20 feast so the atheists among us were more comfortable with the party theme.

        1. LaurCha*

          It’s really okay to celebrate Mardi Gras even if you’re an unrepentant heathen or just, you know, Not Catholic.

          I know it’s a Catholic holiday, but that ship has sailed. It’s for everybody now!

          The New Orleans tradition is that the person who finds the King Cake baby has to bring the next king cake. (You probably know this but I’m in an oversharing mood today)

          1. londonedit*

            Our equivalent is Shrove Tuesday, which everyone now just knows as Pancake Day – yes it of course has a connection to Easter but really everyone just uses it as an excuse to have pancakes. And it definitely brightens up the Doom season a bit!

    2. Artemesia*

      WE do our annual party during this period — like the 8 weeks of doom — we jsut call it a Souptails party in the deep dark winter. 4 soups are served and it is run like a cocktail party.

  35. Juliet O'Hara*

    I feel like schools accumulate a lot of these. My favorite was our former principal’s St. Patrick’s Day tradition. The kindergarten classes would spend the days leading up to it having read alouds about leprechauns, and the teachers would leave notes or messes supposedly from the leprechaun each morning (like Elf on the Shelf). Then, on the day itself, each class would be brought down to the office, which had a crawlspace underneath the health office. Our principal would pop open the trap door on the floor, descend into the dark crawlspace, and triumphantly emerge with a very old, beat up leprechaun doll, to screams of delight from the kinders. She would scold it for the mischief it had caused and then banish it from school grounds for another year.

    1. Always Tired*

      At my elementary school, if we hit the accumulated pages for the reading challenge, we got a day of fun and games and the principal had to spend it on the roof. There was no greater joy than everyone being lined up on the playground, told we hit the goal, and seeing her wave from the roof up above before we ran off the spend the day playing.

      She also dressed up as Viola Swamp for Halloween every year, took a turn in the fundraiser dunk tank, and thew out the first pitch in the annual Teachers v. 5th graders softball game. She lived in a charming little house with a white picket fence covered in wisteria. Literally a woman out of a children’s book.

  36. AthenasTree*

    We have a tradition that when people wear similar shirts or outfits to work by accident they get their picture taken together and posted to the team slack channel #twinning

    There was one day that everyone except one person was wearing a burgundy shirt or blouse. Big picture day!

    2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I went to an onsite meeting once where 11 of the 12 people in the room were wearing black slacks and white blouses with black cardigans or blazers. I swanned in, in my red-orange-and-turquoise skirt with a red top, and they were like “…. are you in the right place?” I said “yes, but I apparently did not get the memo!” They put me in the middle of the group photo.

      1. It's Marie - Not Maria*

        I walked into a Panel Job Interview where all the Panel Members were dressed in black and white. It was like they were all wearing a uniform, and here I am in a pair of khakis, a cream colored blouse and dark Teal Blazer. I did not get the job, and honestly, I’m okay with that.

    4. ICodeForFood*

      I once worked in a purchasing department where every once in a while the entire department (6 or 7 women) would all show up wearing the same color scheme. It used to happen somewhat regularly, at least every other month or so…

  37. TCO*

    When two or more employees dress alike, we take a photo. We have a (digital) album going back several years now. It happens surprisingly often considering we don’t have all that many staff.

    1. Preschool Guy*

      My husband and I work together (in the same building, for the same org, but on different floors and departments) and accidentally do this at least once a week, so that album would be at least 30% us, plus a few including our mutual work friend who also semi-regularly accidentally matches us

      1. Dog momma*

        Every so often, but not so much now, husband and I would dress in different rooms and come out wearing the same colors…jeans didn’t count..

      2. TCO*

        There is a photo in my office’s album of when my husband (who does not work at my company) and I accidentally dressed identically while working from home during covid.

      3. Anonymous Scientist*

        My spouse and I also work in the same building for the same org but on different floors and in different departments. We generally try not to wear the same org t-shirt EXCEPT on Twin Day when we absolutely do.

  38. Whale I Never*

    Every library/archive I’ve known has at least one fun themed cart for transporting books and boxes. One library had giant googly eyes attached to almost every cart, except for the one that had tiny googly eyes. Most elaborate was probably the woolly mammoth-themed cart with fur, eyes, tusks, the whole shebang. A cart with one wonky wheel was covered in Nemo stickers. My personal favorite was the pale purple cart labeled “Lavender Menace” at a women’s archive that had a robust collection of lesbian/queer women’s material.

    1. another Hero*

      Ours all have names. Pete the Cart. Anne Hathawheels. Carty McFly. Carti B. Ursula Cart Le Guin. Cart Stevens. Marion Cartillard. Cartstance Wu. People pick their puns according to their own enthusiasms.

  39. Juicebox Hero*

    The bibs one makes me think of one lady from my knitting group. Pre-pandemic, we used to order in lunch on Saturdays. When her husband retired and closed his dental office, he had a boatload of those paper bibs they put on you while they work on your teeth. She bogarted them and used them when she ate, and gave them to anyone else who wanted one. Me. I wanted one. For reasons I can’t explain, I’m an incredibly messy eater no matter how hard I try.

    1. Artemesia*

      What is it about spoons that make them so hard to use LOL I need one of those bibs or I am likely to be that old person with drips on their shirt.

  40. Retiring Academic*

    This isn’t exactly an *office* tradition (it would be a bit loud indoors), but back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I worked for Jardine Matheson, the Hong Kong-based Scottish trading company which was also big in shipping (originally). They have a gun mounted outside their offices in Causeway Bay which is fired every day at noon (as mentioned in Noel Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’), the original purpose being for their ships in Hong Kong harbour to set their clocks by it. Normally it’s fired by staff employed for the purpose, but sometimes distinguished visitors are invited to fire it, or employees of the company on some special occasion. I’m happy to say I fired it once to celebrate my marriage.

    1. Susan*

      It’s wonderful! And my internet searching based on posts has led to knowledge of toilet accessories and penguin puppets I never knew I needed.

  42. HomerJaySimpson*

    My office has a giant Teddy Bear (bigger than my 5 year old) that gets moved around from desk to desk when people aren’t around. So if someone is one maternity leave, or on temporary assignment to another division, the bear sits at their desk.
    It also has a knee brace, for some reason.

    3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I have one of these – the four-and-a-half-foot tall version from Costco – sitting in an armchair in my living room. He has a cutlass in one hand and a Nerf shotgun in the other, and he represents my right to keep and arm bears. (I also have several pictures of various cats, past and present, curled up between his feet on his footstool, so he is Moose the Armed Bear, Defender of Feline Dignity.)

  43. Texan in exile on her phone*

    I worked in corporate planning for an F100. The lowest-paid analysts were required to bring bagels for everyone on Friday, including people who used to work in the department. It worked out to about once every seven or eight weeks per person. The VPs and directors never contributed.

    The more I think about it now, the angrier I get. It was already a horrible place to work – I knew from experience the lights went out at 10 pm and you had to call security to turn them back on. And then I had to pay to feed people making twice as much money as I did?

    I quit one year and one day after I started for a job that paid 50% more.

    And I didn’t have to take bagels.

    1. Anonymel*

      My son is a firefighter and has changed stations a few times. “Rookies” are required to bring in donuts, brownies, cookies, something sweet every shift (24 on 48 off) until their new Capt. decides they’ve done it long enough. At one station he did it for about 3 months. I expressed dismay about it (for one thing it meant either he or I had to bake something every 3rd day or he had to get up even earlier than usual and go to Dunkin’ at 6am to get to work on time, but he shrugged it off and said, everyone else has also had to do it, he was okay with it and it wasn’t a surprise as it was a well known tradition among firefighters. Sort of a food based hazing I guess?

      1. Dr. Doll*

        Hopefully he will become a Capt some day and HIS station will have a tradition that the most senior, best paid members bring treats on a reasonable schedule. Reverse hazing. Anti-hazing?

  44. CreepyPaper*

    Tuesdays in one job I had became ‘blue suede Shoesdays’ after a group of guys showed up wearing blue suede shoes on the same day, totally by accident. It swiftly became a Thing and most people participated – I had a very snazzy pair of blue suede ankle boots that I loved but were strictly reserved for Blue Suede Shoesday.

    I don’t know anyone who works at that company anymore because I would love to know if they continue the tradition!

    1. KaciHall*

      We had Pink Fridays at a bank I worked at because our banker (a recent college grad) and a teller (who was previously a manager at borders and just needed a job for a few years) got in an argument about who had the brighter pink tie. So they both wore them the next day. So many people commented on it, that the next week we ALL wore pink. I ended up buying some hot pink shrugs and camis so I wasn’t wearing the same shirt every week, because I am not a pink girl.

      None of us work for that bank (or any bank) any more, but every so often we’ll post on Facebook about it feeling like a Pink Friday and tag everyone. It really brightened up the Fridays and even our clients commented on how cheerful it was.

    2. Polyhymnia O’Keefe*

      My husband works for a theatre company that does red shoes on opening night — creative team, artistic director, etc. The cast, who all obviously have shoes (typically not red) as part of their costume will wear red shoes for the opening night party, and many longtime ticket holders also wear their red shoes if they come on opening.

  45. Deni*

    We have a table gong. It’s a good size! Whenever we close a deal or have other good news the lucky person gets to strike it. I can be very loud.

    1. One Duck In A Row*

      We had one of those too! It was occasionally used for achievements, but more often used by someone walking past being goofy, and mostly not used much at all.

      But then during the “great resignation” that hit a few years ago, it started to become tradition for the person who was leaving to gong at the end of their last day. Just among those of us on our team or friends in nearby teams. Now I just think of it as the gong of sadness, because every time it gonged it meant a person I was sad to see go was never going to be back. It is no longer here, since the person who it belonged to eventually left, too. In fact, I think I’m the only person left from the group of people who would be resignation gong ringers, and perhaps its absence is the only thing keeping me here? help?

  46. Flying Fish*

    When someone leaves a specific department in our office, there are always “Bye Bye Bagels” on their last day.

  47. Flying Fish*

    I work in a medical office with seriously ill patients, so patients dying is a regular thing.

    We have a bulletin board in an employee only area where we post their obituaries. It’s a way to communicate that someone has passed, and obits are public records, so not a privacy violation.

    It’s nice to see pictures of our patients from before they were sick.

    1. One Duck In A Row*

      Sometimes my ADHD makes me randomly skip entire sentences or paragraphs. In this case, I started off not reading the first or last line of your comment. Just the middle. Which, on its own, is somewhat alarming. (The problem with reading AAM posts/comments while eating lunch and waiting for my afternoon meds to kick in…)

      But seriously, that is so lovely. I mean the entire story with beginning and ending sentences included. <3

    2. Paint N Drip*

      My clients die not-infrequently as well, and obituaries are passed around here too. We know them from the end of their life, but getting to learn more about them and seeing them healthy & youthful is truly wonderful.

      1. Repeat Offended*

        Well, unless you treat vampires or the like, it’s hopefully infrequent for the individual patient…
        I’m not afraid of death but would not necessarily do it more than once.

  48. Emily*

    At the start of this year, I realized that I dreaded Wednesdays specifically (I’m in office M/W/Th), so I started bringing in fruit I had never tried before from the grocery store to share with my team. This morphed into Wacky Fruit Wednesdays, where my team and people seated near us talk about anything other than work for 30 minutes and try new food. We’ve tried over 100 fruits at this point, and people have brought in different things like hot sauce and pickles. We pivoted to a paper airplane contest for Ramadan, and it was a blast. This week we tried the miracleberries that convert sour into sweet and ate plain limes. It’s become the highlight of our workweek.

    1. ThursdaysGeek*

      That is pretty cool!

      I had a boss who claimed he had never met a fruit he didn’t like, but really, I should have known better than to bring a durian into the building.

      1. H3llifIknow*

        OMG. My son likes the taste of durian and it has a sort of custardy texture so he has made durian flavored ice cream with it. But even he explains the smell to people as “think dirty diaper filled with rotten onions.” *shudder*

        1. ThursdaysGeek*

          The taste isn’t nearly as bad as the smell. It tastes a bit like sweet, rotten onions. But the smell! I’ve described it as teen boy’s dirty gym socks.

        2. Panicked*

          To me, durian tastes like those chicken-in-a-biscuit crackers and the smell is “gasoline soaked rotten apples.” It’s always so interesting to hear how others describe it!

          1. JustaTech*

            I’ve never tasted it or smelled it, but one time someone brought in durian candy and bacon jellybeans and the scent from someone eating both sent the whole lab hunting for who had dropped a bottle of beta-mercapto-ethanol, which is a really nasty smelling and quite toxic chemical that is used in cell culture.
            Even a small spill will clear the lab for the rest of the day between the smell and the headaches.
            But honestly I think that the bacon jelly beans were more to blame than the durian candy.

  49. beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

    For a couple years in a row in the spring, my former department participated in a game of Assassin (for our purposes, it had a non-violent name that was a play on the name of a project we had completed the first year we did it, but the concept was the same as Assassin). For the uninitiated, in Assassin, everyone is given a target, you “take them out” in whatever way is specified (in this case, a post-it note on the back or arm), and the person who is out gives the person who got them out their target’s name, and it continues until there’s a winner. We had off-limits areas (bathrooms, offices, and conference rooms were off-limits; hallways, elevators, the atrium, the office gym, and the cafeteria were free game. And if you saw your target in the grocery store or something after work, I think that was technically allowed, too, though I don’t know that anyone ever went that far) and we were strictly forbidden from running. Even with all the restrictions, it could still get intense in a mostly fun way. People who got out early would form alliances with their work friends and travel in a pack to and from meetings and lunch to protect those who were still in the game. Participation was entirely optional, but a large portion of the department played, and it was honestly really fun. (And this department had a wide range of ages — from new grads to people nearing retirement, and I think there were at least a few players in most age groups. It wasn’t just a bunch of people in their twenties playing.)

    We moved to a larger building, which had us more spread out, and then post-COVID restrictions, everyone was on a varying hybrid schedules, so the last attempt at a game kind of died out without a clear winner. And even though I much prefer working from home, I do think of the couple of games that we played very fondly. I wish it had continued to be an annual thing.

    1. SkiddamarinkADinkADink*

      Not work, but we played marshmallow assassins in my college theatre department and I fully got tackled in the cafeteria once. Good times!

  50. ThursdaysGeek*

    Background: Rubber Duck Programming is a thing. And my co-workers are in multiple offices and states.

    When I needed help, I’d Teams call a co-worker and ask if they could give me some input, refer to them as my rubber duck. One time, after a particular helpful session, I went to Amazon, ordered a passel of rubber ducks, and had them sent to his office. A bit later, after I was helpful back, I came to my office to find a box filled with ducks. Our intern was brilliant: she got some ducks, and realized she was fully part of the team. A fellow teammate stopped by my cube and got some ducks. A large stuffed duck showed up for me (and I will point out that hugging a huggable duck is completely professional!) Ducks were anonymously sent to the boss.

    We call our ourselves Team Ducks, and it exemplifies how we are willing to ask for help, willing to give help. I’m really going to miss this team when I retire in 2 months, and I’m taking my ducks with me.

    1. One Duck In A Row*

      So I just expanded all comments and did a ctrl-F so I can go back and reread a comment I left after I worried that I made a weird typo. Obviously the search term I used was “Duck”. Was surprised when it said there were 13 Ducks on the page. Snort-laughed when I hit the down arrow to find myself at this comment, with a veritable pond of yellow-highlighted ducks.

    2. Rage*

      Team Ducks > Duck Club.

      When I was an EA, I used to discretely put one of two little rubber ducks on top of my monitor to indicate the CEO’s mood that day (I had a low-wall cube in the middle of the open area surrounded by Exec offices. The librarian duck (reading a book) meant “shhh…maybe not today” and the jazzercize duck (wearing an 80s track jacket) meant “we’re up and running and getting things done! Feel free to approach.” The other members of the C-Suite loved it.

    3. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      husband and I (both coding managers, albeit programming for him and medical coding for me) have rubber ducks on our desks that we talk to on the regular :) Mine is dressed as Abraduck Lincoln, I think his current one is an astronaut.

    5. It's Marie - Not Maria*

      At McMurdo Station Antarctica, there are Ducks in the windowsill of the HR Office of the Galley Building. They are not part of the America Jeep culture, but are there to spread joy. It’s my understanding they are still an attraction after I left them there several months ago.

  51. beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk-ox*

    Also, I LOVE the office plant and Formal Fridays. The office plant seems like such a sweet and kind way to signal support in a way that’s not overwhelming or intrusive, and Formal Fridays just sound really fun.

    1. Irina*

      I love the Formal Fridays too! Our church choir (which is now my workplace since I got kicked upstairs to director) has a tradition of wearing much more formal/festive dress on Christmas Eve than on ordinary Sundays, long skirts for the women and suit and tie for the men.

    3. Recovering Librarian*

      In a previous job, I worked with a department who had Fancy-Pants Friday. One guy often wore a tux, another sometimes wore a tux, and a third guy, who also played in a band, wore a zoot suit. Interestingly, I don’t remember the women in the department ever dressing up.

  52. H.Regalis*

    Some people used the opportunity to bust out their 80s/90s apparel with shoulder pads and chunky gold jewelry.

    I love this ^_^ I’m not a costume/formal wear person, but I love seeing all the awesome things other people come up with.

  53. pally*

    Every year, on the first day back to work, we tested our luck.

    Someone went round to each employee, carrying a large paper bag. Inside the bag were a bunch of scratch-off lottery tickets. Each employee was asked to draw one ticket, scratch off and see how lucky they were.

    No one ever won much. But it was a fun way to greet the new year. Folks would fantasize a bit about what they might do if they’d won a big amount of money.

  54. Anon for this*

    There was this small framed family photo that someone found in an old desk. No one knows who they are. We used to put this in new people’s office while they were on vacation. We would try not to make it obvious where we put it, but it was always in plain sight. We would see how long it would take them before they realized that was a photo of random people in their office. After several years of doing this, the photo disappeared.

    1. GreenShoes*

      I can imagine someone walking into their coworkers office “Hey, what’s that picture of Aunt Betty and the kids doing here” and taking it home :)

  55. CSRoadWarrior*

    Maybe not that unusual, but when I was working as a temp for a beverage company in 2017, the office would play music in the office on Fridays to kick off the weekend. We would have one of the employees connect his/her smartphone to the Bluetooth speaker we had in the corner of the office.

    It was a mid-sized office and completely open floor in one room, so everyone could hear the music. And we all enjoyed it.

    1. ashie*

      We have a weekly Zoom all-staff meeting at 8:30 am and for a while there the EA would start off the meeting while everyone was joining with a curated playlist. I actually really miss it, it was a nice way to start off the day!

  56. Thedoorwasbigenough*

    My warehouse had a ‘happy bell’, you know something good happens you ring the bell praise the employee kind of thing. Our bell, upon closer inspection, had “Titanic” stamped across it. So yeah our happy bell was Titanic replica.

    I’d like to say our tragic/happy bell is still ringing songs of achievement, but sadly it was destroyed in a small fire we had in the warehouse. (Only bells were harmed in the telling of this story)

  57. Perplexed Penguin*

    My workplace is fairly casual, you just generally have to dress nicer than the clients we work with which isn’t hard considering most are young adults. Anyway, at the end of one semester, I was super burnt out and each week started with a groan SO I started a tradition of Bow Tie Monday!
    Now, I’m a woman who typically dresses in khakis and button downs, so bow ties weren’t too far a step up, but it made me feel better and helped me put my best foot forward. Sometimes people join me and sometimes not, but people expect to see me in a bow tie anyway. It became such a thing that when I was featured in our org’s public-facing magazine and had to be photographed with 5 things important to me, a pile of bow ties was one of them.
    So far, I’m on year 3 and counting!

      1. Perplexed Penguin*

        Hi, thanks for asking! I probably have about 20, although I only wear about 10 religiously. I do like that I have enough of them to lend to friends that need them at times. :)

      1. Perplexed Penguin*

        All of mine are already tied. Those are usually the ones I find on sale. But I should probably up my game.

        1. Rain, Disappointing Australian (formerly Lucien Nova)*

          Is this where I should note I make and sell bowties? Both pre-tied and self-tie? In whatever colour/pattern fabric I can get my hands on?

          (I also wear bowties, but they’re quite expensive and I can never find any in patterns I like, so I began making them. People LOVE them and are constantly awed when they ask “where’d you get that bowtie?” and I tell them I made it. :D)

          1. Perplexed Penguin*

            I don’t know if it’s allowed, but if it is, I would LOVE to know the name of your shop and/or a link to your stuff. I’m always on the hunt!

            1. Rain, Disappointing Australian (formerly Lucien Nova)*

              I’ll probably be able to pop a link into the weekend thread!

  58. Rage*

    Last year, our new-ish CEO (he started Dec 1 of the previous year, so there wasn’t time for him to really push anything new) announced that the company would give a holiday ham or turkey, plus a pie, for every employee. Sign up here, pick up on this date, we’ll deliver 3rd shift’s to them personally, yadda yadda.

    I was expecting one of those spiral-cut honey hams – you know, like Smithfields or something. Nope. It was a 5 pound dry-cured uncooked ham shank. OMG. We were trading recipes for glazes and seasoning rubs, and bringing leftover portions in to share with others.

    But it’s now an Official Organizational Tradition, as they are repeating it again this year, with the addition of a Tofurkey option. I still opted for the ham.

  59. Sunflower*

    For the first day of baseball season, we throw a party with hot dogs and all the fixings, peanuts, and Cracker Jacks,

  60. Beboots*

    When I worked for a national park as a interpreter (tour guide), if we did a particularly good job that day (helped out in a tricky situation, really rocked a program or something), our boss would give us what she called a “Take a Hike” coupon, which was good for one hour of hiking time on work time. (We’d give it back to “redeem” the coupon when we scheduled a time with our boss to go hiking.) We were the perfect audience for that and the boss usually found a reason to give each of us two or three a season.

    3. Seeking Second Childhood*

      This is brilliant– reward people with a reminder of why they applied for this job!

      And if any administrator questioned “giving extra PTO”, the boss could say it’s an occasional one-hour “spot-check” of trail maintenance. ;)

  61. TheNinthBear*

    I used to work at a small library. Our children’s librarian decided we needed more staff fun, so he purchased 5 or so small action figures and would hide them around the back office. If you found one, you could trade it to him for a piece of candy. Eventually, people started hiding the figures themselves and it became a ‘competition’ to hide them in the most interesting places. He left the department a few months later, but other staff kept hiding the figurines. I was back at that library the other day and was delighted to discover the action figures are still around, hiding on top of door frames and in drawers!

  62. StrayMom*

    Pre-pandemic, there had been “breakfast Fridays” at old job; it was voluntary to participate, and at first, everyone in the office contributed. However, it evolved from bagels and cream cheese to fruit, yogurt and granolas, eventually to full-on feasts. Not that the participants were competitive or anything, but once a colleague brought in a homemade quiche, so I when it was next my turn, I came in with homemade English muffins, smoked salmon and deviled eggs. We were all humbled, however, when a new executive assistant was hired, and she showed up for her first breakfast day with three different kinds of scones, homemade jams, French toast casserole… turns out she used to bake for a small bakery and she killed it! People began to drop out because the expense and time to keep up was becoming unsupportable. I think it still continues to this day, but since the office remains largely remote, I don’t think the breakfast buffets are what they used to be. But those were fun days and a great way to wind up the workweek!

  63. Orbital*

    When I was at my previous job, it was a security requirement that someone sign off on a checklist at the end of the day that all the safes and doors were locked. To indicate whose turn it was that week, we passed around a pretty large smiley face piñata with a bunch of random trinkets stuck into it. It was impossible to forget to lock up if that giant thing was on your desk staring at you all day.

  64. Esmae*

    At a previous office, we had one employee who usually did field work, and any time he came to the office he brought bagels. Part of my job as receptionist was to alert the entire office if he was there with bagels that day. (It was also part of my job to warn people if a certain employee who brewed extremely strong coffee had been the last one in the kitchen, but that was less of a tradition and more of a protective measure).

  65. Anna Green*

    Our office does group photos all the time – for lunchtime potlucks, chili contests, Halloween, lotto draws, completing the giant puzzle in the break room, etc. The walls of the office are covered in group photos dating back a few decades. It’s pretty cute.

    1. H3llifIknow*

      Oh that would be actual HELL for me. I don’t think I’m so ugly and scary looking that I scare children or anything but I CAN NOT have a decent photo taken and I’m ALWAYS pressured “no you HAVE to be in here or it won’t be complete,” etc.. and it makes me miserable because inevitably I WAS right and the picture is awful. No kidding my son and DIL do not have ANY of the pics from their wedding that have me in them anywhere in their house, and I don’t blame them one bit. LOL Even a professional can’t make me look presentable.

      1. Anna Green*

        Thankfully at our office it’s truly optional if you want to be in a group photo. The events are optional as well, so it ends up being people who are enthusiastic about social events that also love group photos. Our more introverted workers tend to read or knit on their breaks, with no requirement to socialize or be in group photos.

      2. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        Yes, I have always hated having my picture taken and I could not stand this. I’m basically willing to be photographed for my passport, driver’s license and work headshot and/or badge photo. Anything else, I’ll take the pic for you, or oops I have a call right now! An office where it was expected that everyone would be in pictures all the time sounds like an office where I’d try to find a WFH option or leave.

      3. goddessoftransitory*

        I take horrid pictures as well; photos of my OWN wedding are in my desk drawer, thank you very much. I absolutely do not want to participate in this kind of nonsense.

      4. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

        My junior high history teacher was taking photos at the Winter Formal. His was the only photo of me that I liked. My mom knew him and we were able to hire him for my wedding 8 years later. Unfortunately, after the divorce all my photos from the wedding are stashed in boxes somewhere and I am again without any good photos of me.

  66. Indisch blau*

    I brought in a mug for the office cupboard that said “Schön, dass es dich gibt!” (literally: It’s lovely, that you exist!, more idiomatically: Glad you’re here!). I actually bought the mug because I thought everyone needs that kind of thing once in a while. The idea was that it could be used by anyone who needed a boost, but one co-worker tended to monopolize it. One day I realized it was not in circulation anymore. Did it meet an untimely end on the kitchen floor? Or did it find a new home with the co-worker who had resigned around the time the mug went missing. And who felt she hadn’t been sent off adequately, as I found out later.

  67. Ann O'Nemity*

    One of the successful tech start-ups in my city used to do Formal Fridays. They went retro with – think old school briefcases – and even catered in cold sandwiches in brown paper bags.

  68. Mindy*

    We do drug and alcohol screening for probation, pre-employment, etc. We collect memes about the topic all year long, then one of the employees puts them in a calendar. Our clients find them hilarious.

  69. VoPo*

    I used to work for a recruiting firm. At one point one of the recruiters got a personal package delivered to the office, and they had included an extra item he hadn’t ordered. It was a sparkly silver cocktail dress. Instead of returning it, he kept it at the office, and we all decided it was lucky. So if someone was having a run of bad luck or had a big placement that they wanted to make sure went smoothly, they would hang the dress by their desk for luck.

  70. Preschool Guy*

    I work in a Jewish preschool. Because Halloween and Valentines Day are holidays with pagan and Christian roots, we don’t celebrate them as a school. Halloween is not replaced with anything, but the kids (and adults!) wear costumes on the closest Friday to Purim in the spring. There is also the Purim Parade, in which all the classes parade their costumes through the building for parents and staff from the rest of the building to cheer on (and get loads of pictures). It’s seriously the highlight of my year. Last year there was a tiny Ruth Bader Ginsberg, complete with white collar and black glasses.
    Valentines Day is replaced by Pajama Day, where everyone in the school (and some non-school staff in other parts of the building) wear school-appropriate pajamas. The normal morning snack is replaced by waffles and fruit, and many classes relax their schedule to have some cozy downtime with extra stories. In the office one year, we bought a pack of those long Victorian-style nightcaps with pompoms or tassels at the end, and each wore them all day. I misplaced mine but some of my colleagues still wear them every year.

    1. Mouse named Anon*

      I worked at a Jewish agency that also had a Jewish preschool/daycare. The kids would do a parade at Purim and it was so fun!

  71. Green Thumb*

    This may be apocryphal, but legend has it that Albert Einstein had a plant in his office at Princeton where, to this day, whenever anyone gets their PhD in Physics at Princeton, they get a clipping from Einstein’s Plant. Through a friend of a friend, my office has a great-great-great grandplant of Einstein’s Plant that has become an exalted member of the team. Our office is about to go through a renovation and there have been many discussions about ensuring that Einstein’s Plant is taken care of.

  72. QueenFrstine06*

    My office had a full blown March Madness ping-pong tournament! It started the year we moved to a new space with “cool” amenities like the ping-pong table, and I tried putting something together to have a little fun and boost morale since we had a couple of terrible bosses. The bosses left not long after, but the tournament grew after that — we had a full 32-entrant bracket (some years even written large-size on the whiteboard walls of my cube) that we attempted to seed based on prior years’ results. There were some incredibly good and competitive players among the staff! There would be funny low-key smack talk, and people even started bringing their own paddles. For the finals every year we’d do a big party where people would bring food (bonus points for ping-pong theming) and our CEO would officiate the coin toss to determine who served first. The winner of the tournament got a cheesy trophy that I bought off some custom trophy site, and would have to pass the trophy down to the next year’s winner if they didn’t retain. It was such fun!

  73. korangeen*

    The Formal Friday sounds fun!

    My old department took Pi Day VERY seriously. A huge pie competition and gathering, complete with formal photos of all the entrants and winners, and super elaborate (internal) video promos about Pi Day that were essentially short films with whole storylines and characters and special effects.

    1. HipsandMakers*

      My office also really does up Pi Day. It begins with a pie baking competition (judged by a panel of three tasters, but everyone can try samples). Most are sweet dessert pies, but there have been some excellent savory ones. (There are also pre-wrapped hand pies for the less adventurous or the tardy.)

      Then there is a pie-EATING competition, and three to four competitors smoosh their faces down in pie tins and inhale as much whipped cream as they can in the time allotted. The winner receives a crown. The crown is replaced each year so the winner gets to keep it in their office in perpetuity. And competitors have started wearing costumes and using noms de guerre. The MC turns into a total pun-dropping hypebeast. The director wears a sports jersey with our logo on it.

      We love Pi Day.

  74. Anonymel*

    Our office is hybrid, but has instituted a “Chain of Excellence” Award. Leadership team chose the first person who got it and then she got to choose the next person and so on. You give a little speech about their contributions to our program, and then ceremoniously annoint them with a cardboard crown, covered in tin foil and when they’re in the office for the week, they have to wear it and then it’s passed on. It’s fun and silly and a nice way of recognizing people like Admins etc… who do a lot but aren’t often recognized.

    1. Coffee*

      I am disappointed that it’s not a literal metal chain you are handed on pillow like a medieval sword

  75. Goddess47*

    Most of us are now retired (we were in IT support in academia) but we would pick a random Friday and do “Pizza and a Bad Movie”

    As the supervisor of our tiny corner of the world, I would generally spring for the pizza but occasionally charge it back to the office. Once a year it would be more potluck and folk would bring various foods…

    But, man, the bad movies! The guy in charge of the movies really could pick them and we watched a number of bad movies over the years. (We were all salaried, which made the movie time flexible.)

    Damn. I miss that!

  76. harps*

    We had a goat shrine. It was just this little alcove with a few pictures of goats and in the center was a little toy goat statue that would scream when you pushed down on it. Whenever someone accomplished something or completed a difficult task they would hit the goat and we would all cheer for them. New hires would hit the goat when they got out of training and got their first real work assignments.

    1. AnneCordelia*

      You didn’t leave offerings for the goat? My high school Ancient History teacher had a made-up “god” made out of plasticine on top of a filing cabinet in his office, and any students who came into the office would leave little decorations or trinkets for it.

  77. Red Headed Stepchild*

    My team received 2 bags of a highly coveted puffed treat one year. We got through about 1.5 bags before either interest was lost or politeness took over and the last bit was never finished. Nobody could bear to throw it away though so one day one of the team hid it at someone’s desk. This began a multi-year tradition of passing the puffcorn. We competed to have the best, sneakiest, funniest ways to hide it or pass it.

    Memorable moments included:
    Someone slipping it into a team member’s coat sleeve at a team lunch
    Having it mailed to my house during covid
    Sneaking into the office when I was supposed to be off to tape it under my co-worker’s desk

    It lived for years, survived covid and only died when my team split for other ventures.

  78. why me>-*

    my office had a taxidermized squirrel they called their mascot. It was horrid. They stuffed it in the Xmas tree, left it on the reception desk, it shed and was not nice looking. One year they demanded I had make a hat and scarf for it, which I did. (mainly as i was shocked at the demand, but went with it in case it ended up funny) after that, they FINALLY decided to toss the poor carcass out, along with the hand made items they demanded. No one ever thanked me, and when I inquired they just said, oh we assumed you would not want them back.
    Terrible tradition. they tried to buy another one but in the end decided not to.

  79. Nonny-nonny-non*

    We had the Quality Unicorn. The unicorn was a pink and white plushie, about 6 inches high from hoof to horn, and someone had made it a mini version of our lab jackets.
    My site works in the aviation business, so ensuring all our output would meet the relevant Quality standards was a big deal. If someone had an action due that day in our Quality system they were given the Quality Unicorn to sit on their desk until they were done. The idea was to prevent people going home having forgotten they had an action to close – seeing it there would remind you.
    If no-one had an action that day the unicorn would sit on top of the central notice-board, gazing out across the workshop.

  80. Dinwar*

    A jobsite I was on for six months had daily meetings, with a strict no phone policy. If your phone rang, you owed a dollar, which you had to put in the coffee can in front of twenty or so people. I think they increased it to $5 or $10 at one point, because of the number of distractions. Several times throughout the project the cash was donated to local charities. Raised some good money, did some good for the local community, and oddly there was a spirit of comradery built by it. Needing to pay the fine was sort of a rite of passage to enter into the construction management team.

  81. anon for this*

    Back when we had an office, there was a treat table where folks would bring in baked goods to share. We’d write what was brought, since it was often homemade. Folks would usually just tape a sheet on the table with the description scrawled on it. Once, someone left the sheet behind so the next time treats came, the previous line on the paper was scratched out, and a new description got added to the same sheet.
    When we ran out of space on that page, a 2nd sheet was taped to the bottom of the first one. Eventually, the taped sheets hit the floor.
    The next time treats showed up, someone had folded up the 3 pages of treat descriptions, written ‘treats.tar.gz’ on it, and taped to the table next to a new sheet. We faithfully kept rotating treats.log from then on!
    (we still bring in home made treats for occasional office visits, but treats.log has stopped, and alas, I think we lost the archived logs during move out)

  82. SALC*

    My previous company took computer security very seriously and it was a big deal to lock your computer when you were away from it. If you didn’t, you would send out an email to your team that says “I love unicorns!” and everyone would know your shame. If it was happening to you repeatedly your manager might talk with you about it because you’re making a habit of leaving your computer unlocked.

    Then I switched to a security team and things got much sillier. Because we take security so seriously, if you get unicorned twice within a short time your email would say that you’re bringing baked goods next week. Then we switched to our team ALWAYS owing a snack to the team if you get unicorned. We had a unicorn goblet that lived on your desk until you brought in carbs for the team .

    We had to make rules about what counts—if you were still in the area of your desk (open plan), between your desk and the door, it didn’t count UNLESS somebody could go to the area next door, get the unicorn mask, put it on, sit at your desk and send an email without you noticing. This was to prove you wouldn’t notice a stranger coming in and using your computer. This exercise was done successfully a couple times!

    I was notorious for ‘badge unicorning’—you’re not allowed to leave your badge sitting around either, and your badge could be used to scan documents and email them ‘from’ you. So I had a unicorn picture I would scan and send to the team if you left your badge at your desk

    1. CreepyPaper*

      We used to change people’s desktops to pictures of unicorns if they left their computer unlocked.

      Funny how people only ever used to do that once lol!

    2. Mike S*

      One of my coworkers left his computer unlocked while he went off and did something. His officemate composed a “I Quit” email addressed to our boss, but didn’t send it. First coworker came back, saw that he had an open email, and promptly sent it.
      The rest of us became aware of this when they both took off running to our bosses office, so she wouldn’t have a heart attack.

      1. SALC*

        When I moved to Germany one of my German coworkers wanted to send the classic German prank email, which was to invite everyone to an FKK party at their house (FKK = Freikörperkultur also known as “nudist”)

        I was her manager and had to say sorry, as an American company it wouldn’t fit the culture to prank your coworker by jokingly inviting people to show up naked to his house even if everyone knows the invite is a prank… nudity is just taken more seriously there so nope let’s avoid it heh

    3. Six Feldspar*

      I used to work in a place that did that too, but with ponies! Very effective way to make people lock their screens!

      I’m proud to say that I was never “pony”ed myself and several jobs later I still reflexively lock my screen whenever I need to step away from the computer.

      1. SarahKay*

        A co-worker and I used to rotate each other’s screens if we left our computers unlocked, so like you I always lock out of habit.
        When I had to WFH in 2020 it took about three months before I could bring myself to leave it unlocked while I went to the bathroom or to get a coffee. I live alone – I don’t know who I thought would access my computer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    4. JustaTech*

      My husband’s startup was less kind than unicorns – they used Justin Bieber.
      First time not locking your computer? Slack message “I love Justin Bieber!”
      It would escalate from there to emails, desktop backgrounds, Slack icon.

      Most people only got Bieber’d once. But there was one guy who just never locked his computer. So finally he left it unlocked and came back to it locked with a new password (biber) playing Justin Bieber music at volume, so now he had the peer pressure of everyone else in the company to lock his dang computer!

  83. Library Lady*

    I just joined a team that has a yodeling pickle that they bring through the department to announce when it’s closing time. It’s kinda like one of those novelty screaming goat toys, except…it’s a yodeling pickle.

  84. Peanut Hamper*

    At my last job, somebody said something about panning for gold on their last vacation out west, and how disappointed they were that they didn’t find very much.

    The very next Monday, a large smooth rock painted shiny gold showed up on their desk. (I have no idea who did that, I assure you.) There were many laughs, and it sat on their desk for a few weeks until it disappeared, only to show up on someone else’s desk a month later. This happened until I left there: it would mysteriously disappear, then mysteriously show up on someone else’s desk for a few weeks before dipping back into the ether again. It showed up on my desk on my last day there.

  86. Lizy*

    We’ve started a new one this week, where most work – and all work before lunchtime – must be done one-handed because one hand must be holding and petting the kitten. Right next to one’s face. Full kitten fluff in the face. Constantly. The kitten (which is SUPER adorable, btw) will otherwise sit at my feet mewing until I pick her up.

    1. Margaret Cavendish*

      That is an EXCELLENT tradition. My kitten office-mate is very much in favour of this one as well.

    2. Mouse named Anon*

      My dog started the tradition of only wanting pets during meetings. Then loudly sniffing whenever I un-mute.

      1. JustaTech*

        When we first went home for COVID both my cat and my coworker’s dog would *only* come in our offices to shout at us, demand pets, or, on one memorable occasion, throw up on our carpets during our team meeting. The rest of the week, not a peep, not a bump, nothing. The minute there are other humans to talk to?
        Oh, it’s bothering time!

  87. L*

    We have some sort of relationship (I’m fuzzy on the details) with some sort of co-op or charity that grows and sells garlic. There used to be an annual sale for the staff, but I guess our leadership team decided it was better to just buy it in bulk, so periodically we each get hand-delivered fancy bags of garlic by management.

    1. Forrest Rhodes*

      Oh, wow, this sounds great—where do I sign up?
      (From one who thinks there might be a Too Much Garlic level out there somewhere, but hasn’t found it yet and is not sure she believes it exists.)

      1. I DK*

        I have had Garlic-Parmesan Wings that should have been called Garlic with Parmesan & Chicken flavoring that didn’t move the needle on the TMG Meter(tm).

        Random Bags of Garlic is my new unicorn office perk!

    2. I Have RBF*

      Oooooh! I live near enough to Gilroy, the Garlic Capital of the World (supposedly). When it’s harvest season and the wind blows right, you can smell it in the entire SF Bay Area.

  88. Margaret Cavendish*

    The service desk team in my office has a theme for nearly every day of the week:

    Moustache Mondays (everyone wears a cheap moustache from the dollar store)
    Tiara Tuesday (ditto)
    Wig Wednesdays (ditto)
    Treats Thursdays (snacks!)

    Most of them WFH on Fridays, so there’s no theme. But the rest of the time it’s very fun to walk past their area and see what everyone is wearing!

  89. Library Girl*

    My library has a doll (roughly the size of an American Girl doll) missing her left arm. She’s also got a thousand-yard stare. As we’re the Youth Services department, she gets dressed up and sometimes used in programming. When I started working here, she was in a little monkey suit. For Halloween, she was a ladybug. We all call her Baby and I think she may be our mascot now.

  90. FernLaPlante*

    We have a rotating lego set that when built it’s the city we live in. Every month it gets disassembled and passed to someone else. They build it and keep it on their desk for a month then break it apart and pass it on. It’s about the size of a hardback book on end so it’s not intrusive and everyone gets excited when it’s their turn. We’ve been doing it for 3 years and never lost a piece.

  91. Seahorse Girl*

    Our work group had a large fake banana slug. Whoever asked the stupidest question in a our weekly meeting would have to keep it for a week.

  92. foofoo*

    Back when we had an office, the front room had a massive gong in it… like one of the ones you’d see in a concert band or Chinese festival/temple or such. No idea where it came from, it just showed up one day. C-levels would use it to announce/celebrate whenever we signed a new client. You could hear it from one end of the office to the other, it would just CLANG out of nowhere and people would start cheering. Since we went fully remote due to covid, we obviously don’t have a gong anymore, but when a new client signing is posted about in the announcement channel, a handful of people respond to it with a gong emoji. It’s confusing as heck to people who are new to the company.

  93. Pixel*

    Oh heavens. Old Job had SCADS of traditions.

    The VP of Ops would always ask a question during the Q&A part of quarterly all-company meetings, so eventually the CEO just started calling on him to open Q&A. When the VP retired, some of the managers started carrying VP-face-onna-stick during quarterly meetings and designating someone to be the official one for purposes of question-asking.

    Old Job is a hardware manufacturer and this sometimes involves patents — if you were responsible for a patent being submitted you got a leather jacket.

    The CEO’s admin (an absolute jewel of a human being and possibly the sweetest person ever – no, really, the CEO officially fired a customer who made her cry) decided that during the summer we would have company-wide treats on Fridays. Ice cream trucks, smoothie bars, s’mores tables (I had to teach more people how to roast marshmallows and make s’mores…). She also got us hats for the annual holiday lunch. They started out as regular Santa hats and got…more involved – Santa jester hats, Xmas trees, etc. I may still have one floating around.

    We got Honeybaked hams for Xmas and a pie and a grocery gift certificate for Thanksgiving.

    In Engineering they started playing pranks on people who were out for any length of time — when one of the managers took a few weeks off to refinish his basement — they built him a basement in his office (basically a loft) but the fire marshal made them take it down. They set up a beauty salon for another manager when he was out for surgery. When the director of QA was overseas getting a new acquisition integrated in, they built him a deck outside his office which had an internal window looking out at the rest of the QA department. There was a mural on the wall, and plants, and a water feature.

    Current Job, in the office we were in when I started, in my department, we had Nerf guns. Well, I had a crossbow. And we also had Beer Fridays — there was a small fridge, you’d bring beer or your favorite other beverage and hang out on the lounge furniture and just chat. This is how the CFO and I found out that a) we were from the same town, and b) he’d dated my babysitter.

    Since Current Job is now mostly remote, we don’t really have any traditions anymore which is sad.

  94. Magnus*

    Worked at a very casual office (sweatpants OK) that had opposite-Casual Friday, when you dressed more professionally (or just nicer than usual)

  95. OneTimeAnon*

    I work in a public defender office, and we have the “Gideon Award” – a wooden plaque – that gets passed around to whichever attorney has most recently won a case. This is the type of work that comes with few pats on the back and not much time at all to celebrate before you’re working on the next 857 cases, so it’s always fun to have this moment of passing the award on.

    We also had a fun tradition a few years ago that we would hide a bottle of Jarritos soda somewhere in the office. Whoever found it got the bottle, and then was in charge of buying a new one and hiding it somewhere for the next person. You’d always hear a fun cheer when someone found it.

  96. Blue Spoon*

    My workplace has a long-running acronym game on a whiteboard on the breakroom refrigerator. Someone will write a set of 3-4 letters at the top of the board and everyone will add things that those letters could stand for. Sometimes someone will draw a little picture if an answer is particularly evocative. Someone will write up a new one every week and a half or so, so it stays fresh.

    1. InSearchOf9000*

      Oh, that reminds me of one from a few jobs ago! We had a /giant/ whiteboard in a break room at one job, and someone did a stick figure with a note one day. From then on, all notes got accompanied with drawings – alerts had stick figures holding up signs, vacation reminders got stick figures going on adventures, weather alerts had stick figures with scarves and mittens.
      If someone wrote something up there and left it undecorated, other folks would add the figures. It was a lot of fun.

  97. Zombeyonce*

    My department brings in llamas to the employee appreciation event every summer! A little scary, but cute.

  98. Anita Brake*

    I worked in a small company once, small enough that we had “an IT guy” as our IT department. During the holidays he would bring in his guitar and play and sing Christmas Carols when he wasn’t busy.

  99. iglwif*

    My all-time favourite weird office tradition was SO weird that if I describe it accurately, someone from that job will immediately know who I am lol. (And I know I have former colleagues from there who read AAM.)

    So instead I will say that it involved a publicly displayed collection by one person of objects in a specific category brought back by other people from places they visited. No money was spent on this and there was nothing NSFW — it was just a collection of things from everywhere.

  100. Not The Earliest Bird*

    We have a hockey net alarm. Whenever someone closes a big deal, they get to set off the alarm. It’s really loud, and has the red rotating light on the top of it.

  101. Retirednow*

    I forgot that many years ago, my DH was a contract employee for a large engineering firm here in the SF Bay Area. We were invited to the company’s Christmas party, but only company employees got the holiday gift, a honey baked ham.

    However, contract staff got 2 tickets to any Golden State Warriors game left in the season. These were the days when the Warriors winning a game was about as likely as me winning the lottery.

    We did go to a game as we’d never been and it 2s o e if the saddest sporting events I’d ever witnessed. The scoreboard kept lighting up,” make some noise” and except for us, the few attendees did not.

  102. Mouse named Anon*

    My last job you could opt in (or out of), getting your desk decorated for your birthday. It was fun and all the same decorations were used everyone. Your team also brought in treats and you went out to lunch it was really nice!

    This same place also had an appreciation week for each department all year long (usually separated by a month). The company paid for each other department to buy the featured department snacks, gift cards or some kind other nominal gift. You got a handwritten thank you note from each team manager. Honestly it was really nice to be recognized, but also thank my fellow co-workers. The company footed the bill for everything so no one was forced into spending their own cash.

  103. nice tradish*

    I worked for an agency that serviced children’s mental health, general social work things, foster care, helping young adults who transitioned out of foster care etc. Every year every single kid who got services with us got a Christmas gift. We serviced some 1000+ kids. The process started in September and then was full swing in November and December. It was such a nice thing. You could volunteer (But really were paid bc you were at work) to wrap gifts or organize things. To top it off kids got things they actually requested too. Some kids were really poor and it might be the only gift they receive that year. Others were average middle class kids. But it was still a really nice tradition. I loved helping with it and have thought of just going back to volunteer.

    1. Panicked*

      I did that when I was a caseworker and it was a blast! There was about 20 of us who spent an entire day at Walmart, it felt like we were buying out the entire store. It was my absolute favorite part of the work year.

  104. Lauren*

    My org has combined the annual celebration of a historic milestone with a celebration of employees. On your 5, 10, 15 etc. employment anniversary you get a ribbon and pin for that year and everyone is invited to a celebration with snacks, remarks and the best part- dancers. For each year group one of the top songs from the year those employees started is selected and there’s a choreographed dance performance. In 2006, when i was celebrating my first 5 years, we had Crazy by Gnarls Barkley at the top of the set, then got all the way to Harry Belfonte’s Banana Boat song because we had some 50-year celebrants.

  105. CubeFarmer*

    Nothing crazy. We have a large grotesque that came from an old school in our city–he’s our office mascot and named for the architect who designed the school. We have a tradition that all our summer interns need to pose with the mascot when they’re introduced on social media.

  106. JMC*

    Oh I WISH I could have persuaded anyone in any office I worked in to turn off those godawful lights, I’ve always hated them and if they flicker in any way I get a migraine.

  107. SAR*

    For years, I worked in a very strange office with a lot of very strange traditions, but one of the oddest was the inexplicable fervor over Breakfast Burrito Day.

    So my office was located in the basement of the building, and the lobby area had this little shoppette. Essentially a gas station convenience store without the accompanying gas station. Every Thursday, the owner of the shoppette used to bring in homemade breakfast burritos to sell. The EXCITEMENT over these breakfast burritos cannot be overstated. People went crazy for these breakfast burritos. Chatter about their arrival would begin days in advance. By Wednesday afternoon, many harried work discussions would invariably lead to someone reassuring whomever they were talking to that “at least tomorrow is Breakfast Burrito Day!” Come Thursday morning, the desire for burritos would reach a fever pitch. People would send envoys up to the shoppette in 15-minute intervals to scope out whether the burritos had arrived yet. Once word was received that the burritos were there, people would gather around the front desk and quite literally swarm upstairs to procure burritos. One time, a group of roughly 20 people started a breakfast burrito conga line that cha-cha’d its way all the way up to the shoppette. After buying the burritos, people would return to the basement like Olympians returning with gold medals.

    I partook in Breakfast Burrito Day once with one of my friends. The conga line was what sold us; we just had to try these seemingly life-changing burritos! And reader, I need to make it clear to you how absolutely terrible these breakfast burritos were. They were really, really bad! They were soggy and slimy and bland! We both actually threw most of our burritos away. Not worth any of the hype, let alone a dedicated CONGA LINE!

    And YET. Breakfast Burrito Day was and remained a weekly beacon of light for many of the basement dwellers (much to my bewilderment).

  108. post script*

    I worked in a smallish academic department. We had once a month get-togethers where we brought a bunch of food and everyone with birthdays that month got a hug from the department head. And got to be first in line for the food. I miss that place.

  109. GoryDetails*

    At one of my software development jobs, our group would celebrate releases or goals achieved (or, sometimes, “we just need a break” days) with a long lunch at a local go-kart track. (The company was affiliated with Cummins so we all cheered for the Cummins-sponsored NASCAR driver – Mark Martin, then – and would vie for the go-kart with that car’s number on it.)

  110. Micki*

    I once worked in an office that had a “Get Dressed Up for No Reason” day. We came to work in evening gowns, bridesmaids dresses (see, you CAN wear it again), a wedding dress, suits, etc. One man sported a full Irish look – tweed jacket and pants, gorgeous wool knit sweater and a flat cap. He looked so dapper.

    The Formal Fridays bit made me remember something I hadn’t thought of in years. It was just once but such a good time. Every so often, I see a former colleague post it as a memory.

  111. EverAnon*

    A kind coworker started a Trivia Day on teams during covid, and is still running it, once a week. We appreciate it immensely!

  112. Mo*

    Former job, marketing department of around 10 employees, I was there for a couple of years and we had a fairly consistent team during that time. The first holiday season after I started, we did a White Elephant exchange: classic rules of ideally something you have at home, if not then something purchased very inexpensively, goal is one-person’s-trash-is-another’s-treasure. One of the graphic designers contributed a large (poster-size – 2×3′ maybe?), limited edition, numbered print of a black and white pencil drawing… of a mime. Just the head, no torso, but then what was presumably the mime’s arm/hand, floating out to the side, with a tiny elf perched on the palm of his hand.

    I don’t remember who wound up with the print in the exchange (it might have been me, actually?), but it was the highlight of the gifts and we adopted the mime as our department mascot. “Mo the Mime the Marketing Mascot” was generally displayed somewhere that you’d catch out of the corner of your eye unexpectedly (think the bottom shelf of a bookcase). The designer who brought him in had also scanned it, and Mo showed up all over the place – a tiny Mo taped to the bottom of your mouse when you got back from lunch, his head attached to your desk chair, even once added to a newspaper ad that went around the department for proofing (NONE of us caught it and I still have a copy of the page with all of our initials signing off that it was print-ready!).

    Mo went back into the White Elephant exchange for the next couple of years, then we all started leaving and the department had completely turned over within 2-3 years, but I believe my immediate supervisor (one of the last to leave) took Mo home on her way out.

  113. Sunshine Gremlin*

    We have emotional support rubber chickens! If one calls out for help, another responds.

    This started with one in each department that mysteriously showed up one morning. My office is locked for compliance when I’m not in it, so my chicken was tucked into my inbox, but most people found their chicken tucked onto their desk amongst their belongings like it settled in on its own.

    One long-time beloved coworker ended up moving out of state (but he continued to work very part time for about a month after the move, so he remained in Slack) and one time, he posted a video of someone using rubber chickens to recreate Total Eclipse of the Heart. This prompted someone to send a clip of their chicken honking. Someone took a photo of their chicken in front of their screen with the clip visible in Slack in the background. And then someone else took a photo of their chicken with that chicken in the background. This progressed with dozens of chicken photos.

    By the end of that week, every single person with a desk had a chicken.

    We do monthly employee appreciation catered lunches and during one, someone brought in a huge, elaborate bird cage with multiple levels and put two rubber chickens in it.

    When we’re having A Day, we will honk our chicken and any chicken that can hear will honk back (emotional support chickens, remember?) and sometimes this leads to a chorus of chickens just shrieking their frustration.

    Recently, I saw a tiny rubber chicken keychain that squeaks when you squeeze it, so needless to say, myself and my partner (who is endlessly amused by the office chickens) now have tiny chickens that we honk at each other.

  114. Rainbow Narwhal*

    An old job had a traveling mustard jar that would get hidden for people to find. As legend goes, at some point, somebody brought in a jar of very fancy mustard that never got opened or used, and after it sat in the pantry for a while, one employee thought it’d be funny to hide it in the boss’s office for them to find. I joined the company after the tradition had already been in full swing for a while, so the details of its origin are a bit murky for me. But the mustard jar did in fact circulate through the office, being hidden in supply closets, filing cabinets, desk drawers, bookshelves, etc. Pretty much everybody got a kick out of finding the mustard nestled amongst their belongings and then conspiring with coworkers as to who should be the next victim of the hidden mustard and where to hide it. If a few months went by with no mustard chatter, the employee who started it all would often be found poking their head into everybody’s office to ask if anybody had seen the mustard, which was always especially funny if we knew it was in their office. New folks were always confused about the mustard inquiries, and more than once, somebody found the mustard with their stuff without knowing about the game and bemusedly asked why there was a jar of mustard in their drawer.

  115. The Big Duck*

    My work has a scheduled “Duckies” meeting every Friday afternoon, where we all stand around in the back and throw rubber duckies at each other as kudos for things we did well over the week. It helps relieve a lot of tension after long weeks, and whoever gets the most ducks per quarter gets a prize.

    Whenever we have a new person, they don’t know what “DUCKIES!” on the calendar means until they get to see it themselves. There is a lot of squeaking during the meeting, such as whenever people agree with a shout-out someone is getting, all of which can be heard in the front where customers walk in. It’s awkward but funny to explain when you’re the person who has to help customers up front during Duckies.

  116. It's Me*

    When I worked at a (smaller) publisher, any time one of our books hit the New York Times list, the boss brought in “bestseller bagels” the next morning. As a dramatically underpaid assistant, I loved those bagels dearly. I still miss them.

  117. AM*

    My company “awards” a giant stuffed animal weekly to someone who has excelled the previous week. It sits in their office all week. However, now that we are a hybrid office, sometimes someone who works remotely will win it. In my department, a tradition has arisen that if one of us is the winner, for the rest of the week on zoom we have to preface everything we say with, “As this week’s big animal winner…” And if there are any low-stakes disagreements (Is a hot dog a sandwich? Are Cheetos chips?), the big animal winner is the decider.

  118. Other Duties as Assigned*

    I worked part time as a commercial radio announcer when I was in grad school. In terms of how everyone was treated it honestly was the best place I ever worked.

    One tradition they had were fake mimeographed “checks” that anyone in management could give to any employee for good work; they listed why the manager had given it to you. I’d gotten ones for quickly turning around a set of commercials, for a letter received from a listener complimenting my on-air work, for giving a studio tour on short notice, etc. News reporters would get them for news scoops or journalism awards, promotions staff would get them for media mentions, engineers for solving thorny tech issues, copywriters for winning advertising awards, sales people for new contracts, etc.

    The idea was save them and then turn them in at the end-of-year party to be put in a drum to win door prizes. The more “checks” you amassed, the better your chance of winning something. As a part timer, I didn’t have nearly as many as the older full time staff, but I had a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the senior employees didn’t submit their checks so that others could have a better chance of winning.

    The nice part of it was that the checks could come from anyone in management, not just your supervisor. It was really nice to know your efforts were being seen and appreciated by people outside your department. I even got a couple from the GM.

    I left in the middle of a year and still have my “checks” from that time.

  119. one of the annas*

    Years ago, I worked in a small office with just about 10-12 people, and on particularly stressful days, the finance director would go to the fancy bakery down the street from us and buy the office a beautiful little cake. It only happened 3-4 times a year, but it was such an immediate morale boost to have not only surprise cake but super fancy cake at that!

  120. Swiss Army Them*

    I no longer work here, and a lot of this story actually happened before I got hired, but here goes:

    For a White Elephant gift exchange, someone brought in a creepy porcelain Victorian doll. The kind that is ABSOLUTELY haunted, hexed, and/or cursed. The person who decided to keep it ended up starting a tradition where we would ask the doll to haunt, hex, and/or curse annoying clients and contacts. This turned into an actual complaint box that the doll lorded over, and when people were frustrated, they would put the client/contract/project “into the doll head box”. The whole company went remote in 2020 and has stayed remote since, but there was still a dedicated Slack channel called “the-doll-head-box” where we could digitally invoke a haunt, hex, and/or curse. It honestly felt pretty good to ask a haunted doll to rain hell on clients.

  121. Purple Jello*

    The small business I joined had a miniature golf “inning” (instead of a golf outing) the day before Thanksgiving, after which we’d have a luncheon and then go home early. Originally, the different departments would stay late the night before to create a challenging “hole” (meaning “paper cup”) for the course, but eventually it was the engineering department employees doing most of the designs and set up. There was always a hole near the end of the course using an electric fan and a plastic whiffle golf ball.

    That company had some great slogans until it started to get bigger and got acquired: You have to make money and have fun. Must be present to win. And my personal favorite: Nobody goes to jail.

  122. Sauerkraut*

    Not really an unusual tradition, but a good embarrassing story around our holiday party tradition…

    The CEO leads a fun little game of chance like a raffle at the beginning of dinner during the holiday part. Everyone, employees, family, etc all participate, and the prize is usually a couple hundred dollar gift card or similar – nice enough that everyone wants to participate, but not crazy so that people over react to it.

    One year my family was seated at the table by the microphone, so everyone is looking at us while the CEO was calling out the info for the game.

    My four-year-old is standing on his chair so that he can see. When he gets eliminated, he screams “Oh F—!” as he sits down. I was mortified, but at least everyone pretended they didn’t hear him.

  123. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

    3 o’clock chocolate. A coworker and I both liked good quality chocolate and decided that chocolate was necessary at 3pm to get us through the rest of the day. We started trying to outdo each other with better or more unusual chocolates. A few others in the office got involved. It was fantastic.

    I don’t think it qualifies as quirky, but I loved it and still think about it 15 years later.

    1. Casey*

      Ooh we do chocolate-for-the-team every time someone travels! We’ve had Italian chocolate biscotti, Costa Rican chocolate-covered espresso beans, Guinness infused chocolate from Ireland, etc.

  124. Respectfully, Pumat Sol*

    A previous company had George Clooney. At a big all hands meeting there was a customer service exercise that featured Mr. Clooney and resulted in our department being the caretakers of two cardboard cutouts of him. We began to leave him in various offices – any time someone was out for more than a few hours, Clooney would show up in their office or chair. And then somehow this morphed into hiding tiny clooneys. So when people left for vacation or were out sick, they’d come back to their offices and find tiny hidden pictures of Clooney all over their office. In drawers, under mice, on the ceiling, stuck into binders or paperwork to be found at a later time. It was hilarious watching people find all the Clooneys for weeks after they’d returned.

  125. Stan S Stanman*

    My former employer had professional caricatures done for employees when they reached 5 years with the company. They did a celebration of employee milestones once a year where they “unveiled” the caricatures. A copy went up on a wall in the lobby of the company and a framed copy was given to the employee.

    I made it to 5 years at the company but was laid off a few months before the annual celebration. My bosses arranged for my caricature to be done early and presented the framed copy to me on my last day as a going away present.

  126. 653-CXK*

    I inherited a large plant when I first began NewJob five years ago – I named it “Bob” sort of as a tribute to a coworker over at ExJob. My duty was to water Bob frequently when I was at work, and I did that every other day. Bob flourished, and occasionally I would buy some plant food sticks so it could thrive and grow.

    Then came the pandemic – we weren’t allowed into the offices for quite awhile, so I wasn’t able to water Bob as frequently as I liked; another team asked if they could take Bob to another part of the building so they could take care of it. I consented, and now Bob is even larger and more lush than ever before.

    Bob now takes a prominent place in the recreation room, giving oohs and ahhs to guests and workers like.

    1. Laura*

      I had a terrible manager I disliked very much give me a “money tree” plant when he left. By give, I mean he quit and instead of saying goodbye as expected, I walked into his office and asked if I could have his plant. He said his sister he hated gave it to him and he was surprised it last all the years he’d had it in his office because he never watered it. I did. I watered it. It’s now very happy at my house, three times as big. I didn’t Luke anything about that manager as a person or a manager but I like that plant (and sneaking into his office when he wasn’t there to water it) so I have at least one positive memory about him.

      1. 653-CXK*

        It seemed when I got there, no one else had time (more accurately, the desire) to water it either, so I inherited it. Bob at Ex-Job was well-liked and respected, so no malice there.

  127. Fish Microwaver*

    I love the idea of the Team Plant. It’s caring, fun and not intrusive. Every workplace should have one.

  128. Snudence Prooter*

    I work on an orthopedic unit act someone brought in a little skeleton to decorate for Halloween. Some silver paint and metal tape was used to give her a knee replacement, a shoulder repair and neck surgery. She stuck around, got named Bone-ita, and now she gets a new dress for every holiday. For Halloween, she gets several friends in lab coats and nurse hats, but they get packed up in November. Bonita stays. Bonita has a slutty elf costume.

    I love Bonita.

  129. Laura*

    A manager I worked for created a Black Dog award to give to the lowest performer as a public punishment. It was a cool black bulldog statue about 8 inches tall. The first “winner” added a Hawaiian shirt, then the next sunglasses, and so on. It got to be so coveted that people purposefully tried to tank their productivity so they could get the Black Dog. Team members argued about whose productivity was lower so they could get it. Totally the opposite of the intention.

    1. Mutually supportive*

      I’m really glad this got turned around because a public shaming black dog seems a bit mean.

  130. Clara Bowe*

    My incredibly sweet coworker would get really in to working on specific work requests. She was older and didn’t have as solid a grasp on the digital aspects of our work. When she got really frustrated, she would announce it was time for a puppy/kitten break. Basically we would all spend 2-3 minutes, stop what we were doing, and look up a photo of a fluffy animal.

    She started it, but we all kind of adopted the habit and to this day, if any of us get frustrated with a task, or spend too long on something, we announce a puppy/kitten break. She has long since retired but I am glad the tradition has kept on.

  131. Billy-Ray Pearly May*

    years ago my department would celebrate our major software releases with the “Billy-Cup”. The release itself was supposed to take up most of a Saturday, but never went as planned. So we had a big board with everyone’s “Billy” name, and guesstimates for the over/under for each phase in the release schedule. The winner, with the closest real times, received a Home Depot bucket filled with RC Cola and moonpies.

  132. Paladin*

    We hired several people in late 2019, and the topic of bidets came up at one of the welcome lunches. A teammate had just visited Japan and was very pro-bidet. We discussed the weirdest toilets we’d ever seen – very tall or short toilets, weirdly placed toilets, two toilets in a single stall bathroom (his and hers? we never figured out that one). Never details of how they were used, because it was lunch, but general discussion of a household appliance and matter-of-fact details like cost and environmental impact. This continued to come up at every welcome lunch as a joke until the Toilet Paper Panic of 2020 prompted even more discussion about bidets. Where to find one, how to install them, etc. If you moved, does your new home have a bidet? Are you going to install one? The pro-bidet teammates have since left the company, but it’s become a running joke that “it’s not a team meeting until someone talks about toilets” and the jokes have become more and more over the top. Yesterday’s discussion was a very animated brainstorming session for a Shark Tank pitch – The Blowdet, a green option that collects rainwater with a tube to blow through so it doesn’t require electricity and can be used for camping.

    I just bought a house with a blue toilet and I’m kinda bummed nobody mentioned it when I shared the listing.

  133. Anon345678*

    The emergency department getting disqualified every time there is a hospital-wide creative holiday challenge bc ER humor and C-suite humor are on different planets

  134. Fae Kamen*

    In high school I was stuck in a class I was too advanced for, so during the final exam I decided to write the essay portion in iambic pentameter. I’m sure I messed up the stresses sometimes, but I forgive my younger self.

  135. Zulema_K*

    At one of my previous workplaces, the country director kept getting interrupted with small matters and never got time to think and get into deep work. He bought the office “Thinking Tembos,” little stuffed elephants to use when you just needed time to think. (Tembo is elephant in Kiswahili).

    If you had a Thinking Tembo on your desk, it was a sign to let the person be, as they needed quiet thinking time. At one point during our annual financial audit, the entire Finance team had arranged a row of Thinking Tembos guarding their office door.

  136. Rock*

    Restraint used to have a tradition of throwing employees into the harbor if it was their last shift (and if it was high tide and if they could swim). That ended after they tried to do it to the then-head chef. As far as I know, he ended up in the water, but not without a fight and took a few people with him.

  137. Whatapodcast*

    At the first non-profit I worked at in 2002, we had a bicycle horn. During our busy campaign season, when someone would come in with an envelope of cash, or a cheque, or pledge forms, they would honk the horn. If it was more than we expected, or a really big amount, we would yell “HONK THE HORN”. The returning person would honk the horn, and everyone would cheer. One grump hid the horn, but we found it, and honking ensued.

  138. Anne of Green Gables*

    Community college library, when we were in a stand-alone building on campus. One guy started playing a song over the PA system every morning about 5-10 minutes before we opened. It turned into a tradition. When a musician died, we would play a song by them for a few days. There were themed songs, like “Everybody Plays the Fool” on April Fools’ Day, “Ring of Fire” on the day of the total solar eclipse in 2017, and the guy who started it was a huge Halloween fan so there was a whole themed playlist the month of October. He would take requests; I asked for “Rockin’ Robin” on the first day of spring and “Centerfield” on baseball’s opening day. Occasionally the song would be a reference to something at work, though the only example I remember was “Beautiful Boy” the day after a coworker had a baby. We all loved it, and it was a nice incentive to come in early. Sadly, we are in a new building now and it’s not just us, so we have not been able to continue.

  139. Rin*

    In the Before Times I worked at a hat shop (really!) where from time to time we had events– think musicians, new collection launches, collabs with other designers or influencers. Some of them were local affairs, some were Big Deals (a well known NFL player did a popup with his accessory line, and that was how I learned to tie a bow tie).

    That’s not the tradition. The tradition was Hat Swap.

    After an event, we would go out to have our own off-the-clock party. At which, at any point, someone could call “HAT SWAP!” and everyone in the group had to switch hats around. You could wind up wearing something way too small or too big, something that didn’t match at all, or something that looked surprisingly good! There were several bars near the shop that got very familiar with The Hat People, one would even call us out if we came in -without- hats.

    There were some other fun things at that job, like the board where we collected pictures of our hats in movies/on celebrities and drew speech bubbles on them, or the weekly email where someone would infodump about a non-hat or only tangentially hat-related topic (I wrote one about Sarah Bernhardt and the origins of the fedora), or the twice yearly Inventory Hell, to which being assigned was a perverse kind of honor…

  140. bryeny*

    Long ago I worked at a software company where the developers did a daily automated build of the product (pretty common practice) so we could try out new features and check bug fixes. Anyone checking code into the build was supposed to test it thoroughly first, but sometimes they cut corners or just didn’t think of all the ways things could go wrong, and their code would break the build. This caused inconveniences and slow-downs for the whole group.

    Enter Bernie. Bernie was a ridiculous panda-shaped plush hat with a rule attached: if you broke the build, you had to wear the panda hat for the rest of the day. Bernie was very motivating.

  141. Casey*

    I work in one of those places where there are lots of government regulations around accidentally exposing sensitive information. Thus it’s important for people to lock their computers when not at their desk. We have collectively decided to enforce this by “donutting” — if you leave your computer open, someone will message our group chat from your computer saying that you will bring in donuts tomorrow. Donutting has evolved into an office sport with an entire rule page detailing the amount of time one has to respond, the procedure should you catch someone at your computer mid-attempt, whether bagels count as donuts, etc.

  142. Raine*

    We have a White Elephant Gift Exchange. There’s a dolphin plate (think Franklin Mint issue) that has been passed around for at least a decade. When someone left the company and the original plate was lost, a new one was acquired.

    We also have a small plastic gnome named Sergei who goes on trips with people; it’s tradition to take Sergei along with you if you’re going somewhere. There’s a whole collection of “where Sergei has been” photos. Sergei has been to Poland, Italy, and France, along other destinations.

  143. Palliser*

    I work for a very successful professional association, and we have the best boss on the planet. Hes so good that I’ve actually written in about him on Good News Fridays. He’s thoughtful, kind, fair, the right amount of encouraging but firm, and my team adores him. Every two years we put on the biggest event in our industry, and it is a massive effort by everyone, but he captains the ship. On the afternoon before everything kicks off, we have a tour and run-through, and we give him a goofy appreciation gift. In the last several event cycles he has received socks with individual photos of team team members on them, an Irish loardship, and most recently, a portrait of himself on the iron throne.
    We’re aware that gifts are supposed to flow down, not up, but once every two years we make this exception, and we all love it.

  144. K*

    My favourite tradition in my team is that instead of giving “snaps” or applause for someone doing a good job we do crab hands. It makes it more fun, and my manager even went online and bought some massive plastic crab claws that she would put on to celebrate when someone did a really really good job.

  145. Long Live the MeatBall*

    For many years, I was part of an interdisciplinary working group composed of folks from several provincial government ministries and agencies. We lucked out and gelled very well as a group, with many of us becoming friends outside of work too. However, as time will do, eventually we hit a point where members either changed job duties and left the working group, or left government altogether. To mark one such occasion, we capitalized on a longstanding inside joke about Swedish meatballs and created…the annual MeatBall. Picture a gaggle of government scientists, their significant others, children, babies, etc. descending on a corner of the Large Swedish Furniture Warehouse cafeteria on a cold winter day sometime after Christmas. We push as many tables together as we need (yes, we put them back in their original state afterwards), all order meatballs (or plant balls) from the cafeteria, and have a mildly riotous time catching up with current and former members. Gifts are given, new jobs or milestones are celebrated, group photos are taken, and everyone has a fabulous time. It’s a great way to keep in touch, and what’s better than a party where you can buy a new funky-shaped toilet brush on the way out?

  146. BlueSwimmer*

    My old department (at a high school) had Potato Day every St. Patricks day (or the Friday before if it fell on a weekend). Everyone paid a buck to a volunteer who got a big bag of potatoes at Costco. Everyone also brought in some type of baked potato toppings for a potato bar. I always brought a crockpot of “liquid gold” (Velveeta cheese sauce). We baked the potatoes in the Culinary classroom all morning and then had a feast for lunch. Experienced potato eaters realized you could do two sets of topping combos- eat the first layer along with some potato and then go back for a second layer- because Costco sells huge potatoes. It made for some very sleepy teachers in the afternoon but we looked forward to it all winter.

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