when office potlucks and catered parties go wrong

by Alison Green on November 7, 2024

As we approach to the season of office potlucks, catered parties, and other holiday meals with coworkers, let’s discuss the many ways in which they can go wrong — from alarming cuisine to cheap-ass rolls to riots over the chili cook-off to tantrums over insufficiently abundant shrimp.

Please share your stories of potlucks, cooking competitions, catered parties, and other office meals gone awry!

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  1. Unkempt Flatware*

    Mine isn’t about the food but about the management of the event. I got a call at 9am one day from my colleague insisting that I go across the metro area to judge a chili cook off at her branch because no one had arranged judges. She was rude, demanding, angry, frantic, and all-in-all crazed about it. I told her that, no, I wouldn’t be dropping everything at the last minute to destroy my GI tract because she couldn’t get it together in time. She went on a full rage and called me a child and how she would do this for me if I needed her to. I told her I would never be so inconsiderate as to do that to her.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      “ I told her I would never be so inconsiderate as to do that to her.”

      This was a work of art! I aspire to have your wits in the moment rather than two days later going “THAT’S what I should have said” :)

        1. Magc*

          I usually say that I’m no longer suffering from estrogen poisoning.

          (I stole the idea from a “testosterone poisoning” comment by a male friend about my then 10-year-old son.)

          1. Storm in a teacup*

            OMg I’m nicking both of these responses! Sadly as my giveafuck muscle weakens my brain fog grows.
            A lunch today I briefly forgot my boss’s name. I had to style it out. I don’t know if I got away with it

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      I took part in a chili cook-off where we didn’t have judges (I think the original plan was to make a director who ended up not being able to come in that day). We just ended up trying out delicious chili and complimenting each other. (It’s a very supportive group.)

        1. anotherfan*

          and there are so many different kinds of chili! We did a ‘chili taster’ in my office where only 3 people participated, but I brought in cincinnati chili (which is very fine grained, includes chocolate and is usually served over spaghetti with beans, cheese and onions available as toppings) which was nothing like the practically stew-like meat chunks another coworker brought in vs the mid-level meat size but very very hot version that was the third.

          1. Charlotte Lucas*

            One person brought dhal! It had chilies in it, and we loved it.

            I brought sweet potato chili.

          2. JustaTech*

            After two years in a row of coming in stone-cold dead last for our chili contest (I make a very mild chili because I don’t like and can’t tolerate spice), I brought a vegan chickpea curry, strictly out of malicious compliance (I had to participate because I’m on the social committee).

            It didn’t win, but it did open up the field of offerings and now we get a couple of soups as well as more traditional American chilis.

      3. Ally McBeal*

        I like that better, anyway. Unless there are concerns about a coworker’s popularity outweighing the quality of their food, I think cook-offs should be judged by everyone. Why appoint a judge/judging panel? Even on Top Chef they’ll usually do at least one episode per season where the contestants feed a big group of people, who are given ranked ballots to fill out (or a few tokens of some kind to drop at the stations of the meals they liked best).

        1. KateM*

          One way to judge would be to have everyone bring in the exact same amount, and the winner is the first chili to be eaten.

        2. Random Biter*

          I entered a pumpkin sausage soup at a chili cookoff…..thick, chunks of spicy meat and a fruit-based bottom. What’s not to like? I didn’t win but there was none left.

          1. Jonathan MacKay*

            That sounds like it would taste like a meaty butternut squash soup… It sounds like it would be perfect on a cold winter day!

      4. stelms_elms*

        We just had a chili cook-off. You can bring a chili, or a side like cornbread, chips or dessert. Everyone gets to vote for the best one!

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          I’m not much for chili, but I adore cornbread. I would have enjoyed that event!

        1. Just Another Cog in the Machine*

          So was ours. And every chili was numbered so you didn’t know who brought what (unless you saw them at their chili earlier).

      7. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        At a previous position, we used to do a chili cook-off during our Halloween party. Awards were by consensus vote, but everyone had a good time.

        I was honored to win one year with my Kickin’ Chicken Chili Verde!

    3. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      I told her I would never be so inconsiderate as to do that to her.

      * chef’s kiss*

      1. Ama*

        I am storing this for the next time anyone tries “I would do this for you,” as a reason for boundary pushing. (Thankfully it’s not often but you don’t always know when a new friend/coworker is going to turn out to be manipulative.)

    4. hereforthecomments*

      One place I worked let everyone judge who wanted to participate. There were money collection cups in front of every entrant and whoever got the most donations, won the trophy (yes there was a homemade trophy and the winner kept it until the next year). All money was then donated to a local food pantry. I happen to know that at least one time someone wanted the trophy enough that they donated A LOT to their own entry!

    5. CSRoadWarrior*

      She called you a child? Sounds like she is the one being a child with her tantrum of not getting her way.

      1. InterrobangMaid*

        …Not to mention her scatterbrained failure to secure judges for the chili cook-off! Seriously…who arranges a contest with no one to judge the contestants’ entries?!

    6. Beth*

      If I were forced to judge a chili contest, I would look at each pot and say, yup, that’s chili. (I can’t stand chili — my palate hates that kind of spice.)

  2. Juicebox Hero*

    The store I used to work at had a restaurant in the basement (the food was actually pretty good) so we always had a decent Christmas lunch for all the employees. Usually stuff like chicken fingers, vegetables, mashed potatoes, some kind of salad. Except for the last year they did it, where the restaurant manager was allotted a budget of $1.30 a head. We had three kinds of pasta with premade sauce. One had quartered storebought meatballs in it. And generic soda.

    Given how heinous working retail over the holidays is, it felt like an insult that they’d cheaped out on us so badly. Management, that is; not the restaurant manager, who deserved credit for pulling together any kind of spread on that miserly of a budget.

      1. LaminarFlow*

        Would 100000% love an update from Cheap Ass Rolls. Where are they now? How do they feel about the debacle now? Do they still hold King’s Hawaiian Rolls as the standard by which other bread products are judged? Also, do they still bring King’s Hawaiian Rolls to parties?

  3. Tradd*

    All I have – a coworker once threw a fit that there was nothing she could eat. We had never seen her eat in the office in the 4-5 years she had been there and we had no clue she was vegan. Still no idea why it was suddenly an issue when she had never shown an interest in party food before. We made sure to have vegan options going forward and let her know, but she never attended anything again. Just once.

      1. Tradd*

        No. We *loved* our meat/dairy and the food reflected it. Main dishes were meat. Salad had bacon, cheese, hard boiled eggs. Side dishes were veggies with cheese sauce, green beans with bacon, etc. We were given choices beforehand of meat (beef/pork), chicken, or seafood. *Everyone* chose the meat. Man, that was good food!

          1. MigraineMonth*

            “Here in the Midwest, we like to flavor our food with dairy!”

            Sorry, can’t remember who to attribute that to.

        2. Meep*

          Eh. I don’t think the hissyfit was necessary or appropriate, but in the year 2024, it really isn’t that hard to have at least one vegetarian AND vegan option. Even if you love meat and dairy, sometimes you don’t feel it.

                1. Meep*

                  And yet… it is a little ridiculous to not have ANY option what-so-ever that is strictly vegetarian or vegan. It isn’t like they are these rare unicorns in 2014.

          3. amoeba*

            Yeh, tbh, I’d find that spread pretty weird and would never have expected it (even ten years ago). Any kind of “normal” buffet here always has at the very least vegetarian sides, usually something vegan as well – like, not even on purpose, a lot of things are just vegan by nature. Going out of your way to add meat or dairy to literally anything would be really out of the ordinary here.

    2. Upper Learning*

      Former coworker complained for years about lunches, coffee/pastry hours, etc. not being vegan-friendly. It mystified organizers, since they consistently sent around an RSVP form where any allergies or dietary preferences could be noted, with the understanding they would do all they could to accommodate. They regularly ordered 50% extra vegan meals since they knew non-vegans could eat them, but vegans couldn’t eat the non-vegan meals (leftovers were also fair game to take home at the end of the event). But this guy insisted that there was nothing for him at these events because everyone was so inconsiderate and refused to attend.
      Finally, after 3 or 4 years, he attended. He didn’t fill out the RSVP, but was still offered ample choice in vegan, vegetarian, etc. option. He chose to eat the meat option, complained the entire time that it was low-quality meat, and went back to saying that no one accommodated his vegan diet afterwards. So strange, and such an unpleasant human!

        1. Bossy*

          Some people are an issue.
          I arranged a think for clients, one guy said he needed vegan, all kinds of work was put in on all sides to make sure he had an amazing vegan meal which we paid plenty of money for and then he decided he wasn’t vegan after all apparently. I don’t find these people to be strange, I find these people to be inconsiderate jerks.

          1. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

            A few months ago I won a company-wide award. The winners were taken to lunch by the CEO and a VP. I’m not vegetarian, but my preference for vegetarian is well-known, and I expressed it again when the lunch was planned. The restaurant literally had ZERO vegetarian options. The VP expressed surprise when I ordered a burger, and I struggled to find a polite way to say “I didn’t have a choice.”

            1. CaliforniaRoller*

              I had an old boss that took me out for Japanese to celebrate a project completion. He kept encouraging me to try the expensive nigiri, but they had tofu gyoza and unagi rolls and I will straight up murder any amount of those I can get my hands on.

              About a year later he happens to order sushi for the whole department from the same place and there, sectioned off at the end of the table, is a couple containers of delicious, delicious futomaki with my name on them!

              Awesome! I grab a bunch, and some California rolls, and a couple of spicy tuna, and as I’m walking away the boss stops me and says “Hey, just to warn you, it was only the ones on the end that are vegetarian.”

              It was at that moment it dawned on me that every department meal we’d had since that lunch had a prominently labelled vegetarian option, despite me being sure we didn’t have any vegetarians.

              I just looked at him and said “No, sir. The ones on the end are freshwater eel. I really appreciate you remembering they’re my favorite though!”

      2. Brioche for me*

        I once had someone’s +1 to my Thanksgiving dinner bring her sister, who I was told on Thanksgiving morning was gluten-free + vegan. I panicked and did my last-minute best to alter enough of my menu that the sister would have something to eat, and also clearly labelled everything.

        The sister ate exactly two things I had cooked: the turkey and the definitely-contained-both-butter-and-wheat chocolate chip cookies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        1. Hungry!*

          Where are these wonderful, thoughtful places with generous vegan offerings, and can you invite me next time??? I work in one of the most liberal-crunchy-supposedly-veg-friendly cities and yet frequently at work events there is nothing suitable except black coffee and, if I’m lucky, maybe some fruit.
          Once at a conference that my boss led she promised she had arranged a great vegan option for lunch. It was a chunk of raw beetroot, some lettuce, and a lemon slice.

          1. LaurCha*

            what. the. actual. ffuuuuu?
            Raw beetroot and a bit of lettuce?
            I am seriously stunned at the stupidity.

          2. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

            I might be limited on fully vegan dishes without notice, but I have on many occasions accommodated veg*ns (some dishes fully vegan, others vegetarian but including dairy), the gluten-intolerant, lactose intolerant, and garlic, shellfish and nut allergies all at the same thanksgiving, successfully. (Though luckily for me, most of those restrictions were fairly silo-ed, no individual had more than 2 of them.)

            1. Smurfette*

              I once invited three families for a Shabbat lunch. The food restrictions included:

              – dairy
              – honey
              – sugar
              – cinnamon
              – avocado
              – kiwi fruit
              – strawberries
              – leafy veg (e.g. lettuce)
              – a couple of other things I can’t remember

              These were not preferences, but either allergies or related to medical conditions. It made for challenging menu planning, and opened my eyes to how many restrictions some people have to live with.

          3. JustaTech*

            Ugh, one time I was in charge of planning a food-based event at work and I thought I had managed it to have at least one thing everyone could eat (beyond the raw veg and fruit) but when the food arrived I discovered that *everything* (except the raw platter) had either meat or cheese on it.
            I felt like such a heel, because I had told our resident vegan+ (his dietary restrictions changed regularly) that I would have something for him to eat.
            That was the last time I was in charge of the food because the catering place just plain didn’t listen to me.

          4. Yet Another Traffic Engineer*

            Haha I was at a conference recently and they gave me a pathetic salad while everyone else got really hearty food for lunch.

            I told the organiser I was going to run out and grab myself a burrito, he inquired why I wasn’t satisfied and I said “would you be excited to eat a leetuce and beetroot salad?” and he admitted he wouldn’t be.

            Long story short I ran into someone at the lift, whinged about the catering, turned out she had ordered the catering (mortification week entry forthcoming???? nope!)

            Turns out she was horrified that the company just made me a salad, and started asking me questions about what I want in a lunch to be satisfied by, and ended up coming out with me to a local thai place and buying me some vegan pad see ew (my favourite).

            So it ended well in the end, because I’m at the point in my career where I give zero fucks and will go spend my own dang money so I get a decent feed.

            (It was, of course, a pity to miss the networking opportunities in our tiny, niche industry though!)

            1. ICodeForFood*

              Oh wow, this reminded me of a meeting I attended in the 1990s, when my employer was being acquired by another company. The meeting was held at one of those hotel/conference centers, and for some reason, I was the only one from my company who attended. Everyone from the acquiring company was given the correct conference room number, but somehow I was given the wrong one, so I missed the first 15 minutes of the meeting because I was trying to hunt down the right room.
              It was a relatively unpleasant meeting (and situation… everyone in my department expected to be laid off), and when lunchtime came, they brought out one of those 6 foot long Italian subs.
              I don’t eat pork or ham, and I don’t mix meat and dairy.
              I looked at the sandwich, looked around the room, and said something like “I don’t eat that. I’m going to go get a lunch that I can eat.” And I left to find one of the multiple restaurants in the hotel/conference center.
              This was in the 1990s, and I was in my late 30s… but given the situation, I already had no f***ks to give.
              When I returned to my home office, my then-boss complimented me on how I’d handled the situation!

          5. Wolf*

            Which reminds me of the weirdest vegetarian lunch I ever received in a restaurant: it was noodles with lettuce. Neither sauce nor dressing, just a pile of spaghetti with a handful of lettuce.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              Okay, I’ve seen some desperate “oh god let’s just give them chopped vegetables” reactions, but that’s usually a) in reaction to much greater restrictions than just vegetarian, and b) something recognizable as at least part of a dish.

              Was it a meat dish with the meat taken off? Like, chicken on a bed of lettuce, with a side of spaghetti and meat bolognaise? That’s the only way I can imagine someone coming up with that.

            2. Rob aka Mediancat*

              At an awards dinner for my company my vegetarian option was a variety of oversteamed vegetables and tortellini without any kind of sauce. It was inedible.

        2. My oh my*

          This person isn’t actually vegan then, so annoying. I’m a strict almost life-long vegetarian, and these new pretend “vegans” who seem to enjoy the label to be special are sooooo annoying to me. Say you’re mostly plant-based, but do eat meat on occasion.

          1. Cheesy McCheddar*

            THIS!!!!!!
            Bloody new vegans
            Also in the UK a lot of restaurants have stopped making veggie dishes and only vegan and usually some crap fake meat bullcrap because these new age vegans cannot eat vegetables or tofu.
            Give me back my cheese godammit

          2. The Editor-in-Chief*

            Absolutely not @-ing you, but “plant-based” is my bugbear. Most things are plant-based. Petroleum is plant-based.
            Steak is plant-based, given that without plants, the steak wouldn’t exist.
            …and now I’ve hit semantic satiation on ‘plant’ just from thinking about it.

            1. Ialwaysforgetmyname*

              Me too! I get overly angry at everything being marketed as “plant based.” Plant based crackers? Gee, and all along I thought my crackers were meat-based….

              1. Skippy*

                Like my vegan shampoo! The hairdresser always points out that it’s organic, vegan, and 99% chemical-free (which given that it’s 99% water isn’t saying much).

                1. Cat*

                  *gasp*
                  They claim it’s chemical free while containing 99% dihydrogen monoxide!!1!!!

                  (It’s all chemicals, folks)

                3. amoeba*

                  I mean, there are definitely loads of things that aren’t vegan when you’d expect them to be. Wine is apparently often filtered using gelatin, so there are indeed plenty of non-vegan wines around. (Not all vegans care, obviously, just as there are plenty of vegetarians who still eat parmiggiano, but it’s still useful to label the actually vegan ones for those who do care!)

                  Also stuff like beeswax, honey, or all kinds of things used in the manufacturing process that wouldn’t even end up on the label.

                  Chemical-free gets me as a chemist though, haha!

                4. MigraineMonth*

                  @amoeba – I was thinking of doing Veganuary and while looking for lists of vegan pantry staples to have on hand accidentally ended up on a very strict vegan website. Nothing against very strict vegans, it was just pretty overwhelming to go from “I’ll try giving up meat, dairy and eggs for a month” to “I’ll try giving up meat, dairy, eggs, honey, leather, wool, and also make sure that everything I eat or use from shampoo and cosmetics to apples and oranges to white sugar isn’t processed using animal ingredients.”

                  I’m going to try Veganuary this year, but I’m going to be half-assed about it.

              2. Wired Wolf*

                I’ve seen some (really obscure brands) cereals proudly proclaim on the box that they’re “plant based”…seems to be another marketing ploy as that phrase adds a few bucks to the price.

      3. Just Another Cog*

        This makes me laugh! My spouse was a food service director at a college in Northern California back in the 80’s and the college required two vegan entree offerings for every meal. He said that the vegan students were vegan – until chicken nugget night, then the vegan entrees went untouched for the most part.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          Ha, this was not my undergrad (mine was late 90s on the East Coast) but so many times I saw people who otherwise professed to be vegan/vegetarian chowing down on chicken tenders anytime the dining hall had them!

          To be fair, one of the ones I “saw” was myself, although I didn’t claim to be vegan or vegetarian, just usually skipped the meat. I did once refer to myself as a fried-chickenatarian, although I suppose that suggests I ONLY eat fried chicken!

    3. restingbutchface*

      I don’t eat animal products and I find discussing anyone’s diet boring, even mine, so I just tend to bring some food along with me.

      Not many people I work with know how I eat because I am forever scarred by 2009’s work Christmas dinner. The company was very male dominated. There were more Steves than women. And these guys loved their meats. Oh, they loved their meat. The smell of bacon still makes me think of that office.

      I didn’t think it would be a problem to mention my preference to the organiser, so I let them know when I RSPVed. I turned up with my StevePhilGary crew and the organiser loudly announced that to make me feel included, the whole meal was vegan.

      Can silence be furious? (Yes, yes it can)

      My dudes, every single head turned towards me. In my nightmares I am still there, being stared at for stealing my colleagues meat feast from them. I fled before dessert.

      PS. Liam from HR, if you’re reading this, why? What did I do to you? Also, vegan food is not just salad leaves with vinegar, you absolute maniac.

        1. Quill*

          The side effect of many people deciding that the “alternative” food needs to fill all of the possible restrictions at once – Vegan, nut free, gluten free, low calorie – is that people apparently just throw some lettuce on a plate and call it a day.

          1. Midwestretiree*

            My husband is gluten-free, no cow or goat dairy products, no nightshade products. And allergic to lettuce. Catered events are…interesting.

            1. restingbutchface*

              Oh gosh, that’s is challenging. I’ve never heard of a lettuce allergy, probably because I don’t think of lettuce as an actual food. It’s certainly not a main event. What is your husband’s favourite meal?

              Nightshade includes tomatoes and potatoes right? They’re even more prevalent than milk. Sidenote, can we stop adding milk where it doesn’t belong? Salted crisps/chips don’t need milk, thank you please.

          2. Steve for Work Purposes*

            Yeah that happened to me at a conference once. The GF/vegan/kosher/halal/dairy-free meal was a place of lettuce with shredded cucumber on top. No dressing or anything else. I managed to get some soda to help tide me over, but as soon as the event was over for the day, I went to a grocery store and grabbed GF granola bars to have in my bag for the next day (I’d flown in that morning so no chance prior, international flight). I always bring emergency granola bars if I possibly can, a lot of conferences and events really cheap out on anything with dietaries.

          3. Reluctant Mezzo*

            This is why I made sure there was a vegetarian/gluten free option at the banquet I ran last spring. None of it was left!

          4. restingbutchface*

            Do not get me started on this. I love gluten. I like nuts. Dither is a huge difference between a dietary choice and being celiac and lumping them all in together means nobody is really happy.

      2. Polyhymnia O’Keefe*

        I worked in a small office with about 12 people, and we did a potluck for Christmas every year. One staff member was vegan, which we all knew, but she wasn’t obnoxious about it, and we generally had at least a few dishes that she could eat. One year, the boss (who wasn’t the vegan person) suggested on the potluck sign-up that people try to bring a vegan option. There were no new people on the team that year, and no one who wouldn’t have know about her dietary restrictions, but the boss just chose to make it slightly more front and centre than it had sometimes been.

        It was SUCH a fascinating study in people’s personalities to see how the potluck offerings broke down into the following:

        1) People who made a vegan dish that wasn’t a substitute for anything else — just vegan and delicious in its own right.
        2) People who brought a vegan version of what they were making already, so they had both the one with substituted ingredients and the original.
        3) The one older guy who was so proud of his vegan dessert… that had marshmallows in it.
        4) The one lady who was trouble in other areas and just… didn’t bring anything vegan at all. Because it wasn’t required, just requested. (Trust me, those were passive-aggressive pork rolls.)

      3. Shiny Penny*

        “More Steves than women”
        lol priceless
        (Also, a horrifying situation to find yourself in.)

      4. Tess McGill*

        “There were more Steves than women”

        I laughed so hard at this! And furious silence…lol.

      5. J*

        I had the opposite experience with my group of Steves.
        My company’s standard catering program was vegetarian (lots of advertising about being climate conscious) but my department was so full of Steves that they would do a special meat order when we had a catered lunch.
        So the menu would be something like: ham and cheese sandwich, bacon sandwich, beef sandwich, ham croissant, and some fruit on the side. For poor vegetarian me there would be a little dish on the side of the table with a cheese sandwich and an egg salad sandwich. Those Steves would _run_ towards the buffet and be like “Well my wife never makes me vegetarian sandwiches, but this egg salad sure looks delicious, isn’t this a nice day to try new things?” and gone was my vegetarian plate.

        Similarly, with a bigger group, we had a couple colleagues who ate gluten-free. I saw a clearly non-gluten-free Steve pile on some of the gluten-free rolls on his plate. Another colleague was like “but Steve, those are gluten free!” and he just answered “no worries, I can eat gluten-free food too!” Oof.

        1. Wired Wolf*

          Yikes. I’m an onmivore and will happily try GF/vegan items, but I have the grace to -ask first- if I see any indication that those items were brought/made special.

        2. amoeba*

          Yeah, that’s why I honestly prefer when there’s enough of the vegetarian/vegan option for everybody! Like, at conferences here, there are often three kinds of sandwiches – meat, cheese, and grilled veggies/hummus. They are not specifically labelled for any group of people but there are enough so that even the latecomers generally still have the choice of all three.

        3. restingbutchface*

          Aww, your Steves are sweeties! Aside from the roll hogger, that’s so close but so far. I don’t understand why people aren’t curious about new foods (although I don’t think not eating meat for one meal is a Big Adventure).

          1. restingbutchface*

            And now I reread your comment properly, I revoke your Steves sweetie status. I read it as they enjoyed the chance to try something new, not stealing your only option. Bad Steves, no croissants for you.

  4. SD95*

    I work at a public university so we don’t have large budgets. We had a training week for our TAs and we provided lunch. Since we can’t have extravagant meals sometimes it was pizza and salad. One year, we had one person who said they were vegan so we did our best to get one vegan-friendly pizza among the rest of the regular kind. The vegan later proceeded to eat a regular pizza that had cheese and sausage on it. My co-worker who went through the trouble of ordering food was livid.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      Usually it’s the opposite, and the non-vegetarians try to eat all the cheese or veggie pizza.

      1. SALC*

        For ordering pizza, or anything really, it’s important to remember a lot of people just LIKE cheese pizza or vegetarian toppings and to try to order a lot more than if you are just ordering for the vegetarians. I’ve worked at places where they keep forgetting that EVERYONE likes the ‘white’ pizza (cheese pizza with a garlic sauce) and they should order tons of it, or also where they assume’ vegetarian’ means ‘wants tons of vegetables’ so the only vegetarian pizza is covered in weird veggies including broccoli

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          This! I dislike most veggie pizza, because the veggies are either ones I dislike or not tasty on pizza. (I love broccoli, but I prefer it fully cooked, not a weird combo of charred and raw.)

          1. UKDancer*

            Yeah I like vegetables but not usually on pizza because they’re usually either charred or raw. I like the sausage and pepperonis they use but they don’t always agree with me.

            So my default for work functions with pizza would always be the plain cheese.

        2. Lady Danbury*

          Yup, we’ve learned to order two to one cheese to pepperoni bc the cheese that’s def for the pescatarians will also be eaten by the children (when they’re not in the mood for pepperoni) and adults who don’t like/feel like eating pepperoni (ie me).

        3. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          Hi, weird vegetarian pizza-lover here: I uniformly hate onions, green bell peppers, and olives. That generally leaves me with mushrooms and I cross my fingers for tomatoes and/or spinach. I had a place near me that had broccoli for a pizza topping and it was amazing. (There are places that have other veggie toppings and I always appreciate that since a veggie pizza is usually full of the stuff I dislike.)

          1. goddessoftransitory*

            You should try our Italiano! San Marzano tomato base, fresh mozzarella, roasted garlic cloves, spinach and sea salt.

        4. UKDancer*

          Yes. this so much. A lot of the time I prefer the cheese pizza despite being an omnivore. Most meat pizzas have a lot of preserved meat and that doesn’t always agree with my digestion. I like pepperoni, it just doesn’t always return the favour and I want to enjoy the experience.

          So my company always orders more cheese pizza than anything else because it’s far and away the most popular.

        5. Silver Robin*

          I was literally giving this advice yesterday when the big boss bought us pizza. The person ordering it is new and had never had to order pizza for an office before so asked me how many/what kind and I told them to make at least half if not two thirds of the order cheese or veggie, because those are the everyone pizzas.

        6. Hyaline*

          Yes. The number of people who will like the pizza is inversely related to the number of different types of toppings on the pizza. Cheese? Most people will like/at least tolerate it. Add one topping? Fewer people will like that pizza because some people always hate that topping. Repeat with additional toppings until you have a supreme pizza and exactly one person who will eat it.

          1. Lexi Vipond*

            I don’t actually like *cheese*. I don’t mind the texture of melted cheese, so cheesy pizza that tastes of vegetables or of pepperoni is fine, but cheesy pizza that tastes of cheese, no thank you!

            However, I accept that I am odd.

        7. Nicole Maria*

          I used to order pizza for a group about once a month – this was for a parenting class my clinic ran, so about 30-50 parents, kids, and our staff, and my rule of thumb when ordering pizza is this: order whatever you think you’ll need, then add 1-3 plain cheese pizzas (depending on the group size).

        8. Dave the Cat*

          Nooooooooo! White pizza isn’t pizza at all! The most important component of pizza is tomato sauce! I’m vegan and I want tons of sauce, tons of vegetables (including broccoli!), and no cheese.

          1. paxfelis*

            Then you can have my share. I have stomach subscriptions (goes way beyond issues) that mean that some days, tomato sauce is ok… and some days, tomato sauce means I wake up that night with burning on the inside of my ears from acid reflux.

          2. Literally a Cat*

            We have two vegetarian/vegan cats in this thread already. We are so getting taurine deficiency.

        9. JustaTech*

          Yeah, the mostly-vegetarian in my group also doesn’t like vegetables, so when we’ve ordered pizza we get a small cheese just for them so they’re not having to pick all the toppings off.
          (By getting a small in a separate box most people will realize it’s specifically for one person and not grab from it.)

        10. Anon for this*

          This! I am a meat eater, but I loathe most of the meats that are commonly put on pizza. Cheese tastes good and doesn’t have anything I don’t like. White pizza is even better.

          Anyone who likes pizza and doesn’t have a specific dietary requirement that would stop them from eating one of the ingredients will eat cheese pizza without complaint.

        11. Quill*

          Yeah. People will stare at the pepperoni, evaluate it’s grease quotient vs the idea that they’ll have a vegetable in their diet today, and chose the mushroom and olives, in either total ignorance of the fact that someone decided a single pie with a vegetable was the option for all the vegetarians. Or it ends up happening just because if you put out two pizzas with two different flavors people will take one of each out of curiosity.

        12. Pizzs*

          I worked somewhere where someone once ordered only “fancy” pizzas and we had a team member who ate the plainest food – cheese pizza (no other toppings), hamburger that was bun and meat, maybe ketchup on it, etc. it was a reminder that most will eat plain cheese but not necessarily everyone will eat something with lots of toppings.

          1. Grimalkin*

            That team member could have been me! I mean not literally, that exact situation hasn’t played out (and there are one or two non-cheese pizza toppings I’ll eat), but I’m a very plain eater. In a work setting, it meant getting a special order when we had a holiday meal at a fancy restaurant; in a social setting, I’ve been in that exact set-up where a friend ordered/made all “fancy” pizzas and I have to sit there eyeing them and trying to decide if any would be acceptable, perhaps if I took certain toppings off by hand…
            It’s not what people usually think of when it comes to food issues, but yes, please factor in us picky eaters too!

        13. Literally a Cat*

          Good to know because I devour any vegetables on anything, more the better. To the point that I completed didn’t think that there are people who don’t.

        14. amoeba*

          Yup. Basically almost all Italians I’ve ever met preferred margherita to most other kinds of pizza – or it was at least their standard, go-to version, omnivore or not. Also, I’m mostly vegetarian by now, but for pizza I don’t think I’ve ever chosen one with meat for myself, even as an omnivore! When I was young, the standards were always funghi (mushrooms), spinach, margherita, and then some non-vegetarian options like ham, salami, or tuna. But the vegetarian ones weren’t marketed as “for vegetarians” (there weren’t that many around then!), just as… standard pizza toppings.

      2. Steve for Work Purposes*

        Yeah that happened so often where I went to grad school that they changed their policy and all events would just have cheese pizza from there out.

    2. Ally McBeal*

      The university I once worked at (private, though, not public) always had a separate, clearly marked table for kosher food that was several feet away from the main buffet lines. I think that helped mitigate the number of people who might’ve otherwise seen specialized food on the main tables and said “oh that looks good!” without a thought for the people who can ONLY eat that food.

      1. Coverage Associate*

        I don’t typically keep kosher, but I once attended a conference where a lot of the meals were stations, with one kosher station. The kosher station had the shortest lines, despite the presence of a rabbi to explain the food and prevent cross contamination. (At first, I thought he was sending away people who weren’t Jewish, but my kosher keeping friends explained he probably was just making people get clean plates.) It was really fun, and the staff were friendly. They even offered me candles for Shabbas. I did skip the “cheesecake” with no dairy, though.

        1. Silver Robin*

          Kosher station at university was similar: tucked away in a corner, never had the long lines, and sometimes had better food than everyone. Halal was more central so it got more traffic, but new students were regularly advised not to discount those stations, especially if you were in a hurry.

          1. Pizzs*

            My college’s kosher food section was known to be better! I can’t remember if they had paper or completely separate plates, but it was “please don’t bring your other dishes/utensils over here but you are welcome to try the food”

        2. BW*

          When my husband went to university, there was a handbook in the desk drawer of his dorm room that explained things like how the cafeteria downstairs worked.

          There was an entry called “Pork Substitute.” The definition was, “If you’re Jewish and you get this, you’ll wish you weren’t and didn’t.

    3. blueberry muffin*

      I have watched the reverse happen.

      The omnivore co-worker who ate the vegan-friendly pizza because they wanted to know “what it tasted like.”

      2. FricketyFrack*

        As a vegan, the answer is, “not that good.” Vegan cheese has come a long way and there are some that are decent, but in the last 5 years, I have yet to try one that’s both good (and now the caveat, “for a vegan substitute”) AND suitable for pizza. I’d be mad if someone ate the only pizza I could have just for a totally mid experience.

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          I’ve recently had to give up dairy so I’ve tried a few vegan cheeses. Some are genuinely delicious and suitable on crackers, in sandwiches, on pasta, etc. But I haven’t encountered a single one yet that bubbles properly for pizza.

        3. amoeba*

          Eh, in Italy, there’s generally a “marinara” version on every pizza menu, which is just pizza without any cheese – people seem to like it and order it a lot, and definitely not just vegans – it seems to be quite traditional/established!

          Also, I’ve had a lot of vegan pizza because the place around the corner from where I live generally has at least 1/3 vegan options, and the monthly special is also often vegan. They can be great! That’s a really good and somewhat fancy/hip pizza place though, I can see the “vegan cheese” version at the mediocre delivery place being underwhelming.

      3. Blue Pen*

        As a vegetarian, it doesn’t at all bother me when a carnivore wants to branch out and try vegetarian or vegan food. The problem, however, is that when that food inevitably runs out, I’m left with nothing to eat, while they still have plenty of options to fill their stomachs.

        1. Phlox*

          I had one colleague at a former job who stood at the front of the line for staff retreats and instituted a “hey omnivores, let the vegan, veg, etc folks get a chance at the options that work for them first please” for the larger group. He wasn’t veg/vegan, just self-nominated to back us up. It was small thing that made the all-day event better.

    4. Bacon Pancakes*

      This reminds me of a family dinner we attended where on participant repeatedly accosted the server that the pizza NEEDED to be vegan, asked for a side of parmesan, dumped the ENTIRE bowl onto their singular slice, and then RAVED all night about how great the VEGAN pizza was.

    5. Lab Snep*

      I have an unfortunate sensitivity to a certain meat protein (beef).

      I also have weird food texture issues (like no sauces on samdwiches, I hate onions) and the guy who orders is usually good. On pizza day he asked what he could get for me, I said Hawaiian because everyone likes it. And there is usually a cheese pizza.

      We were allowed two slices.

      When the pizza arrived there was no hawaaian, two pizzas that had HUGE slices and were full of toppings I didn’t like or beef based protein, and two pepperoni pizzas. One of which had beef and pork pepperoni and one, which I found out months later from the pizza place, I could have eaten but didnt want to risk it.

      There was a cheese pizza. A single, tiny cheese pizza. Where three slices were the size of ONE slice of the othet pies.

      I took three slices of cheese pizza and was starving.

      Another catered meal was with an emoloyer who was a jerk, and he knew that myself and another coworker didn’t like our sandwiches dressed.

      He ordered subway. Do you think he asked for sauces on the side? Ha. He just told us to scrape it off and belittled us in front of our client.

      The client ordered my coworker and I pizza.

      1. Freya*

        I can’t bear butter on my sandwiches. Part of that is my lactose intolerance having been so bad at times that I just… never got used to it. And partly it’s because the texture is so greasy once it’s in my mouth. I can’t bear margarine, either, for similar reasons – and there are infinite people in the world that will argue with me that margarine doesn’t have lactose in (if it’s got ‘milk solids’ as an ingredient, there’s lactose).

        I learned to take my own food for hospital procedures, because people will hear me say “dairy free”, give me food, watch me take the cheese out of their offerings and peel off the butter that is so thick you can peel it, so I can eat the plain bread that’s all that’s left, and think that that is a good option. (Infinite kudos to the one intake nurse years ago who actually listened when I said I had my own food because dairy free is Too Hard, thought that was appalling, and went down to the hospital kitchen and made me food I could eat herself, since the kitchen staff had left for the day)

    6. LifebeforeCorona*

      We run into that problem every time we have a training course. People sign up as vegan/vegetarian/gluten-free even though they aren’t. Most of the them will admit that the 10 day course gives them a chance to try the diets without having to buy and prepare the food.

      1. amoeba*

        But how is that a problem though? If they sign up for it, it’s all fine, right?
        I mean, I sometimes do eat meat but generally prefer the vegetarian option, so yes, I do choose that when asked. It just means “I would like to eat the vegetarian option, please”, nothing more.

        2. GlutenFree is NOT Free*

          Because it’s more complicated ensuring that there are options provided for multiple diets, and good GF options are usually more expensive. Think of the difference between cooking two big pots of noodles & meat sauce to provide ten plates of spaghetti (plus a backup plate in case of accidents), vs the four pots to cook for seven regular spaghetti plates, one plate with GF noodles, one plate with marinara or fake-meat sauce, and one plate with no meat or Parmesan either, plus either prepping a little bit extra of each specialty item or risking not having a replacement if anything happens to their intended plate.

      2. Ace in the Hole*

        What’s the problem? As long as they sign up for it so you know how many of each meal to provide, everyone gets the meal they asked for.

        I’m not strictly vegetarian 100% of the time, but I’m picky about meat. I always order the vegetarian option because I’ll be much happier with that than with a meat meal I dislike.

  5. Viki*

    I live on the other side of the country. There are 2 people in the org (just under 100) who live within 80km of me.

    The rest of the org lives/near in the head office. The team does a yearly YE potluck and food drive in addition to the party. Last year, a very excitable new grad put herself in charge of the potluck to make sure there was enough food for everyone and diets, a perfectly balanced and optimized potluck.. Instead of the usual excel where you just write your name/dish, she assigned you something (dessert/salad/napkins etc.)

    The three of us on the other side of the country for obvious reasons don’t participate. We never even check the excel. You can see where this is going.

    Last year, they ran out of buns, plates and veggies. This year, we went back to sign up yourself.

    1. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      One office in our org has a terrible manager. She has driven most of the long time employees away. She encourages potlucks as team building. She rarely contributes but is usually one of the first to partake. The problem is it has been witnessed by multiple people that she does not wash her hands after using the restroom, so once she has been near the food, people usually stop eating and the rest of the food just sits there all day long. Some of them will bravely use their own utensils to scoop from the far side of whatever dish she was near.

      1. Veryanon*

        Years ago, when I was in college, I worked as a student aide for this professor who loved to bake goodies for the department. Unfortunately, she was known never to wash her hands after using the restroom, and her goodies were usually full of cat hair. No one ever had the heart to say anything to her, as she was otherwise a lovely person, so everyone would take one of whatever she had made, make yummy noises, and then discreetly discard whatever it was. I became a genius at finding out of the way trash cans in empty classrooms.

      2. Ally McBeal*

        At some point I’d stop bringing any food that could possibly be taken off the serving platter with one’s hands. Mac & cheese sounds like a safe option, as does soup. I used to work at a company where I sat close enough to the restrooms to know that the head of sales never washed his hands, so I know the visceral disgust you & your coworkers must be feeling. Does your manager have a supervisor/do you have good HR? I might consider banding together as a group and taking this public health concern over her head.

      3. hygiene*

        I have a flip-side example. Out of a concern about cleanliness, I wash my hands immediately before potlucks and try to get my food first. Someone objected because I picked up a deviled egg. She wanted me to use tongs because… many people touching the same implement is clean? I could understand if I’d touched anything else, but I hadn’t, just what I was eating.

        1. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

          I would also object, because I don’t know if e.g. you’ve not washed your hands after the loo or blowing your nose, or touched any surface since you last washed.

          Using implements instead of hands is the expected convention because probably everyone thinks they are clean but that everyone else may be dirty.

          1. Lexi Vipond*

            Yes, but this is about only touching the one thing you’re going to take away and eat.

            If the germs are going to fly off your hands onto the other food as you come near it, they could just as well fly off your hands as they’re holding the tongs near it.

            2. JustaTech*

              This is an interesting question from a microbiology perspective.
              Part of the reason to use something like tongs is that the end people touch is not the end that touches the food. So if I have some kind of cootie on my hands, I may have contaminated the “hand” end of the tongs, but I haven’t contaminated the food itself.
              Then if it’s a food item that people eat with forks or spoons, even if the people who come behind me have had their hands contaminated by the cooties on the tongs, if they use a fork they are less likely to accidentally move the cooties into their mouth.

              Another consideration is the material of the utensil. They’re usually plastic or metal, which aren’t brilliant surfaces for bacteria to grow (not impossible, but not the most hospitable). Unlike food, which is almost always a great place for bacteria to grow. So it’s less like that the number of bacterial on the utensil will increase over the duration of the meal, where it is possible (if it’s a long meal) that the bacteria might multiply in the food.

              If everyone involved is high risk then it might be worth having individual servings so no one is touching a shared item. Or everyone can wash their hands both before getting food and then before they eat.

              1. Glitsy Gus*

                I have been working in food service for a long time, and this is the crux.

                Shared utensils are best, even though many people touch them. Yes, you are only touching the thing you pick up with your hand, but you hand can brush the plate, the other eggs, etc. Yes, YOU are careful, but we are talking about generalities in these things, not individuals.

                Ideally, if you are concerned, the best way to go is to wash your hands before serving yourself with the communal spoons, or whatever, then wash your hands again before touching your own flatware or starting to eat.

                The germs aren’t realistically going to “walk” down the stem of the spoon into the food, unless someone dunks the whole ladle into the soup or whatever. If that happens you should get a new one anyway, because who wants to touch a soup covered ladle? If you really can’t handle it, don’t eat the soup after that happens, but the chances of trace contaminants still being concentrated enough to hurt you are pretty low.

                1. Glitsy Gus*

                  At the end of the day, do what makes you comfortable, but overall I generally try to be careful but not paranoid.

          2. Silver Robin*

            +1

            We have utensils to avoid hands going near food because hands pick up and transfer everything. Would you (hygiene) also be taking fistfuls of (for the sake of this thought experiment, undressed/dry) salad because your hands were clean and you were the first one to go?

            1. Never Knew I was a Dancer*

              I believe the practice would only be for foods that you could realistically pick up by hand, like a deviled egg or a cookie or a cheap-ass roll.

  6. gingersnap*

    Catered lunch for 300+ company VIPs as part of a multi-day event. Event coordinator realizes a few hours before that the lunch area at the hotel isn’t being set up. Panic ensues. This particular lunch hadn’t been properly ordered. The head chef comes up and says the only thing he can prepare for 300 people on short notice is pizza, salad, and chicken tenders. Admin staff are sent around to explain what happened, ask for patience, etc. As I’m walking around the ballroom all I can hear are delighted giggles and comments of “my staff never lets me eat like this at home.” The salad went mostly untouched and I saw many attendees coming back for seconds of pizza and chicken tenders. Turned out to be the highlight of the trip.

        1. gingersnap*

          We used this hotel every year for this event and they were phenomenal. Had such a good relationship with all the departments there and I imagine if we weren’t on such good terms the response would have been “sorry you didn’t order lunch and we don’t have the time or supplies.” But the kitchen certainly delivered in this case!

    2. CommanderBanana*

      I’m imagining happy little groups of bigwigs clutching chicken tendies in their hands like toddlers.

    4. FricketyFrack*

      My office handles a major event that happens every other year and it went from being a punch-and-cake kind of thing to a bigger deal over time, so we had a caterer for the last one. We also got a couple of trays of chicken strips from a nearby fast food-ish place, mostly for any kids who were forced to attend. We labeled them as being for the kids. Did the adults descend like locusts? Sure did.

      By all accounts, the catered food was delicious and everyone really enjoyed it, but we also learned that people cannot restrain themselves around fried chicken.

      1. Harriet Vane*

        I used to belong to a playgroup, and we held a couple of joint birthday parties for several of our kiddos. This playgroup was super earnest and most of the moms in it kind of adorably PC, and for one of the parties, they decided most of the menu should be vegan. However, they acknowledged not everyone would want the vegan food and assigned me to make ham and cheese and PBJ sandwiches in fun shapes “for the kids.” I made two platters of them that were scarfed down, almost instantly, by a group of dads. I don’t think a single kid got any, besides my kids. Later at that party, my heretofore soft-spoken oldest daughter (maybe 6 at the time) was served a beautifully frosted slice of vegan birthday cake. She took a HUGE bite (she is now a grownup but loves cake to this day), spat it out immediately and yelled, “WHAT IS THIS?!!” I started moving her to a quieter corner while soothingly saying, “Oh, it’s birthday cake, of course!” Yelling even louder, she exclaimed, “This isn’t cake! IT’S PASTE!” Two of the dads who ate the sandwiches started laughing uncontrollably. We left shortly thereafter.

        1. EngineerRN*

          Vegan cake worth eating does exist!

          My neighbor across the street can’t do dairy or gluten, so her homemade cakes are not only vegan but also gluten-free, and AMAZING. She makes a vegan carrot cake complete with dairy-free “cream cheese” frosting that is delicious (and I am very much NOT a vegan or gluten-free).

          Getting our families together for meals is always a bit complicated, though – my kiddos can’t do nuts at all, and a lot of the good vegan substitutes are nut-based. So when we do events together, we both bring desserts!

  7. desk platypus*

    At one of my old offices we had a Souper Bowl party where a bunch of the managers brought in a variety of soups on a particularly chilly weekend.

    They were GROSS. They were all very weirdly grainy and flavorless messes. Most of us were surviving on crackers or rolls after sampling a couple. Our admin assistant looked directly at the kale soup, which was just oddly cut kale bits in hot water, and loudly said, “What is WRONG with you people?” She whisked away to go get takeout instead. I still hear her offended Southern twang when I’m at a bad potluck and wish I had her honesty.

      1. Lady Lessa*

        For the kale soup, by not having meat (I think the Portuguese has sausage in it), and poorly if any seasonings.

        I cook kale in my crock pot all the time, with black eyed peas, tomatoes, and a nice seasoning packet. Nice thick soup.

          1. Zelda*

            I grow kale, so almost every soup I make from August to March has a few handfuls of kale thrown on top in the last fifteen minutes or so.

            On a totally unrelated note, would anyone in the Chicago area like a bag or three of kale for their fall and winter soups?

            1. Cardboard Marmalade*

              I wish I lived in Chicago, I have a curried chickpea and kale soup that has gotten me through many a grey winter.

          1. Retired Accountant*

            The WaPo has a recipe for farro, kale and peanut butter soup that is excellent and more like a stew. Vegetarian and potato free.

          4. Forrest Rhodes*

            Thank you for that, Jessica Ganschen! I have a long history with “stoup”: it was my great-grandma’s, then grandma’s, and then mom’s name for anything that came out thicker than soup but thinner than stew—and I’ve passed the term along to the kids in my family, too.

        4. Lady Ann*

          Portuguese kale soup typically has sausage (linguica or chourico, not kielbasa or chorizo no matter what the recipes say online), potatoes, beans, and sometimes ham. I grew up eating it and still haven’t adjusted to the idea people have of kale as a gross health food. :)

        5. ferrina*

          I always make mine with bacon fat (brown the onions in the bacon fat, then add water and a mix of chicken and beef bouillon, then the kale and whatever else). I’m sure it’s lost all nutritional value, but it sure is delicious.

          1. Dahlia*

            Vegetables do not become less nutritional because you add fat! If anything, they become more nutritious.

      2. Gus TT Showbiz*

        I’m a pretty good cook but I have the yips with chicken noodle soup. My ratio of broth to solids is always off, and then I try to fix it and it swings too far the other way, and pretty soon I have a giant pot of soup that we get sick of way before we eat it all.

        1. Meow*

          My husband’s chicken noodle soup is like that too. It’s soooo good but he would end up with so much of it and then he started feeling hurt when we didn’t eat all the leftovers. :(

        2. Glitsy Gus*

          The way I have solved this for myself is I only put a small handful of noodles in the pot with the soup to cook, so they can add starch and absorb flavor. Then I cook a pot of noodles separate, add some to the bowl then pour the mostly noodle-less soup over the top.

          I like to use wider noodles in my soup, and I have found they soak up all the broth and start to get mushy, so that’s why I do the noodles separate. It’s probably not for everyone, but it makes me happy.

      3. Random Bystander*

        Yeah–we had one of those at church once (everyone who was bringing food was to bring a soup). I brought Neptune Stew, which was absolutely *demolished*.

        The thing with soup, though, I think, is that good soups aren’t quick to make, and some people try to shortcut the time, and it just doesn’t taste right or things aren’t properly cooked (I am all of 58 years old now, and I still remember with horror the time I got the soup-and-sandwich option at my high school and the soup was potato soup and I pulled out a piece of *raw* potato).

      3. RC*

        Flashes of Buster Bluth “hot ham water”: “it’s so watery… and yet there’s a smack of ham to it!”

    5. WellRed*

      Please tell us how that went over with the people who brought in the sad soup? Were they properly chastened? That admin deserves a medal!

  8. Ann O'Nemity*

    Mold on the bread of the sandwiches in catered box lunches. The kicker was that we’re required to use expensive catering because potlucks aren’t “safe.”

    2. Wolf*

      We once had those tiny tubs of ice cream ina freezer at a buffet. They were liquid, and also 6 months past their shelf life.

  9. Eeyore is my spirit animal*

    For several years, we usually had everyone pay around $10.00 and it was catered by a local restaurant. We had a new manager who wanted to help plan the lunch. He insisted that we have a potluck because he didn’t want anyone to pay money. We never could convince him that the $10 was much cheaper than making a dish to help feed 40 people.

    We have moved more to potlucks now. It isn’t really something going wrong, but a bit funny and odd. Our potlucks don’t really have vegetables. Chili, BBQ, fried chicken, fried fish, smoked turkey in all their permutations. We had one potluck where the closest to veggies was macaroni and cheese and some rolls. We have evolved to include potato salad or coleslaw but rarely both. I think it may have something to do with the gender makeup. I am one of two women in the department and neither of us are on the planning committee. I find it fun but not bothered enough to volunteer for the committee.

    1. Lady Danbury*

      Your problem isn’t necessarily gender but (lack of) organization. I frequently organize potlucks for family gatherings and start out by creating a google doc that says types of dishes (meat, veggie, starch, etc) and then has a certain number of signup spots designated. So you should end up with 4 people bringing chicken for 10-12 (which is definitely doable under $10) instead of one person bringing chicken for 40 people. Dishes that are less expensive and/or less likely to have people eating them have less people designated. Free for all potlucks are a recipe for disaster!

    2. PhyllisB*

      Ah!! you must not be in the South where macaroni and cheese IS a vegetable!! :) I kid you not. Look at a menu in most restaurants and you will find macaroni and cheese listed under the vegetable options for sides. (I am born and bred Southerner but even I think that’s weird!!)

  10. MsM*

    Not my story, but a former coworker of mine. Said coworker has the kind of celiac disease where if there’s any cross-contamination with wheat whatsoever, she’s going to have a miserable time of it for at least the rest of the day, so she politely declines to participate in food-related activities at work or brings her own stuff from home. This did not sit well with the office mother hen, who insisted she was going to bring a special, safe dish for the next potluck just for coworker.

    When Coworker inquired what she had in mind, Mother Hen proudly answered…mac and cheese. Not cauliflower mac and cheese; just plain old noodleicious mac and cheese. No amount of attempting to clarify exactly what she thought a gluten-free diet entailed or explaining why this wouldn’t work would assuage her. So she brought the mac and cheese in and shooed everyone else away from it while waiting in vain for Coworker to take the first bite. It went back home with her untouched.

    1. Kiwi*

      oh man I have severe “time for the ER cuz you’re not breathing” food allergies, and people like that coworker drive me up the wall. and then they get offended if you don’t try their thing, which I never asked them to make and do not trust them to have handled in a way that wouldn’t potentially cross-contamination. i’ve spent a lot of time lying about dietary preferences and habits because apparently “Oh I don’t eat sugar after 8/oh I can’t handle ham after I got food poisoning” is a better excuse than “I could die”.

      1. wilma flintstone*

        I have a strawberry allergy. Work parties, for some reason, often include a strawberry-forward cake. I playfully accuse them of trying to murder me. And make several pointed comments about how pretty the MURDER CAKE looks. Does it work? No, but it keeps me entertained.

        1. Pinta*

          Me too! In general there are a lot of strawberry desserts at our work events, so I figured somebody must like them, but there have been two times over the years when I was the guest of honor (a promotion, an industry award) and the dessert was a big strawberry shortcake. It looked great I guess.

          A little while after the second strawberry shortcake incident, I was chatting with the admin who does the catering, and she said something like “I always associate you with strawberries, you must really like them!” and I told her that maybe she associates me with strawberries because I’m allergic to them and make note of that whenever RSVPs ask for food restrictions. She seemed shocked, but also, the strawberry desserts have continued.

          We usually have a couple of dessert options (cookies, biscotti, etc) in addition to the “showcase” dessert so I’m not lacking for dessert. I am 100% expecting a strawberry shortcake to show up at my retirement party though.

      2. Asparagus*

        I will also add that I have (legit, diagnosed, severe) PTSD, and “X is my trigger” seems to read as a challenge to see what they can get away with or whether they can be the one to “cure” me, while “oh, I find that X topic is always so stressful. You too?” works wonders.

        1. littlehope*

          It’s surprising how often people are totally happy to make accommodations as long as they don’t realise they’re Making Accommodations…

          1. Wolf*

            The same people will happily curate a room with only the people they agree with and the conversation topics they enjoy, but balk at the idea of “safe spaces”.

            (And on a lighter note: some Germans are appalled if you offer them vegan beer. Beer according to german laws has to be made from nothing but water, barley and hops since the year 1516.)

      3. FMNDL*

        I once had a coworker who was vegetarian and allergic to spinach. I decided to list her food needs myself when they sent around dietary restrictions requests, just so there would be a second reminder that “Jane is vegetarian and severely allergic to spinach,” because they were so bad at accommodating her. The very next staff meal, they ordered a steamed spinach dish and she couldn’t even go in the room.

      4. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        Reminds me of when my daughter was in second grade (more years ago than I care to count).

        At the “Back to School Night” (for those not in the US, it’s when the parents come to the classroom to meet each other and the teacher), I got up and introduced myself, and said that my daughter had a food allergy, and that I didn’t care what they sent their kids with, but my daughter was “Drop Dead” allergic (yes, I used the term drop dead) to nuts, so if you’re sending something for the whole class, please be careful.

        Just three days later, some parent sent their kid with WALNUT brownies for the whole class. Some people…

      5. No Bees, Lots of Hives*

        People don’t get allergies. They don’t understand that it’s not about how much you do/don’t like the food, or they think you’ll be fine if you just try a little bit, or they think it’s about stomach upset or whatever. In what universe can you just “pick the nuts off?” Definitely have had to explain that I can’t eat anything that has TOUCHED the nuts, not just the nuts themselves. (Allergic to walnuts.)

    2. Paint N Drip*

      As someone who lives with the delights of food allergies, people like this are 20% endearing and 80% insufferably frustrating

      1. Lexi Vipond*

        It sounds like she thought that the problem was contamination from other people who were eating it, which is kind of endearing while also being completely useless.

        1. MsM*

          No, I don’t even think it was that. She just literally could not seem to comprehend that noodles had wheat in them, or at least the same kind of issues as bread wheat.

          1. This Creature Has An Exoskeleton*

            I worked in a county jail and we had accomodate medically diagnosed food allergies. My loveable but oh-so-clueless supervisor asked me to make a meal for one of the inmates that had celiac disease. He told me to substitute crackers for the bread. When I told him that crackers also contain wheat, he triumphantly brought me the box and read the ingredients. “See, no wheat!”. I had to explain that the main ingredient of the crackers, “flour” was made of wheat. He did not believe me.

            2. Silver Robin*

              Sometimes I roll my eyes at “people these days are so disconnected from where their food comes from!!!” (shaming people for their ignorance is annoying and ineffective) but then we get stories like this and my sympathies swing back.

          2. Galadriel's Garden*

            Me, mentally screaming: what do you think noodles are made from?!?!

            Ahh man. I feel for you, with a corn allergy that ruins basically everything.

          3. The Editor-in-Chief*

            This reminds me of Cabin Pressure, when Arthur insisted there was no wheat in bread.
            Carolyn: “What’s bread made out of?”
            Arthur: “It’s not made of *anything!* It’s just…bread!”
            Carolyn: “Wheat! Bread is made of WHEAT!”
            Arthur: “….. *wow!*”

    3. JustADrone*

      “oh, it doesn’t have gluten – these are just noodles. I’ll put it here, next to the vegetarian dish (where I swapped out beef for chicken so it’s vegetarian-friendly).”

        1. WeirdChemist*

          My Greek grandmother basically did this the first time she met my vegetarian sister in law lol. “It’s turkey chili, it’s healthy, what do you mean she can’t eat it??”

      3. A Simple Narwhal*

        “Whadya mean you don’t eat no meat?! …It’s ok, I’ll make lamb.” :-D

        As a former vegetarian I sadly have lots of stories where someone insisted a dish was vegetarian despite being made with beef stock, or cooked a vegetarian item on a surface that had just cooked meat, or claimed “it’s not meat, it’s fish/chicken!”, or told me to “just pick the meat out”.

        (I will say people were mostly wonderful and kind about my vegetarianism, there were just definitely a non-zero amount of bad experiences. And sadly those who insisted their “solution” was fine were usually more likely to get mad at me for not agreeing to it and being grateful enough to them.)

        1. Silver Robin*

          side tangent on “it’s not meat, it’s chicken!!” that may be of interest as historical/linguistic context, but this is certainly not meant to excuse anyone.

          I have noticed that lots of languages still preserve the distinction between land / sky / water flesh as meat, poultry, and fish. In English, “meat” is used both as a generic term for all animal flesh, but, as we see in grocery store counters, also sometimes gets used for the narrower definition as well. So, in cultures where that three-way distinction is still important, folks who are less familiar with vegetarianism will hear “no meat” as “no land flesh” when what is actually meant is “no previously living animals”.

          My sympathies for those who have to navigate the miscommunications/misunderstandings. Eating animals really can be quite deeply ingrained for some folks, and getting them to think about their food otherwise is rough.

          1. ferrina*

            Fun fact: Puffins have been classified as “fish” by the Catholic Church for Lent purposes. Also considered “fish”: capybaras, beavers, muskrats and alligators.

            1. Lis*

              also geese, because they grow from goose barnacles. kidding not kidding, but it was apparently a thing in Ireland.

            2. Silver Robin*

              Kosher rules has all fish as “neutral” like vegetables, neither meat nor dairy. always makes me laugh, but I am grateful for bagels and lox!

          2. linger*

            Though crosslinguistic semantic comparisons are fraught with pitfalls.
            Note English meat originated as the rather more general Old English mete “food” (hence e.g. “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”).
            It was only later restricted to “flesh” (and then further restricted, in some less common uses, to “flesh of land animals”).
            So in this case it’s not so much “preserving” a distinction, as developing finer distinctions as more dietary choice became available.

            1. Silver Robin*

              ah, I did not know the tidbit about English! I will include it moving forward, thanks!

              I did not mean to imply that English necessarily had that distinction previously, but that there are languages/cultures which do. Like Russian and Serbian, which I have the most experience with. So there are miscommunications.

        2. Beth**

          It doesn’t help that many people claim to be vegetarian when they are not. Years ago, I went to a multi-day meeting in the Czech Republic in a city other than Prague.

          I’m not actually vegetarian, but I don’t eat pork, which I knew would be the dominant meat available, so it just seemed easier to say I was vegetarian.

          One day the “vegetarian” option at lunch was egg mayonnaise (egg salad) wrapped in ham and then breaded and deep fried. The only other “vegetarian” at the meeting happily tucked into this dish. She was also not actually a vegetarian but was “trying to cut down on meat.” The restaurant staff tried to convince me that it was “just a little meat”.

          For lack of any other options, I ate the bits of egg not in contact with the ham. Then rushed back to my hotel room to have one of the cereal bars I had brought for exactly this kind of scenario.

          1. Silver Robin*

            yeah, I also do not eat pork and had a similar situation where I asked specifically if a dish has pork and they said no. it has ham bits though!

            I checked with my host family about whether I had messed up the language, but they said I was fine, they were just dumbasses.

            1. littlehope*

              When I was a kid, I spent a couple of months every year in Spain where my parents worked on an archaeological dig. One of the diggers was a strict vegetarian, and that’s tricky in Spain now. In the 80s it meant you were living on bread. I was about eight when this happened, and I still remember his face when a waitress who had promised the salad had no meat in it set down a salad full of generous chunks of ham. “Pero no es carne,” she said, confused, when he pointed it out. “Es jamon.”

              1. Slovenly Braid Cultist*

                I had a similar experience in Spain- my omelet with spring vegetables, apparently ham is a spring vegetable.

                fortunately for me I was technically more of a pescatarian, I just didn’t really love seafood… but I got much more adventurous with fish on that trip out of necessity.

      4. Wendy Darling*

        This has the same energy as the way my old dog played fetch, wherein he ran to the thrown object, touched it, and then ran back to the thrower, leaving the object where it was.

        There was an attempt, but said attempt has done nothing to address the actual problem!

    4. Babbalou*

      I’m not celiac, but have a significant inflammatory reaction to wheat. I got a call at home from a work colleague early one morning, saying he wanted to make a special dessert that I could eat. Which was sweet, but I told him it was a little complicated – and I had some real failures with gluten free baking myself, so it really wasn’t necessary.

      It turned out that the gluten free dessert he planned on making was a trifle. Using purchased pound cake, which he assumed was gluten free.

      1. RagingADHD*

        Just a plug here that the gluten-free vanilla cake mix from Aldi is meh by itself, but makes excellent trifle.

    5. Food makes 'em weird*

      I have a coworker with Alpha Gal (can’t eat anything from mammals — meat, milk, etc.), so potlucks are challenging, but I try to bring something she can enjoy. (She brings something for herself.) But it’s “hey, friend, I made this with XYZ ingredients using ABC process, so you’re welcome to it,” not YOU (AND ONLY YOU) MUST EAT THIS!!)

    6. Eeyore's Missing Tale*

      My 5 year old has celiac disease. It’s times like this that I’m so thankful that no one has tried to force my child to eat anything. I would lose my sh*! if this happened. The worst thing that happens is me trying to explain to other parents that I’m a bit paranoid about what she eats and that I prefer to bring her food myself.

      1. KateM*

        I learnt to trust people who said “omg I have no idea what he can even eat, could you pack his meal separately?” and distrust the ones who said “no worries, we’ll find food he can eat all right!”.

      2. Another Kristin*

        Poor kid! That must be really rough with birthday parties and so on…hard to explain to a kid why they can’t have the same cupcakes as everyone else.

        1. Eeyore's Missing Tale*

          So far, she’s done great with it! One of my neighbors introduced us to Antonina’s cupcakes and they are amazing. She loves the chocolate ones and they come with a small piece of shaved chocolate on top.

          I think that it helps that no one makes a big deal about it. The kids that have been at the parties she’s been to seem to understand she has food allergies*. And everyone seems very protective of the food allergy kids in their class.

          *I know celiac disease isn’t an allergy. At 5, though, it’s easier for her and her classmates to understand “I have a gluten allergy and can’t eat it” vs “I have an autoimmune disease and can’t eat gluten”.

          1. JustaTech*

            Growing up there was a girl in my class who had a wheat allergy. The school was really good about accommodating her: when the rest of us got cookies Sally got candy, and she also got special meals from the cafeteria. And if it looked like the cafeteria forgot her meal ooh boy were the girls at her table quick to go find the kitchen and make sure she got her food.

            This was before it seems like a lot of food allergies were common: I was in college before I had a classmate with a peanut allergy, but my 4-year-younger brother had classmates with peanut allergies starting in pre-school.

          2. GlutenFree is NOT Free*

            Two of my kids were diagnosed with Celiac at 2 & 4 years old, and I 100% agree that sometimes it’s simpler just to use allergy terms. They’re 10 & 13 now and very matter of fact about the whole thing. The wording that generally works best for me is cheerfully explaining that they have Celiac Disease and have to follow a very strict GF diet, and it’s rather complicated to make sure everything is prepared safely, so we’ll just bring our own [cupcake/etc] so it’s not too much of a hassle for the hosts. Bonus points if I can pair that with a small request for information (the timing of when exactly they’ll eat, the rest of the menu so I can make sure we match as close as possible to what the rest of the kids are getting, or some other tidbit) or assistance with finding a safe spot to store the snack bag until it’s needed; it gives the compulsive volunteers a way to feel good about helping us without risking cross contamination.

      3. ReallyBadPerson*

        That’s a good approach. I was so shocked when another parent, after being told my son had a peanut allergy, asked if peanut butter was okay. I learned early to just send food with him and taught him to read food labels from bottom to top as soon as he was competent at reading.

        1. Eeyore's Missing Tale*

          Oh no! I hope you were able to explain why that was not safe. I’ve been teaching my daughter to recognize the certified gluten free symbols. Once she can read, we’ll definitely dive into reading labels.

      4. Coffee*

        When my oldest niblings were toddlers were had agreement that parents take care of their food. No matte he careful we were we always forgot something. It was such relief that all her kids grew out of the food problems eventually

    7. lurkyloo*

      Me. This is me. And good LORD the shenanigans coworkers have done that I’ve had to deal with. Possibly my favourite (that I could ACTUALLY eat) was the monthly ‘birthday party’ that they did for folks. Giant, beautiful, 3 layer cake with all the amazing things on it; ganache, whipped cream, etc….I was in awe!
      Then they handed me my fruit cup.

    8. Nannerdoodle*

      I also can’t eat gluten, so if I must be part of a potluck, I make sure to bring a large amount of something I can eat. The only other people I trust to make food are someone who also has serious restrictions, and someone who has a FIL with celiac. When others ask why I won’t eat their food (that they think is gluten free, but can’t be sure), I’ll let them know that I’m appreciative that they thought of me, but I do not want to risk getting sick due to bad labeling by food companies or misunderstandings on what’s okay. If they get super pushy about it, then I’ll be a little less nice.

      1. Wendy Darling*

        Gluten free is so hard, and those of us who eat gluten no problem do not have practice dealing with it.

        The one that always gets me is that SOME but not ALL oatmeal is gluten free, and the difference is apparently not only where the oats are processed but where it is farmed because oats are so frequently farmed right next to gluten-containing grains that the oats are cross-contaminated when they’re harvested! Like, how is anyone who isn’t specifically and routinely trying to avoid gluten going to find THAT out?

        (I found it out because I was trying to make gluten free cookies for someone and thought I had a hit with a recipe that had no flour but did contain rolled oats, only to find out that the specific brand of oats I used was potentially a problem. Now if I want to make him cookies I get the special Bob’s Red Mill gluten free rolled oats. And also don’t use my stand mixer because it’s one huge cross-contamination incident all by itself.)

        1. Mount Pleasant*

          So kind of you to accommodate your friend! As a heads up, not only do persons with celiac disease need purity protocol oats, BUT ALSO they must be able to tolerate oats. That’s because the protein structure of gluten is similar (called ‘avenin’). So, once diagnosed with celiac disease, we’re told that we should wait to try purity protocol oats for a few months after diagnosis to determine if we can tolerate them. I can, thankfully, as oats are in a lot of gluten-free products.
          Celiac disease is SO FUN. :) /s

          1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

            Oh lawd – at the last coffee morning at my son’s school, the lovely teaching assistant staffing the cake table directed the celiac child to the tray of flapjacks*.

            Fortunately:

            1. the child has been brought up to be very cautious

            2. I had made them and was able to form the word no (more like “noooooooooooooooooo”) in good time!

            1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

              * British flapjacks are made by melting together butter, syrup and brown sugar, then mixing through rolled oats and baking until it all forms a chewy caramel.

    9. Liz Lemler*

      I have celiac, and I work at a nonprofit that makes medically tailored meals (diabetes friendly, low sodium, allergy free, etc) for the food insecure. Not only are our chefs very talented, but I 100% trust them to make truly gluten free food for me at our office parties. Makes me feel lucky

    10. Annie*

      Oh, man. I had a coworker do this to me once. I am deathly allergic to peanuts, but she desperately wanted everyone in the office to try her wonderful homemade peanut butter cookies, the recipe was proudly passed down through generations of her family or something like that. One day she came in and proudly told me she had made them “safe” for me to eat. How did she do this? By purchasing a different brand of peanut butter than usual. She did not get it, and was extremely offended I didn’t leap at the opportunity to give them a try.

    11. EngineerRN*

      WTF?

      I know how to cook very good gluten-free stuff (my best friend has a mild gluten sensitivity), but I do NOT cook for celiacs – my entire kitchen is contaminated with gluten, because I also bake a lot of bread from scratch, and it’s just not safe to prepare items for celiacs in a kitchen like that, unless you plan to THOROUGHLY scrub the entire kitchen top to bottom, including sterilizing everything that is potentially going to touch the ingredients.

      It’s not enough to use gluten-free ingredients – you have to de-gluten the entire kitchen first!

  11. David Levenson*

    We had a Supervisor who owned horses. Lovely person, but one day she brought in a cake for her staff. When she cut it and took pieces out of the pan, they had horse hair dangling from them. “Horse hair cake” became a potluck warning for years for those in the know.

      1. Po-tay-toes*

        We need a set menu of “AAM-famous” foods, to include Horse hair cake, and cheap-ass rolls among others.

    2. A Library Person*

      As someone with several cats, this is basically a nightmare scenario for me and a reason why I’m glad my workplace doesn’t to potlucks. Although, come to think of it, a cat sneaking their way onto a counter (despite our protestations, believe me!) is somewhat different than a horse doing the same thing…

      2. Paint N Drip*

        I definitely fall on the side of ‘crazy pet person’ and would likely have dog or cat hair in my potluck offerings (included in the allergen warning of course lol) because they live in my house. But horse hair gets into the territory of just… dirty (or are they cooking in the barn??)

        2. Wendy Darling*

          I probably shouldn’t admit this in public but I have very sheddy hair (I’ve had it checked out and I’m fine it’s just how I am) and if I find a hair in my food I simply assume it is my hair, pick it out, and keep on eating.

          I know, intellectually, that sometimes it is someone else’s hair but I figure anything cooked to a safe temperature to eat is cooked enough that it killed any weird bacteria that might be on a hair so… whatever.

          A horse hair would weird me out though.

          1. shaw of dorset*

            Same. I guess I’m supposed to find a hair on my food gross, but I just… don’t. Sorry not sorry.

      3. Secretary Von Bird*

        Not a work story, but many years ago, a friend brought a home-baked banana loaf to my birthday party, but when she unwrapped it, it had clearly had most of its corners sliced off. I asked if she’d accidentally burned the edges while baking it (which would have been fine), and she replied that no, she’d left it to cool on the kitchen table and her cats had started nibbling at it. So she’d just sliced off the parts with obvious teeth marks on, and brought the cake anyway.

        Neither I nor anyone else wanted any cake after that.

        2. Wendy Darling*

          That is something it makes sense to do with your own food at home if you so desire, but not with food you are going to serve to people outside your household. D:

          My mom had a pretty epic family story about a time she and her sisters cooked the Thanksgiving turkey and the cat helped himself and they had to slice off the cat-gnawed parts and serve the rest.

          1. The Editor-in-Chief*

            Ages ago when I was a teen, my mother baked a (very regular, just in a 9×13 pan) cake for my father’s birthday. It was late; the cake needed to cool quickly, and the house was hot. She told me to set it on the roof of the car outside, on a trivet. I did so.

            She sent me back about half an hour later to retrieve the cake. When I did, there were two distinct bird footprints and a hole where someone (magpie?) had helped itself to a few bites of hot fresh cake.

            My father had a very limited meal break on a tight schedule, so we just frosted it and ate it anyway. (It was fine.)

            The bird-foot cake lives forever in my memory.

            1. Cardboard Marmalade*

              I am cackling at this. I love that you even have theories as to what kind of bird was the culprit!

      4. Always Tired*

        My cat is thankfully too dumb to jump on the counters, but if I’m cooking for others, step one is a full kitchen cleaning. I am always shocked that other’s don’t.

        Am I perfect around food safety 24/7? No, I live alone and usually just cook for myself and any contamination is between me and God at that point. But cooking for others? It’s scrub up and timers and thermometers.

        1. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          Yes! In a household with cats and/or teenagers, you clean the kitchen thoroughly *before* cooking.

    4. Strive to Excel*

      That’s a new one. Congrats, I thought I was pretty inured to pet hair, but I threw up in my mouth a bit at this one.

    7. The OG Sleepless*

      I have a friend who made a cake for her coworkers. At an animal hospital. To her horror, she had to hit the brakes hard on the way to work and the cake fell in the floor of the car. Where she usually transported her dogs (though they weren’t with her at the moment). She salvaged it from the floor, left any frosting that had come off the cake, inspected it carefully and didn’t see any dog hair. So she put it on the counter with a sign that said “May contain dog hair-eat at your own risk.” Almost everybody was happy to take their chances and I don’t think any hair was found.

      1. Wendy Darling*

        I feel like at an animal hospital once you take the packaging/wrapping/lid off food and expose it to the air for more than 90 seconds, ANY food is liable to contain dog hair!

        My last dog was the shedding-est dog I’ve ever encountered in 40+ years of petting dogs, so I assume that I have inadvertently eaten enough dog hair to reupholster at least one small dog and am fully beyond caring as long as the food is not visibly hairy.

        1. Not Australian*

          Yup, as the parent of three cats the only question really is whether it’s black hair or stripey…

  12. Honkalonk*

    Office christmas party: on a boat. Possibly the worst 6 words in the English language, because once you’re on and sailing you can’t get off. And worse, the catering was a weird hot buffet with some of the smallest portion sizes I’ve ever seen, like a half serving spoon of rice and a half serving spoon of chicken in sauce. No dessert. And there was just one serving station for 150 people who were therefore stood in an hour-long queue for the food in the close confines of the lower deck.

    When it became clear that even with the small portions, the caterers were likely to run out of food and we were trapped on the boat until 11pm with no further food available, people became quite grumpy and started trying to bribe those earlier in the queue to swap spots in return for drinks tokens. People accused others of cutting in line, or of secretly getting in for seconds before others had had any. The party organising team had to start policing the queue, meaning they were then being exposed to a lot of snark because they had organized the caterers (though I don’t see how it’s their fault that the caterers had massively under estimated what was needed). Ultimately it was a sad boat full of very hungry people who had gotten drunk too quickly, there were lots of cynical cannibalism jokes, and there has never been a boat party again.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yes, exactly. One of my golden event planning rules is no boats ever, for any reason. In addition to people not being able to leave, I don’t want to worry about drunken attendees falling overboard.

      2. Pool Noodle Barnacle Pen0s*

        Boats are a scorpion pit of liability. It boggles my mind that anyone in a corporate setting would even consider it.

      3. Jessica Ganschen*

        I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a boat that didn’t leave the dock, but I suppose in most cases that pretty much defeats the purpose of being on a boat in the first place.

        1. JustaTech*

          My senior year of high school our prom was on a boat (in a harbor). Part of the reason given was that a boat in the water is a much more controlled environment, so there would be fewer opportunities for kids to sneak off to get drunk or do drugs.
          Also, the planners thought it would be “fun”.
          Not unexpectedly I got seasick after about an hour of dancing in a room with ceilings so low that more than one kid hit their head. So I went out on deck in the hopes some fresh air would settle my stomach. It was absolutely freezing and as I climbed up the ladder to the top deck I was smacked in the face with a cloud of weed smoke.
          So much for keeping us sober! All those kids were up getting stoned with the crew!

          (We made it back to dock alive and that was the last boat prom.)

        2. Glitsy Gus*

          This.

          We did one that worked well at one former workplace, but it was just a bay tour that was around 2.5 hours long, give or take a bit, which I think is the maximum amount of boat time possible without disaster. From there we moved on to a nearby restaurant, which meant folks could stay and continue to socialize, or head on home if they were done.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Couldn’t the party organisers at least have asked for the boat to return to the dock? Were they too far out? The least you can do if the catering is crummy, is to let people leave.

    4. OrdinaryJoe*

      “Office christmas party: on a boat. Possibly the worst 6 words in the English language…” SO SO SO TRUE!! I still feel like I have PTSD from way too many office and meeting parties on a boat.

      I remember one trip was so long that I was staring at the river (river cruise meeting trip) and the city over Just There and giving semi-serious thought to … I’m a strong swimmer, I bet I can make it …

      2. Ama*

        I used to live in a city where party boats were common and I am so, so thankful that none of my employers ever thought to rent one (especially the one that was located within walking distance of the dock where most of them left from). Benefit of working for smaller employers that would have found it to be a high per person cost, I suppose.

        My particular flavor of social anxiety is generally handled by reminding myself “if you get there and it’s awful you can leave,” so yeah, boats are not a good idea.

      3. The OG Sleepless*

        Haha, I’m also a strong swimmer and I hate being trapped in social situations (I will do almost anything to take my own car to a party) and I feel this so hard.

      1. Chocolate Teapot*

        I don’t know if I imagined it, but I thought I once read a post on here from somebody who was on a miserable dinner cruise around Sydney Harbour in Australia, and got so fed up that they jumped overboard, swam to the quayside, climbed up the steps and got a taxi home.

          1. Glitsy Gus*

            Could be another story where someone actually swam the harbor floating around on AAM but I wasn’t able to dig it up.

            Thank you for this.

        1. Chocolate Teapot*

          No, it wasn’t Ganymede’s story. I can remember the detail of putting shoes into an evening bag before jumping overboard.

            2. Happily Retired*

              The link is correct, but for anyone else for whom the links never take them to the actual post:

              The Nelly post is its own (not a reply to another’s), and it’s near the end of the posts for that thread, so slide way down to find it. Posted Dec 13, 2013 at 5:53 pm (at least for me here in US Eastern Standard Time.)

              The post is epic and well worth the hunt. I especially appreciated the image of Nelly clenching her handbag in her teeth as she swam.

    7. Nannerdoodle*

      My department had an office party on a boat a while back. I get dreadfully sea sick, so I took some Dramamine and hoped for the best. When we were far enough out that we couldn’t easily go back, the engine overheated and died. My seasickness gets much worse when the boat isn’t moving. After about 30 minutes of torture, they thought they fixed it, so further out to sea we went. At which point the engine promptly died again and we were out there another 2 hours until we could be slowly towed back to dock, occasionally starting the engine for a bit of help. Anytime something goes wrong at an office party, someone else will say “at least we’re not on the boat”.

    8. Elizabeth West*

      Oof.
      An ancient non-profit where I worked once had a work party on the Showboat Branson Belle, a steamboat with a performance venue on Table Rock Lake. They very strongly implied that we should come, and as it was during work hours, we basically didn’t have a choice.

      The wind was high enough that day that the boat couldn’t even go out on the lake. It just sat there beside the dock. The food was very meh and there wasn’t much of it. No buffet; we were served a plate. Only the mashed potatoes were decent — made from red potatoes with skins and garlic.

      Oh, and they bused us down there from the office, so we couldn’t leave. The show wasn’t horrible, but I spent the entire day bored and starving and thinking I should have called in sick.

    9. Happily Retired*

      “A three- hour cruise”

      (In case the emojis don’t display, they are music notes, referring to the Gilligan’s Island theme song.)

    10. Veryanon*

      Thankfully I get horribly seasick anytime I set foot on a boat, so I always have an out if anyone suggests a boat-related activity.

  13. PeanutJaney*

    The department I used to work for had a potluck type meal one day. Everyone signed up to bring a dish – I was bringing my signature Polish beetroot soup which I knew people loved – and I was excited to see what everyone else would bring.

    A sheet had gone round where we could put any allergies we had and it was posted on the wall where everyone could see it. I wrote in big letters ‘Janey – peanut allergy’ because I am allergic to peanuts. Like EpiPen allergy level. Other people had put allergies down and I (wrongly) assumed that there would be food that was safe for me to eat.

    The day of the potluck rolled round and I added my soup to the table, and took a minute to see what other people had brought.

    Pad thai salad. Chicken satay. Peanut butter cheesecake. Snickers cookies. Various other savoury dishes with peanut sprinkled on top.

    There was not a single thing I could eat, and even worse, there was an open bowl of salted peanuts at one end of the table which made me itch just from being in the same room as them. I bailed out pretty quickly and went to the nearest sandwich shop and got myself some safe food.

    To this day I wonder if they did that on purpose because they didn’t like me and the dishes sign up sheet didn’t say anything that anyone would be bringing chicken satay or peanut butter cheesecake.

    I left that department not long after and am now working for one where we don’t do potlucks, but instead go to a restaurant and the boss makes sure it’s safe for everyone… and he pays!

    1. Bruce*

      That is weird. I can understand why you felt targeted, especially with the bowl of peanuts at the end of the table. I was a Scout leader for a summer camp trip, one of the boys had a peanut allergy… and one of the other kids threw a bunch of peanuts on his bed! He came back to his tent, saw them there and backed out. We had to wash his bedding and clean up the tent, he did not have a reaction to the exposure luckily. Never did find the culprit…

    3. Nonprofit writer*

      Don’t any of these people have kids??? Mine don’t have allergies but many of their peers do. I never bring items with nuts to anything because I’m so used to being cautioned about nut allergies.

      1. Another Kristin*

        Even if they are parents, some people believe allergies aren’t real or you should just, I don’t know, “toughen up” and will yourself not to have them. Because some people are horrible.

      2. ferrina*

        Having children and being a good person are not correlated in any way.

        Just ask any member of my family. Going back several generations (yay generational trauma; the more kids, the more you can spread the trauma!)

    4. Bast*

      Even if you don’t care for someone… a cruel “joke” such as this that could send someone to the hospital is in extremely poor taste.

      On another note, I’d love your soup recipe.

      1. PeanutJaney*

        Of course! It’s a cold soup so some people think it’s a little odd but it’s delicious and it’s a family favourite.

        Finely chop a bunch of raw beetroot, stalks and all – do peel the bulbs though. Boil in a large pan with water (about 1.5 to 2 litres) for about an hour. Leave to cool completely. You can blend it smooth if you’re making this for picky eaters who don’t like lumpy soup.

        Chop a bunch of radishes and one medium cucumber into small dice and add to the cold soup. Add some chopped dill and chopped chives. I sometimes leave these out and in a bowl separately so people can add it if they like. Not everyone in my family likes dill.

        Mix 250ml sour cream with 250ml plain natural yoghurt and add to the cold soup. Season with salt, pepper and white caster sugar to taste – again I sometimes leave these to the side so people can season to their liking.

        This makes a ton of soup and keeps for about a week in the fridge. It’s my great grandma’s recipe and she was from Poland so it’s probably legit!

    5. Coffee*

      Even if they didn’t like you, it was unjustified, immature, awful behavior on their part to create an unsafe situation for you. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

  14. Not on board*

    Not holiday per se, but October and November is the “busy season” for my partner and they like to treat the staff to lunch on Wednesdays – when the ordering falls to “Sally” she inevitably messes it up and will mess up the time, or location, resulting in the food showing up mid afternoon. She’s often not physically located at the delivery address. One time she ordered to the correct street address but wrong town which was 1.5 hours away from where they were.

      1. Not on board*

        She’s some sort of supervisor…. also, she recently sat at my partner’s desk to work when he was off for a couple days – despite there being an unassigned desk directly in front of his – and completely re-arranged the entire set up and accidentally took his mouse home – the mouse he purchased himself because the mice they supply are cheap wired ones. Took him over half an hour to put everything back to how it was. He was pretty livid. He spoke to his own supervisor to let them know that this was NOT OK.

  15. Katie*

    My business hosted an event for like 30 clients highlighting what we do. It’s a bunch of presentations and meetings so lots of other people were involved. Its very much a cheerleading session to make the clients feel good about us.

    Day 1 they ran out of food before everyone got it! I was 10 minutes late and they were already out of food. They didn’t even attempt to make it right. Sooo embarrassing.

    1. Elara Harper*

      I was at a similar event for my work. 36 clients for like a 4 hour presentation on why we were the best! New Assistant ordered lunch with no guidance whatsoever. She ordered 36 little pinwheel sandwiches (these were sliced wraps-one pinwheel is like 3 bites), 36 regular cokes and a plain (no dressing) lettuce salad that was probably 12 servings at best. So, so embarrassing. A different staff member was dispatched with owner credit card to nearby grocery store and no one starved. New Assistant didn’t work out for other reasons, but the warning to NOT “new assistant” the food remains in the firm lexicon 15 years later.

  17. Lorna*

    We have an annual pre-holiday potluck/homemade cookies/ buffet kind of thing at work. One year a German coworker brought a charcuterie board loaded with the most pungent cheeses from her home country. Something called Harzer Rolle, Limburger and Handcheese ( I don’t remember all the names). Our office smelled like feet for a good few days.

    2. Raechem*

      Cheese will do that sometimes. I recall Captain Awkward mentioning that when she was in France, the cheese-seller asked whether she wanted a cheese that smelt like feet, vagina, or like death. She gamely tried all three, but decided she was Team Feet-Vagina all the way.

    4. Wolf*

      Harzer Roller is awesome. It’s 30% protein and <1% fat. It does, however, have a very peculiar taste and a very strong smell. Not something you'd usually eat at work, just like you don't microwave fish.

  18. Bast*

    We had one guy who would clear out any leftovers from the office party. The general consensus was, if the party was in your honor (your birthday/baby shower/wedding sprinkle, etc) you were the one who had first dibs on the leftovers. Beyond that, once the party person took their share, it was also just general courtesy that if you DID take something, you took a reasonable amount — so maybe a sandwich and a cookie or two, or a few slices of pizza, etc. This guy would immediately go down to the fridge after the party and take most, if not all, of the remaining food. We had Panera Bread with a cake for my baby shower, and he took Every. Last. leftover sandwich and cookie before I had a chance to do claim anything. There were at least half a dozen sandwiches and even more cookies that he had walked off with. I cannot describe the feeling of going down for a cookie later, cravings and all, to discover every single one had been taken.

    Same person, different scenario — someone decided to bring in doughnuts and Keurig cups for the office as a Friday treat. Dude took the entire box of Keurig cups home.

      1. Bromaa*

        I doubt this is true. Most of the people who behave like this aren’t in need — they’re selfish.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          Anecdotally, EVERY person I have seen taking the lion’s share of the food has been on the more high-level, more highly-paid end of the company scale.

      1. Bast*

        Yes. He’d become outraged and offended and “I can’t believe you’d think that of me” until the other person gave up. It was his way to deflect — FWIW this is the same guy who found every way possible to not do any work, and would also be offended and outraged when someone said something to him about that as well.

        1. ferrina*

          That tracks. Selfish people are rarely selfish in only one way (though it is more fascinating when an otherwise lovely person has a single strange behavior)

    3. HigherEdEscapee*

      I worked with someone like this. She was so completely bananapants that even openly mocking her to her face did nothing to change her behavior. (I was at the end on my rope after days of work running events and she’d just been pilfering actual pounds of food before the invited guests got the chance to take anything and my filter slipped.)

    4. Forrest Rhodes*

      I’m remembering (I hope correctly) an AAM story about a higher-level exec who came into the office party; immediately picked up an entire, as-yet-untouched tray of some kind of goodie; and walked out with it.

      Disgusted with the exec’s behavior—he’d done it often before—the LW marched, two paces behind him, into his office, glared him straight in the eye without saying a word, picked up the tray, and returned to the party.

      As I recall (though it may be wishful remembering), the exec never did that again.

      I’ve always loved that story and have never forgotten it, and that LW is still one of my heroes.

      1. Chocolate Teapot*

        I think it might have been a tray of cookies or brownies.

        There have been a lot of stories on here about how the best remunerated people are the stingiest when it comes to office catering. I still remember the company where the 6 figure salary bosses bring the cola and paper napkins but expect their minimum wage staff to contribute expensive gourmet food, and the boss who would always take all the cookies for their private parties before anyone could have any.

    7. Glitsy Gus*

      We once had a coworker on our team who would do this. He would start a “take home” plate while serving up his “eat now” plate. My coworker and I, (who weren’t his managers, but our manager was across the country) finally had to sit him down and tell him he was getting a reputation and he needed to stop doing that. He was shocked and very confused. He did dial back the stocking up before anyone else had a chance to eat, but we never quite got him to stop the fridge raiding.

  19. DisneyChannelThis*

    Academic setting years ago – potluck meal. One of the broke grad students who were extremely underpaid for their position brought a cheap bottle of wine. Head of the department made a big production of being offended by how cheap and low quality the wine was. It was a very awkward moment. The department head redeemed himself when at the next potluck he brought 3 bottles from his collection of extremely fancy wine! He made a production of getting everyone to taste what “real” wine tastes like.

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      What a shithead. The poor student. Especially when most people can’t actually taste the difference between cheap wine and the fancy stuff in a blind taste test.

      1. Elizabeth West*

        My former coworker could. We had a blind-label wine party at ExJob and she correctly identified region, type, and price of almost all of them just by tasting.

        (Grr. I’m still mad about that layoff.)

      1. Jen in OR*

        This! I would have reveled in saying “This is what broke grad students can afford. If you want better, pay them better, (ya glass bowl)” <–the "ya glass bowl" is silent

    4. Parcae*

      Making a production of getting everyone to taste what “real” wine tastes like sounds like he doubled down on his dickishness.

    5. Worldwalker*

      How is showing off how much richer he is than a grad student—especially the one he disparaged for his poverty—redemption?

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Also, no one took the opportunity to say “Huh, it’s okay, but I think I actually preferred the cheaper wine”? Wine snobs exist purely to be messed with.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          Fully agree on the snobs. Gotta hit em with the ‘oh is this not the same wine that PoorGradStudent brought last time? Tastes the same to me!’

          1. The OG Sleepless*

            Ha. I unfortunately hit a Porsche in a parking lot once by accident. I ran up to her, babbling apologies and asking if she was OK. The lady sniffed at me, “I’m FINE, but this is a VERY expensive car to get RAMMED.” A friend said that I should have said, “Oh, are these expensive? I don’t know anything about cars.”

    7. Pay no attention...*

      I knew a woman like that… not at work. She pitched a loud fit because someone brought a bottle of “2-buck Chuck” to a party but… the wine tastes fine it’s just overproduced by a large winemaker and sold at a discount grocery store, so it’s cheap. Those types of people aren’t looking for “good” wine, they’re looking for status.

        1. The OG Sleepless*

          Agreed, I can generally tell the difference between cheap wine and at least moderate priced wine, but I definitely wouldn’t criticize what someone else brought.

      2. Nusuth*

        I had a friend of a friend who invited her grad school professor out for a drink at the end of the semester (not weird – it was a small, friendly discipline, all adults). She (very wealthy) ordered a vodka martini with Chopin – he ordered a vodka martini with house vodka. She could NOT stop talking about how weird and silly that was to all her friends – a martini with HOUSE liquor?? Who does that?? Isn’t he supposed to be an adult?? Truly, it never occurred to her that he was 1. a relatively poorly-paid professor and/or 2. on a mostly compulsory work-ish outing – not splurging on the best night out of his life. Also, I may be a snob in another way, but if you’re gonna spend $$$ on a liquor, why vodka??

    8. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

      Me to snooty head: “I can’t taste the difference, mate. Did you get ripped off”

      1. Nina*

        I was a very young secretary* and my grandboss called and asked me to order a wine to be sent to someone’s table with their dinner that night

        He got surly with me as I was taking notes, because he had to name the bottle twice

        I said, oh, I’m sorry, it’s just that I don’t know anything about domestic wines

        (totally dating myself with this anecdote butI was *so* pleased with myself)

    10. What_the_What*

      I feel so sorry for that grad student since it sounds like nobody stood up for him/her. I make very good money and can afford “good” wine, but I still prefer low to mid priced wines over the pricier ones, as so most people I know. What a snob that Dept Head was and so lacking in self awareness. But also, shame on the other attendees for not calling him out!

    12. Former admin*

      Ugh, not a potluck but something similar happened to me at a yankee swap-type gift exchange when I was working as a receptionist for a university department. Receptionists at that university were some of the lowest paid employees and my husband was a grad student, so we didn’t have much money. A faculty member made a big deal about how cheap it was for someone to give Trader Joe’s chocolate as a gift. That was the gift I brought. It made me feel terrible, like I was a cheap AH with crappy taste. But -there was a dollar limit on these gifts, something like $10, and this chocolate was about that much. Trader Joe’s does actually have nice chocolate gifts around the holidays. I still think so, even now that I can afford “nice” chocolate. And maybe recognize that not everyone you work with makes as much as a tenured professor.

      1. ferrina*

        Trader Joe’s chocolate would be a major hit at my office’s Christmas party. Trader Joe’s food is generally delicious!

        1. Two-Faced Big-Haired Food Critic*

          Trader Joe’s Cocoa Truffles are the chocolate of Valhalla. (And, not chocolate, but I’m still in mourning for their caramel popcorn.)

  20. Alex*

    I may have shared this before, but at my old workplace we would have potlucks “just because”. People who wanted to participate could, but no pressure if you didn’t want to.

    It was generally understood that in order to participate, you needed to bring something.

    One coworker clearly wanted to eat, but didn’t actually want to contribute. So what did she bring to put on the potluck table?

    A single banana.

  21. WarblerB*

    I was at my first potluck at a new job, that I had moved to the midwest for, from the east coast. I was standing in line for food next to a coworker who mentioned he always brings his wife’s beet salad. I love beets and enthusiastically told him so. He pointed out his offering, and I eagerly put a big scoop on my plate. As I was doing so, I remember thinking something was off. It was a jello beet salad. I struggled to get two bites down, and I’ve always remembered salad can mean many different things now.

    2. JelloSaladBlues*

      Haha! Something like this happened to me the first year I went to Thanksgiving at my in-laws in Minnesota (I am originally from CT). I asked my MIL if I could do anything to help, and she asked me to go out to the garage, and grab the salad from their extra fridge. I go to get it, and for the life of me, I can’t find it. I looked in every container in that fridge several times, and there was no salad. I finally came back in to the house and told her I was sorry, but I couldn’t find the salad.

      She seemed surprised that it was missing, and went out to the garage herself, and walked back in with the strawberry jello/pretzel crust…dessert…that I had pushed aside 5 times while looking for the salad. Then I found out that this “salad” was actually served with the main meal, and expected to go right there on the plate with the turkey, gravy, dressing, etc.
      I don’t know how I did it, but I choked down my slice of it, because I really loved my MIL and did not want to offend her at our first Thanksgiving together.

      Then I found out after dinner that it wasn’t even her recipe, it was my husband’s ex-girlfriend’s recipe. Sigh.

      1. Pamela Love*

        My mother used to make salad like this for holidays, and yes, we put it on our plates with the turke, etc.

      2. The OG Sleepless*

        As an elder Gen Xer, a kid of the 70s, I’ve had many a meal where the “salad” was Jello on a leaf of iceberg lettuce.

            2. Wired Wolf*

              Eeeww. And I thought my grandmother’s lime jello/cottage cheese/carrots creation was gross.

            3. Bike Walk Barb*

              My dorm cafeteria once served green Jell-O with sliced black olives in it. Lots of leftovers.

      4. Slippers*

        I live in rural Iowa now and was super, super confused to learn that salad means jello and lord help me the first time I brought a “lettuce salad” to a meal. Thankfully my husband’s siblings also married people from outside the area and we all eat more vegetables now. Strawberry pretzel “salad” is delicious but it needs to be a dessert on its own plate!

      5. Dog momma*

        We had Mom’s Famous Jello for T-giving & Xmas. Always a big hit with little kids who refused to eat ethnic ..like we did as kids.

        Cherry Jello with grapes , mandarin slices or chopped apples before it solidified, + cool whip. Topped with chopped walnuts. Yum!

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          We had a recipe my mom euphemistically called “raspberry whipped salad” that was raspberry jello, whipped cream, and canned fruit (pineapple, mandarin oranges, etc.). I haven’t had it in 30+ years, but I admit freely that this was delicious and that I recently bought vegan jel powder with no real gelatin (which I find gross) so I could make this.

          1. MAC*

            This is still a staple in my family! We just call it “pink stuff” (even on the rare occasions someone deviates with lime Jello, LOL). I’m usually the one who brings it and my sisters are very disappointed if I don’t. (One even asked for it for her birthday treat one year.)

      6. Flit*

        When my mom’s rural MN family gets together, every family is asked to bring a salad to share. One year they were going around the room asking what salad people brought, and getting answers like fruit salad, snickers salad, pistachio fluff, etc. They get to me and when I respond with “Salad.” everyone was very confused. I had to clarify I’d brought a lettuce salad. Salad is serious business here, y’all.

    3. No Direct Reports*

      In south Georgia, the state not the country, I grew up with pear salad. That’s a can of pears, drained, each pear half put on a plate, a small spoonful of mayonnaise in the divot of each pear, and topped with shredded cheese. When I talk about it now, people are weirded out. I would say its a southern thing, but I live in South Carolina now, and they’ve never heard of it. We had it at least once every couple of weeks. If it was an occasion, you put lettuce leaves on the plate under the pears, but those are just decoration, you never eat the lettuce.

  22. FuzzFrogs*

    I work in a public library. A colleague ran a large program that involved connecting ESL patrons and volunteers to work together; she held a catered get-together for the program in February 2020. Things Happened, as you all know. Come March 2022, we started doing in-person programs again, and at some point around then I clean the meeting room fridge. In the freezer was the partially-eaten cake from that 2020 luncheon. It didn’t mold or anything, but you could see that whatever it was, it was no longer Food.

  23. Dinwar*

    I would much rather hear about success stories. I know negativity sells, but I’m somewhat tired of always hearing about how these things went horribly. Especially this time of year, which is always super stressful and which always seems to have so many horror stories associated with it.

    1. A Library Person*

      I agree that a potluck/holiday success post would be a nice counterweight, but if you need something uplifting in the meantime be sure to check the links in the post here- they include the spring roll story, which might be just what you’re looking for.

      1. OldNurseStillCallstheShots*

        Here’s a positive story. Many years ago, I worked night shift as a nurse and had to work every other weekend. There was a core crew who worked every Sunday night and they decided to have a potluck on Sunday nights (after midnight when things slow down) because they missed having big Sunday dinners with family. It became so popular that other staff started making sure they popped in and some even started contributing to our potlucks. We shared with everyone whether they contributed or not and nobody ever got turned away. We even let patient’s family makes plates if they were camped out in a patient’s room overnight.

    2. Blue Spoon*

      Small Positive Story:
      My workplace has a tradition of having small potlucks as going-away parties for staff who are moving on to other opportunities (management provides drinks and a fruit and/or veggie tray). Earlier this year, we had a long-time manager leave shortly after we had hired some new staff. One new staff member who chose to participate in the was someone I’d known in college, and when we got talking about it, he confided in me he was really nervous about what he was planning to bring. He was afraid he’d botch it or that no one would like it.

      This man then proceeded to bring in the best focaccia I’d ever had.

    3. Middle Aged Lady*

      At a library where I worked for z0 years, with little turnover, we knew each other’s special dishes and looked forward to enjoying them at our winter potluck. One in particular was an amazing cheeseball. The woman who made it always entered the room, a little late, with the tray it was on held aloft and ceremoniously placed it on the table in its place. She had a flair for drama.

      One year at a coworker’s wedding shower, someone made decorations for the cake top: beach chairs, tiki bar, etc because coworker was going to a tropical island for their honeymoon.

    4. What_the_What*

      I don’t think mosts of these are that negative or things went horribly. Most are just funny anecdotes and some make me laugh out loud. So far none I’ve read have ended with “and then he died,” so I take that as a win.

      2. Dinwar*

        Negativity is more than just death. It’s the general vibe of the stories that come up with questions like this that gets to me. A lot of them derive their humor from negativity–people getting angry or behaving badly or the like. Don’t get me wrong, in the right mood I’ll laugh as much as the next person at jokes like that–I have my own store of anecdotes along those lines, often with me as the butt of the joke! But the reality is people continue doing pot lucks and the like do so because they’re largely positive experiences, and it seems to me that it would be just as easy to show that side of them.

        1. Coffeebreak*

          But that is uninteresting to read largely. “Everyone came, and ate and were happy and left.” That’s not particularly interesting or surprising. If you don’t like the subject matter, scroll on by.

          1. No Bees, Lots of Hives*

            Yeah, agreed. Potlucks can go really well, but they’re also a potential minefield for people with food allergies and/or dietary restrictions. I’ve only had three serious allergic reactions, but each of them involved potlucks or food individual people brought to an event. I’ve never had issues with catered meals or restaurant food.

            Memorably, the first of these incidents happened in grad school, when somebody brought a fruit tray but didn’t wash the grapes. I ate several handfuls of said unwashed grapes, developed an odd spicy sensation in my mouth and felt my lips go numb, which then developed into a mild anaphylactic reaction (blubber lips, swollen cheek, eye swollen shut, hives, etc). I later learned that the reaction was to brewers’ yeast, which, hilariously, isn’t actually present in beer but is commonly found on grape skin. I guess the one important life lesson I learned here, other than 1) trust people less is 2) always wash the produce.

        2. Potlucks are fun!!*

          I’m late to the party but I agree! The problem is it becomes ‘never do potlucks’ (which, I’ve seen people say here) when in reality they are normally (often!) fine.

          And I’ve done the restrictive diet when I had a small allergic child and still participated in the festivities by bringing a large dish and serving myself out of it first to avoid contamination.

    5. Pterodactyls are under-cited in the psychological literature*

      My daughter just participated in her school’s Halloween play. Since the kids were going straight from classes to rehearsal/performance that last week, the school had parents sign up to bring dinner items. My husband signed us up for the last night of the play and made chocolate chip cookies, rosemary chicken pot pie with biscuits, and bean burritos. We helped a more experienced volunteer set up and serve. Got dinner into 65 kids. They were so sweet and polite, it was really charming. Kids these days! :)

    6. Bookworm in Stitches*

      I’m in public education. One of my favorite end of school years was the one where another teacher organized a “bar hop”. For something like the last 6 Wednesdays of school we did a potluck/bar. One week was soups, another was grilled cheese sandwiches, etc. I think the last one was an ice cream bar. Everyone brought things in. That teacher has retired and we no longer have a staff lounge that could accommodate that anyway. But it was a great end of year!

    7. Jay (no, the other one)*

      I’m a doc and I’m Jewish, so I always work Christmas. My first year out of residency I had hospital call from 8-5 and my best friend was on call all day as the resident. We would have had dinner together otherwise so we decided to serve Christmas dinner to everyone who was working on our service. Our husbands (both excellent cooks) showed up at 5 with turkey, potatoes, homemade rolls, and all the trimmings. And my husband then went back to the car and returned with an absolutely gorgeous Black Forest cake that he had made. “I was home alone and I don’t like watching football so I wanted a project.” One of my colleagues refused to believe he had baked it. She was absolutely shocked that the MEN had made such a delicious meal. We fed 12 people and it was delightful. No one was paged during the whole meal!

      1. ferrina*

        That’s amazing! This is one of the happiest stories I’ve ever heard!

        Yum, Black Forest cake….

    8. RLC*

      Interesting potluck story: large office, very diverse potluck contributions. New hire wanted to impress and brought a beautifully composed salad (think cookbook illustration level perfection) decorated with edible flowers.
      Every male employee who commented on said salad accused the maker of trying to poison the office and refused to try it. The female employees admired then promptly ate the entire salad, lamenting only that it was too small. It was delicious; the edible flowers were chosen for their contribution to the flavor profile as well as their appearance.

    9. Hlao-roo*

      Just here to point out there are also success stories posted by arachnophilia, HumbleHedgehog, and Sulcata Turtle as top-level comments downthread for anyone who is looking for more positive stories.

    10. InSearchOf9000*

      I was super proud of the time I was able to cook for a friend that had a boatload of allergies at one potluck. I made my own stock, to make sure the soup wasn’t contaminated, and listed every single ingredient. It came out really tasty, too!

      1. Raechem*

        It is absolutely WONDERFUL to meet a friend who is both ABLE and WILLING to cook to accommodate allergies and food intolerances. We have ONE friend who qualifies, and while Spousal Unit and I cook daily, it is NICE to have something else, fixed by a friend with love. Take credit to yourself!

        1. Dinwar*

          I’ve recently discovered I have a seafood allergy, and have come to really appreciate this. It’s surprising, when you’re on the inside, the number of people who either think an allergy isn’t real (“Oh, you have to try this anyway!”) or are condescending about it (“You shouldn’t be eating that!” when you know perfectly well you can, that sort of thing). Someone treating the situation with grace and sincerity really is heartwarming!

    11. JustaTech*

      Hree’s a simple fun one:
      When I worked for a university lab we would have a holiday potluck. People brought in all kinds of food from all over the world. One time I looked a the sign up sheet and one person had written “plate of bacon”.
      I assumed it was a joke and went on my way (I brought pies). But about half an hour before the potluck starts I start smelling bacon. I wander down to the other lab’s kitchen area and there is that guy, microwaving up several packages of bacon!

      It was a huge hit! Just plain cooked to crispy bacon, not even a fancy brand.
      Some times potluck success is about knowing your audience and your limitations.

    12. Corporate Goth*

      We used to do a twelve day potluck at the holidays. We had a number of foodies in an office of about 40 and people would go all out. Bosnian lamb stew that took over 72 hours to make, homemade pierogies, award-winning chili with all the fixings, a cheesy bacon braid, an actual Yule log…those were good times.

    13. Honeybadger*

      My positive holiday success story: Literally every group event where food is provided at my current employer. Everything from Dining Services catered meals to casual potluck lunches or picnics, everyone makes sure that all food choices are covered. Are you a vegan? We got you covered. Have allergies such as gluten or peanuts? Got you covered. Plenty of food is available AND those people who are not vegan/vegetarian stand back on the food that is vegan or vegetarian (which is also clearly labeled!) so the ones who need it get plenty. Only after they’ve eaten do the omnivores enter the fray. There is a considerable amount of effort put in by anyone who is doing any event with food including cooking competitions (we are big on those in my org) to ensure that everyone is included and feels welcome. It’s really a breath of fresh air.

    14. Wolf*

      I worked in a very international group for a few years. We had a “cake wednesday” where one person per week would volunteer to bring any kind of cake or snack. Often, it was some traditional item from the coworkers’ culture, served with a tiny story of the holiday they celebrated. We all learned a lot, and got to try amazing foods.

    15. MAC*

      Positive story: Years ago, at a previous job, we had a “soup club”. Each week a different person would sign up to bring soup for the whole department. It was great bonding time and we enjoyed trying the wide variety of options people provided. I had recently taken a series of cooking classes from a local Cordon Bleu trained chef so when it was my turn, I made his butternut squash soup with a Romescu drizzle for the first time. I was super nervous but it was a hit! The next day one of my co-workers told me it was so good, she’d dreamed about it. It was very labor intensive, though, and I’ve never made it again haha. After several months, when the weather got warmer, we transitioned to a “salad club” which was also quite successful.

    16. a positive story.*

      Positive story – My office had waffle Wednesdays once a month for years. It had all the executive leadership manning the line cooking waffles, pancakes, with one table/griddle dedicated to gluten-free food as we had a few celiacs. They would also do all the prep, purchasing and clean-up (the actual execs not their admin staff), although many people would volunteer to help clean-up and often get a bit more chat time in with the execs. There were also fruit platters and whole fruit if you were vegetarian and wanted a bit more, as well as various kinds of muffins that were vegan. Anytime a food restriction was brought up, they would bring in food specific to that person that was always respected. People were welcome to bring in their own food as well, to accommodate their restrictions or even just come by and have a tea or coffee and not eat.
      Zero pressure. Every Wednesday the entire building smelled of eggs, waffles and bacon. It also allowed people face-time with the executives that they would never otherwise meet. the whole thing ran about 2-3 hours, and the front doors were scheduled around that so even the front-line staff could participate. It was lovely.

    17. Laura*

      A success story – we did potlucks on the regular at my old job – working in science we had a group of people from around the world and everyone was happy to share their home country’s cuisine and try something new. People tried to make food to accommodate those with restrictions and clearly labeled anything that might be problematic. When we started my big boss was the kind of guy who never cooked and would always bring drinks or store-bought food but over time, he decided that he wanted to learn to cook so that he could make something for the potluck. He was so proud of himself the first time he brought something home-made!

    18. Cardboard Marmalade*

      I am also here for the horror stories, but I appreciate that we could all use a little joy right now. Here’s my positive contribution for you:

      I used to run an after-school program at my local library and would host occasional screenings of book-based movies for the kids in one of the community meeting rooms (where food was allowed). There was a pizza place about 2 blocks away that sold an absolutely massive pizza that was about two and a half feet in diameter, and I works always go and get one of those for the movie screenings, a) because it was a great deal, b) because the kids would lose their damn minds every time they saw it, and c) because it was so much fun carrying that thing the two blocks back to the library with my little troupe of volunteers scurrying around like the escort vehicles with a wide-load truck, opening doors for me and making sure I didn’t trip or bump into anyone with the ridiculously huge pizza box. Such a simple thing, but it made literally everyone’s day.

  24. OrdinaryJoe*

    A good friend of mine is an ICU nurse that works nights (12 hr shifts) at a hospital, well use to 24/7/365 staffing, obviously! Management and leadership teams always made a big deal about providing a ‘fun’ Thanksgiving and Christmas and NYE meals for the staff who are working those shifts. They came around, thank people, etc. Great! Except they don’t do anything for nightshift. Nightshift comes into the ‘meals’ that are left over from being delivered around 1:00 in the afternoon and well picked over, zero leadership, zero thanks … just a couple of spoonfuls of cranberries and some half eaten rolls. It was so pathetic that nightshift just did their own potluck because they knew nothing official was coming.

    It took FIVE years! of comments, complaints, and pointed emails with photos from nightshift management to have a second round of food delivered and hospital leadership to show up at 8:00 at night to thank people who were working 7p-7a.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      Ugh this stuff is so frustrating! My husband works the early early shift stocking the grocery store – the company is actually pretty good about providing employee appreciation meals, snacks, events, but they always forget the first shift. His shift might get to be involved if they serve a breakfast/brunch (rare) but even so it will be lunchtime. Considering that 90% of the food they serve is no-prep and COMES FROM THE STORE THEY ALL WORK AT I really feel they could do better

    2. Ally McBeal*

      That was one of the first lessons I learned when I helped start a staff council for the university I worked at. At one of our early meetings one of the members who was also in a union mentioned that the night shift employees and ALL union staff never felt invited to the annual holiday party (or any other campuswide events). The people in those roles – mostly janitorial and security folks – do not use email on a regular basis, but email was the only method of communication about parties, plus parties were not scheduled at times convenient for night shift staff. So I connected with the leaders of each of our unions (or their admins) and developed a system for creating and distributing printed flyers to be posted in break rooms. We also made more of an effort to schedule night-shift celebrations, too, but then the pandemic hit and I quit that job not long after, so hopefully they’ve improved on that too.

    3. Arglebarglor*

      I was an ER nurse for 12 years and worked either 12-12 or 2-2. Most of my workday was spent relieving other people so they could go to their breaks. My breaks were never at common times–usually around 7 pm or 10 pm, so I never got any holiday food even when they supplied it for the evening/night shift. I always hated staff potlucks–food left out for hours and hours and getting picked over by other departments. One hospital I worked at had a few “seatings” in the cafeteria and once I got a plate to bring back to the alcove where I was triaging incoming ambulances.

    4. JustaTech*

      My work site doesn’t have shifts, but we do have a team that has to cover the phones, if not 24/7 then something close, like 18/6. Which meant, back when we were all on-site, that at least a few people never got the opportunity to come to the holiday party.
      The solution was that those folks got a really, really nice dinner (better than what was served at the party) delivered to the office so that they weren’t totally missing out.

      I always thought that was a surprisingly thoughtful touch.

    5. Emerg doc*

      This is why I always aim to bring snacks for night shift. Sounds like it’s just food, but it really makes permanent night staff feel slighted, when it happens again and again and again.

    6. ICodeForFood*

      When my brother-in-law was in a nursing home, I always made sure to bring 3 absolutely equal food gifts (think a big bag, with purchased packages of brownies and cookies and granola bars and chips and mixed nuts) for the winter holidays, each labelled for one of the three shifts of nurses and aides. I knew that if I only brought one set of snacks for their break-room, everything would be gone before the night shift folks arrived.

  25. AnonForThis*

    This isn’t holiday-related, but my mostly-remote workplace has quarterly all-staff meetings that last a few hours and usually include lunch before or after, depending on the time of day, as well as a refreshment break. There are over 150 people at these. One time in early spring (in New England), they decided lunch should be provided by two food trucks parked outside the place the meeting was being held. It was frigid and pouring rain outside, and we had to wait in line for the food trucks for ages, and then there wasn’t anywhere to sit in the building where the meeting was, so we all had to go hunt for seats in other buildings. By the time we sat down, our food was cold and we were soaked and freezing.

    1. WellRed*

      I went to a conference that had six food trucks one day for the lunch. In an unshaded parking lot, in blazing sun and temps in the upper 80s. It was also windy as hell so everything kept blowing away. Like eating in a blast furnace. I still refer to it as the food truck hellscape.

  26. Blue Spoon*

    Gonna be positive here because I don’t really have any bad stories. My workplace does a big all-branch, all-staff training day twice a year, and we always have a breakfast potluck. We keep up with a spreadsheet and people are generally very good about making sure we have something to accommodate various allergies and dietary restrictions (my go-to for years has been a sweet, gluten-free chex mix). But every time we have to warn people about Charlie’s Rum Balls.

    Charlie (not his real name) has been working for this organization for about as long as some of the younger staff members have been alive, and his rum balls are a training day institution. They are very good, but they are also very rum-heavy. People are always blindsided trying one for the first time, even if we warn them. I’m pretty sure if I ate more than two, I’d pass the rest of the morning with a pleasant buzz. Charlie’s made jokes about wanting to drink on the job before (to clarify, he never actually has or would, jokes aside he’s very professional if a bit eccentric), and I think his rum balls might be a way to get close to doing that in a way that won’t get anyone in trouble.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      I make tiramisu. When I do, I like to use more alcohol than initially called for; I find it helps cut the heaviness that the mascarpone can bring. I’ve always wanted to push it that little bit further but have always been wary about it. I’ll have to try at some point!

      Not at work though, we’ve got heavy equipment here so it’s strictly a no-booze zone.

      1. InSearchOf9000*

        If you want to lighten up the mascarpone without adding booze, you can fold in egg whites that have been whipped to semi stiff peaks.

      2. Bananapants Circus with Dysfunctional Monkeys*

        I want to try your tiramisu! definitely one of my favourites

    2. Office Manager slash Miracle Worker*

      I bring German treats back to the office when I travel back home. One of the all-time favorites are Mon Cheri. And I always have to include a note that those contain alcohol and will make you buzzed if multiple are eaten in quick succession!

  27. CzechMate*

    I work in higher ed. My office works with the counseling center to host a biweekly support group for certain vulnerable students (ex: a regular get together where, say, BIPOC or first-gen students can just chat about what they’re going through, with a counselor there to facilitate). Lunch is provided, because college students.

    All last year, we were at constant war with the counselor (“Jane”) about what we were going to serve for lunch. We always told her, “If you or the students want something specific, just tell us. Otherwise, we’re going to order something simple like pizza.” Every week she would complain about the food and tell us that the students were “unhappy” with the “unhealthy” selections. We told Jane that if she didn’t like it, she needed to either a) tell us what she wanted for lunch, or b) order it herself. We even offered to let her use our purchasing card. She never did, but every other week, she would complain about whatever we ordered.

    Finally, one day, Jane informs us that SHE is taking it upon herself to bring lunch for the support group. No one sees her going into the room, but afterwards, she tells our front desk person that the students were “thrilled” with the healthy options, and she had decided to leave the leftovers in our office fridge as a” little treat.” I kid you not, when we opened the fridge, it was FULL, top to bottom, with raw vegetables and hardboiled eggs. That was it. That was the “lunch” that the college students were supposedly so “thrilled” about.

    We quietly invited another counselor to facilitate the lunch group after that.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      The fact that the fridge was that full afterwards gives me some idea as to how thrilled they really were.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          It’s sad when a university dining hall has more appeal than the catered support group meetings!

    2. Forensic13*

      I’m so glad you got a new counselor, because if she was that awful to you, I have to imagine it was happening to the students in some way too. I’m especially alarmed that she was clearly willing to lie to you; who knows what she could have been lying about with the students.

      1. CzechMate*

        I agree, I thought that a lot. Part of the issue was that the counselor had a similar background to the students who attended the group, and so she BELIEVED that she had a particular sensitivity to what they were going through. We never received any complaints, and fortunately these were larger groups rather than 1:1 counseling sessions, but she definitely had Issues.

    3. Literally a Cat*

      I’m personally thrilled by vegetables, but I fully recognised I’m weird and this is not what normal 19 year olds would want.

      1. CzechMate*

        It’s not so much that there *were* raw vegetables, more that there was *only* raw vegetables and hard boiled eggs. Tbh, I kept thinking, “I REALLY hope none of the students who have been attending have eating disorders…”

        I’ve since come to think that this woman must have grown up with a complicated relationship to food. She always wanted free food/drinks (one time, when I was having a check-in with her about the group, she cut me off midsentence and went, “Ohhhh, is that coffee in the kitchen there? Let me get some, just a second!”) But then she also had these weird hang ups about only having what she perceived as “healthy” food, even though the lunch was really for very hungry college students and she could have just brought her own lunch and, you know, eaten it before or after. We have speakers come in to talk to our students all the time, and 9 times out of 10 they say, “Oh, I’ve already eaten” or “I have to run to another meeting, thanks for offering.”

    4. I Have RBF*

      If they were actually “thrilled”, there maybe would have been a half tray of leftovers, not a fridge full. College students eat like locusts. When I worked on a university campus we always had to hide away our food because hungry students would try to eat it all before the staff got any.

  28. CommanderBanana*

    A pretty epic potluck fail was a recent potluck at wholesale seafood distributor in Maryland that sent 48 people to the hospital with food poisoning. It was so bad it ended up on the news. They were very careful to specify that it was NOT the seafood, but food brought in by a staff member that sickened everyone.*

    *Various sources have mentioned some sort of fried noodle dish as the culprit.

    2. LaurCha*

      Ahhh, today I wish we could post images, so I could share Andy Warhol’s “Tunafish Disaster” series with you all. A friendly little neighborhood tuna salad luncheon ends in death. Newsweek covered it. Andy, of course, made it into art.

      1. Bruce*

        Or The Meaning of Life where Death dramatically points to a dish on the table and exclaims “The salmon mousse!!!”

        1. JustaTech*

          This is still a running joke with my mom and I! Not least because she used to have a salmon mold specifically for making salmon mousse.

    3. NMitford*

      Southern Maryland is famous for something called stuffed ham, where a mixture of cabbage, kale, onions, and spices are stuffed into slits cut in a whole ham. In 1997, improperly prepared or inadequately refrigerated stuffed ham at a church fundraising dinner caused an outbreak of food poisoning that pretty much flattened the entire town of Chaptico. Something like 750 people got sick, dozens were hospitalized, and two elderly folks died. It was big, big news at the time.

      Anyway, I used to work for a company that had an office near the naval air station down there, and stuffed ham used to make regular appearances at any office potluck. I never felt brave enough to try it.

      1. NMitford*

        Yeah, I’d go to those office potlucks and no amount of money in the world could have induced me to try the stuffed ham.

    5. linger*

      The big news story here last week was a student cafeteria that provided some self-assembly chicken dish as a buffet. Hundreds got food poisoning of the “vomiting out windows because the toilets are all full” type. During final exams. (The university has so far not committed to offering aegrotat passes.)

  29. Raine*

    I was working at a grocery store, and management decided to hold a pie competition – with a gift card as a prize – for Pi Day (March 14th). I made a bourbon chocolate pecan pie (my favorite) and proudly brought it in for the competition…where it was the only entrant. My pie was cut up and passed around, and I got plenty of lovely compliments from my coworkers about how awesome it was.

    And then management decided that since nobody else participated, the competition was axed, and there was no prize for me. I didn’t even get a slice of my pie.

    Buuuuut I’d already known how bad the management was, so I’d made a second pie anyway and left it at home. :)

    1. Blue Spoon*

      That sounds delicious! I don’t suppose you have a recipe? I am asking as someone who enjoys bourbon, chocolate, and pecan pie.

    2. Hornswoggler*

      I’m outraged that you didn’t get the gift card prize. OUTRAGED. You were literally the only one to make any effort at all!

        2. Great Frogs of Literature*

          And it’s not as if you dragged in some sad, store-bought pie that had gotten shaken too many times on your subway commute!

          (Though I would argue that if no one else brought a pie at all, even a sad, store-bought pie deserves the award.)

    3. Bossy*

      I’d never enter a competition there or trust them again! Crappy manager probably used the gift card themselves

  30. Mouse named Anon*

    I worked at a company once that was notoriously cheap. Basically we were given next to nothing but our salaries, and cheap coffee in the kitchens.
    In an effort to build some team bonding my manager at the time organized a monthly team lunch. It was potluck style, however our team was quite small (5 people). Bringing a bag of chips was totally acceptable. Often our manager brought the “main dish” which was cleared with all ahead of time. One of the members of the group hated these lunches. She finally had enough and made her feelings known loud and clear. I understand not everyone wants a team lunch, but she was incredibly rude about it. She basically berated our manager in front of the whole team. My manager who was young, and just trying to build some team rapport was mortified and embarrassed. I tried to stand up to her but it didn’t go well. We stopped having team lunches after that.

    1. What_the_What*

      Ugh what an unhappy person that colleague must have been. I don’t understand people who can’t feel or don’t WANT to feel any joy so they figure they have to suck it out of everything for everyone else. I hope they didn’t stick around long!

    2. Cafe au Lait*

      I’m so sorry that happened to your manager. I’m in that position right now; I don’t have any power at the “change level” of the organization but I’m in charge of my little corner. One of my colleagues so snarky and unpleasant around little changes I tried to make that she made life unpleasant for the other two people in my unit.

      Eventually she ended up being moved to another unit. The official reason was because a larger change was coming down the pipeline. Except that change has been “postponed,” and I haven’t heard anything about her coming back to help with my unit.

      1. Mouse named Anon*

        She felt pressure to come and stated it was out of her budget to contribute. I understand to a point for sure. Finances are none of my business. I guess it was how she handled it. She could have pulled my manager aside and said “Hey I just can’t afford anything extra right now, I will sit out for a few months” (or whatever).

  31. Dragon_Tea_Smithy*

    Warning for the squeamish regarding medical issues.

    I had organized a staff potluck for a team that benefits the larger staff of the organization. I was bringing the main dish, which was a chicken tortilla soup kind of meal. This needed hours of preparation and simmering for the right tenderness, so I made it at home in my crockpot and was bringing it along with me in the morning before the lunch. I unplugged the crockpot, carefully grasped the handles and started down the stairs of my third story apartment building.

    Friends, I missed the bottom step on a landing. The crockpot model I owned did not have the safety locks. The lid came off and the near boiling liquid splashed all over my chest. The soup made my shirt cling to me as it steamed in the morning air. I somehow managed to set the crockpot down and had barely lost any of the food. I whisked up the steps back to my apartment, took off the ruined blouse, wiped myself down with cool water as fast as I could and then put a new shirt on.

    I went to that potluck rather than calling out, you guys! I toughed it out because I had organized it, I had the main dish, and I had the whole agenda for the meeting. So rather than ruining the whole event with my clumsiness, I went and kept fanning myself.

    As soon as the meeting/potluck lunch was done, though, I went to Urgent Care because my chest was covered in blisters from the burns. The nurse that put me in the room before the doctor came in and asked why I was there. I said I had burned myself with hot soup and opened my blouse. She got really round eyes and said the doctor would be in shortly. It took some prescription strength cream to heal up the burns properly, but I didn’t even scar, thank goodness!

    1. Paint N Drip*

      You’re the kind of management that keeps the wheels on, dude. A+ commitment, B- self-preservation :)

    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Whoa, that’s so scary! I’m glad you healed well and it’s amazing you didn’t have a scar! Also amazing that you didn’t fall down the stairs or anything, which would have been disastrous. I still have a little scar on my arm from getting hot pizza cheese on my arm back in 2001, but it’s so unnoticeable that I only recently checked to see if I still have it. Granted, it’s on a part of my arm that I don’t see very often anyway (inside my elbow) but it’s also pretty small and faint anyway.

      That story is a wild one too, though. I was in grad school for music and the orchestra manager (a non-student staffer) decided that it’d be nice to treat us all to pizza at the shop next door to the music school. I don’t think he warned the shop, though, as it took them a very long time (probably nearly an hour, IIRC) to get one pizza out of the oven. So, you’ve got about 40-50 broke and very hungry music students expecting a few slices of pizza for dinner, and the restaurant takes an hour to cook enough pizza for 24 people to have one slice. Before the pie even hits the table we’re all swarming the poor server and reaching in like vultures with roadkill to snag a slice before they disappear, and the molten cheese from someone’s slice slides off and lands on my arm. Hurt like the dickens. I ran to the bathroom and soaked my arm under cold water for awhile, which helped. Next day the thing blistered up and I went to health services and got some cream for it, so fortunately it healed pretty well, with only the small scar.

  32. Beans Beans Beans*

    Church potluck, with no signup sheet. Every. Single. Person. Brought Baked Beans.
    I mentioned this story to someone from the church recently and she told me that her dad used to only come to church potlucks in hope of a a singular dish of baked beans, since no one else in her family liked them so he never got them at home. She said that night was the greatest night of his life.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      Christmas potluck, and our then-manager thought it was a bright idea to have everyone just email her what they were contributing, rather than a sign up list where everyone could see what had already been offered and what might be needed. This manager didn’t like it when anyone tried suggesting an alternative to what she was proposing to do, and would usually shut it down by biting their head off. I’m not sure anyone dared say anything at the time.

      We ended up with loads of people offering pork pies. One of these was from the big boss, so then-manager let him carry on with that and emailed round everyone else asking them to come up with an alternative.

      Next time I suggested we have a proper sign up list so that wouldn’t happen again. Then-manager had to admit it would have been a better way.

    3. Frieda*

      I love this so much.

      When I was on the rota for “hosting” church potluck (you slip out of the service a bit early and set up the tables and food) I discovered how very, VERY important certain rules about potluck are, only by breaking them. Mostly this had to do with the order in which the food went onto the buffet table. Once in a while I’d do something radical like set up a separate small drink station which inevitably caused several someones to come let me know what I’d done wrong, and why.

      I love a potluck but I do not like being supervised while completing a task that a. a 12yo could do and b. I took very seriously food-safety-wise, unlike some other participants. That is why I am no longer on the rota.

    4. The OG Sleepless*

      I’ve probably told this here before, but one year I hosted a Christmas party for our friend group and just told everyone to bring an appetizer. Every single person brought meatballs. The great thing is, though, everybody brought a different kind. Marinara meatballs. Teriyaki meatballs. Chili-sauce-and-grape-jelly meatballs. It was delightful. The Meatball Christmas is writ large in our group lore.

      1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

        A friend of mine did that as a theme for her NYE party once! To celebrate the ball dropping, they had a meatball party.

    5. Bunch Harmon*

      Church potlucks are a category unto themselves! We had someone who would come with no food and a bag of Tupperware and a thermos for leftover coffee. She had been told on multiple occasions that she couldn’t pack up any food until it was time to clean up, but without fail she would start before people had even had first helpings.

      1. ferrina*

        Church potlucks really are their own thing! And each church has its own potluck personality.

        At my church it was pfeffernusse. Several families would bring their own versions, each cut into small squares (and no icing- this was just crunchy goodness). It was soooo good, and not something you could find in the stores.

      2. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        Ha, this wasn’t a church potluck, but my grandmother would go to buffets with her purse lined with plastic bags and a roll of aluminum foil. She could get like half the food in there! Mortifying (imagine being a teenage girl and having tons of people wondering WHO could be so rude and then she sits down with you) but I have to give her some audacity points, I guess.

    6. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      I remember when you posted this before and it’s so endearing, I love it. I once had this incredible craving for pancakes, which I never made at home. I got the rest of the family in the car and insisted we were going to Perkins so I could get pancakes. Imagine my absolute delight when we sat down at Perkins and it was unlimited pancake day (a promotion where you got unlimited pancakes with a donation to a charity). Needless to say, I had my fill of pancakes!

      2. Meow*

        Haha my last pregnancy I got a pancake craving one day and showed up at IHOP during endless pancakes. I was soooooo sick afterwards.

    7. JT*

      I find this delightful. nice to be reminded that one person’s worst case scenario is another person’s cherished bean memory

    9. HSE Compliance*

      We had a family get together at one point that we all brought a dish. No sign ups, either. Apparently no one talked to anyone else, because that holiday dinner we had no less than 12 varieties of meatballs. I think at one point one of the aunts was sitting on the floor laughing with a glass of wine at the sheer ridiculousness of the countertops crammed with crockpots.

  33. delicioso*

    I live in a southern US city known for its yummy cuisine. So our potlucks are really great. The only issues we used to have was one of the highest paid staffers always bringing the cheapest item… until one year, she saw the light and started ordering a box of fried chicken from one of the great local places. Everyone LOVED it and when she retired everyone was sad.

  34. Zombeyonce*

    Not a potluck but a food-centered event at work. My office held a blind taste test for chocolate chip cookies. It sounds like a delicious idea except that some of the entries were store-bought while others were homemade. One person trying all the cookies either forgot some were made by their coworkers or didn’t care. He spent the entire tasting passionately railing against specific cookies for their “defects” (they were all delicious in different ways!).

    This made bakers pretty upset with their contributions being insulted so harshly and no one ever brought in tasty baked treats again. That one jerk ruined it for the rest of us!

  35. Juicebox Hero*

    Retail days again. A young coworker was pregnant and her family held a shower for her, and the whole department went.

    There were a lot of desserts, like that concoction of strawberries, Jello, and pretzel crust, chocolate covered strawberries, and a big fruit basket made out of a watermelon and decorated with giant strawberries. It was summer, therefore strawberry season.

    I’m sitting next to our manager, who is allergic to strawberries (also shellfish, but that wasn’t the issue here). I look over to see her woofing down the big juicy strawberries from the watermelon basket.

    Me: “What the hell are you doing? You’re allergic to those!”
    Manager: “But they’re good! It’s ok, my throat doesn’t swell. I just get a rash.”
    Me: nothing, because what can you say?

    After the big giant strawberries, and a big scoop of the strawberry pretzel stuff, and a couple chocolate covered strawberries, she came down with a rash on her arms and legs that took months to heal and left scars.

    Possibly also worth mentioning that in spite of her shellfish allergy her favorite restaurant was Red Lobster.

    She was fired a few years later for stealing thousands of dollars worth of stuff from the store, too.

  36. Jojo*

    I don’t even know where to start with the new Admin who was tasked with planning the potluck blew everything up to the point that we haven’t had a potluck in over a decade.

    We did have a few chili cook offs. At the end of the day, one of my coworkers who had participated commented on the fact that only men had brought in chili by saying that women must not be as competitive as men. I pointed out that as it’s typically women who do the cooking for a family, making chili is just another chore, and certainly not worth all the effort to hopefully win trophy that was just a toilet plunger with several rolls of toilet paper threaded onto the handle.

  37. Casual Librarian*

    Our office hosted an Octoberfest event with beer cheese dip and pretzels. Everything was fine except the maker of the beer cheese dip didn’t think to prepare the mixture ahead of time, so a crockpot was started an hour before the event with the cold ingredients added. It was chunky and cold and absolutely disgusting to look at much less eat. They left it plugged in for the rest of the day and tried to convince the collective that we needed to experience the real deal as it warmed up. There was so much cheese left over in that pot for weeks.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        That cheese must have developed sentience by the time they got round to chipping it out of the crackpot.

  38. Melissa*

    We used to have a catered holiday luncheon that was literally advertised as a “not all you can eat buffet”, and the office manager would stand over people as they tried to fill their plates. We work in an industry where many of our employees (mostly male) do heavy work and when they pack their own lunch it is hefty. One year, we ran out of food due to “two sittings” but everyone went to the first. Fortunately, the pandemic and acquisition of another company with a different outlook killed this embarrassment. We now have a Saturday evening party where you can even take the leftovers home!

  39. Whale I Never*

    One year, my job had a staff bonding event during Passover. I am a “kosher light” kind of Jew in that I cook kosher for myself but will eat kosher-ish meals at restaurants… except for Passover, when I am more strict about it. And honestly, I would not EXPECT a job to provide kosher for Passover food for me—there are a lot of very difficult restrictions, there aren’t many catering options in my area that can comply, and there was nobody else at that job who needed KFP food. I was planning on just bringing my own dinner.

    However, I was pleasantly surprised when a later email offered more details about the event and the food, including the fact that there would be a KFP option. And then I got to the event and… it was pizza from a beloved local restaurant, and the KFP option was their standard garden salad. Couple of problems:

    1) I don’t consider iceberg lettuce, tomato slices, carrot slices, and olives to be a full meal (setting aside the fact that olives are the one food I can’t stand!)
    2) There were two salads—one garden, one caesar—for the entire staff. If I served myself a dinner-sized portion, there would have been very little left for my ~20 colleagues.
    3) The restaurant was not kosher. I didn’t know if their utensils were KFP. I didn’t know if they went through the trouble of acquiring KFP salad dressing—it may not be obvious, but some salad dressings contain treif additives.
    4) The person who arranged for the food told ME that the salad was the KFP option, not the entire staff, so I watched as someone used the provided utensil to scoop themselves some salad, then scoop some croutons from the little bowl beside it, then put the utensil back in the salad bowl.

    My dinner was a slice of tomato and maybe 2 oz of matzo brei that I hadn’t finished at lunch. Again, I’m not particularly annoyed at the job for not giving me kosher for Passover food. I was annoyed that they TOLD me they had.

    1. CommanderBanana*

      I was at a staff lunch at an event where this was the only food we would have the opportunity to eat for the entire day, and every item except one side dish had beef or pork in it (this despite us reminding the woman tasked with ordering it several times that we had several vegetarians and specifically no-pork people on staff).

      I asked the hotel staff to bring out a salad that didn’t have bacon dumped all over it, and then we all watched in horror as the coworker in front of me picked the serving tongs out of the salad WITH bacon on it and then merrily plunged them into the only other dish safe for us to eat.

    2. delicioso*

      I arranged the catering for a recent conference in my city. The hotel outsources all halal and kosher meals to a company that specifically handles that. The meals were pricey and their was an additional $50 delivery fee per day to deliver the meals to the hotel. Not a problem but it was expensive. AND one of the halal people didn’t even show up for his meal at one event so I was super annoyed. But the others who needed them were so grateful.

      This year the same conference different city… labeled cookies with peanut butter in them as nut free. The way that news spread quickly at the event.. who boy.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        Outsourced kosher food is CRAZY expensive. I was fortunate that, in the only job I’ve had where I had to regularly order kosher food, there was a Jewish deli in the basement of our building* and I could just run down to grab affordable sandwiches that were certified and sealed.

        * “the basement of our building” is a massive understatement – my building connected to Grand Central Station in NYC.

        1. UKDancer*

          It’s the one thing I can’t get from our regular caterers. Halal is no problem – kosher is much more difficult because they’re not set up to do it and the rules are very strict. So in the past when we’ve needed kosher food I’ve asked a colleague from North London to stop off in Golders Green (which has a large Jewish population and appropriate shops) on the way in and pick things up so we can at least provide something.

          1. littlehope*

            Oh boy, yeah, properly kosher food in most of the UK is just…not a viable option. Halal’s widely available, kosher is just not on anyone’s radar outside of North London. (I mean, fair enough, there are a lot more Muslims than Jews in the UK and Muslims are just a lot more culturally visible, for better or worse).
            I don’t know how more strictly kosher observant Jews than me (I’m kind of like Whale up there – I don’t eat treif animals, and I don’t eat meat and dairy in the same meal at home, but I’m flexible about that when I’m eating out, and I sometimes…choose not to check the ingredients list too closely) don’t starve to death where I live. It’s why most of us are just veggie or vegan.

      2. H3llifIknow*

        Peanut butter IS nut free. Peanuts are not nuts, they are legumes. My son has a “nut” allergy. He cannot eat walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc… but he can eat all the peanuts he wants. So, I’m not sure why the labeling was big news to spread… it was accurate, after all.

        1. Arrietty*

          I think it’s pretty obvious that nut-free is assumed to include peanuts, and facile bordering on deliberately obtuse to claim otherwise.

        2. MyBrainCaseHurts*

          I live in Georgia, the land of peanuts, and generally the only people who insist on calling peanuts “legumes” just want to make others feel bad for not knowing this super super important scientific delineation. I know they’re legumes and still call them nuts. It’s the common parlance, if you will.

        3. ferrina*

          Scientifically correct, linguistically incorrect.

          I worked in a role where part of my job is to interpret between scientists and patients. And when I say “interpret”, they are all speaking the same language but using the words so differently that it renders communication useless. My job is to make sure that the patients understand what the scientists are trying to say, and to explain to the scientists that just because they understand the scientific definition, doesn’t mean that the patients are thinking the same thing (it’s a huge problem with clinical trials). Sometimes it becomes a question of “Do you want to win an argument, or do you want results and good data?”

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

          And tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are fruit, but if someone tells me they can’t have or do not want vegetables on a sandwich, I understand that those items should not be included in their order because they are very commonly called vegetables.

    3. Charlotte Lucas*

      PSA: Yes, a green salad can often be acceptable for many diets. However, if you are arranging for catering, ask yourself if in this context, you would be happy eating only a salad. (Hot summer day outside with low activity? Very possible. Long busy day full of activities? Almost definitely not!)

  40. Career coach by the sea*

    Years ago in academia, 3 departments decided to host a potluck lunch for the 25 or so employees on our floor. Salaries were not great all around and most of the staff was under 30. I bought a few Big Macs from the local McDs and cut them into sixths, serving them on doilies and catering trays we happened to have in the office kitchen. One of the older employees was livid and continued to talk about it for ages afterward, but my contribution was a big hit!

  41. WeirdChemist*

    My office has a grill that we drag out on the patio for office parties/potlucks/etc. I have a coworker who considers himself to be the “grill guy” of the office, and always man’s the grill for all these parties because he’s “the only one good at it” (Side note: his grill skills are perfectly adequate but not spectacular). Once, we had an office potluck that accidentally got scheduled while he was going to be on vacation. This guy cut his vacation (at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean) short so that he could be back in time to man the grill. Because he’s the grill guy!

  42. Girasol*

    Company training event. Manager needed to cut costs so much that he insisted I not rent a car when I got there but take public transit, which dropped me off with a week’s worth of luggage a mile from the hotel. The event for the first night was a catered group dinner, which had not been announced, and after dinner they mentioned, “and we’ll be adding an extra charge to your event fees for the meal.” The charge was well more than I spent on food for the rest of the week. I had to explain that to the boss.

    1. Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk*

      I love your handle! We had a restaurant named El Girasol in our college town and ate there enough that one of my buddies named his fantasy football team the Girasoldiers.

  43. Collarbone High*

    In lieu of raises, ExJob offered up a catered picnic “to boost morale.” Shockingly, morale was low on the day of the event and even lower the next day, when the caterer informed us that one of their line cooks had tested positive for hepatitis A.

  44. Yvette*

    I don’t have a story to share, but I am just here to ask you to please include the cheap ass rolls potluck story. Thanks

      1. Lisa*

        Oh my!

        Okay, also, I have to let my inner snark out. If you’re calling a store brand of rolls cheap-ass, you should NOT be acting like King’s Hawaiian are that much better! Yes, I am a roll snob. I would be looking down on both of them! So there, weird roll person!

          1. Clisby*

            Yeah, they have this odd sweet-ish taste. I assume plenty of people like them or they wouldn’t still be on the market, but I can’t see why anyone would thing they’re special.

            2. AnonForThis*

              They’re a direct descendant of Portuguese sweet bread. I like them fine myself, but good PSB from a Portuguese bakery is better.

          2. H3llifIknow*

            I’m with you. Do NOT put my savory burger or slider on King’s Hawaiian rolls or brioche. Ugh gross. I don’t get the appeal. I will lightly toast a kings’ hawaiian roll and butter it for breakfast but that’s about it, other than I have used it for a decent bread pudding.

            1. UKDancer*

              Yeah there’s a weird tendency in modern upmarket London burger joints to put the burger in a brioche bun because people think it’s posher (along with putting about 300 toppings on). I hate it, because it always goes soggy and tastes slightly sweet. I like a proper seeded burger bun myself.

      3. Elizabeth West*

        I completely forgot about the part where she made the fake dating profile for a coworker. I wish that OP would come back and tell us more about that, unless it was in comments and I missed it.

    3. Lisa*

      That one was a ride! Haven’t seen someone in a while so convinced they were being attacked by things that were either neutral or actually positive. The “I didn’t realize you were new” implies to me that they’ve integrated well. To be upset by that… so weird.

      1. EvilQueenRegina*

        I think at the time, the coworker who updated said that they didn’t think she was that new at the time, so it was either a case of this having been something that happened quite a while before the rolls incident and she was still dwelling on it, or it was something like she’d been with that company a while but perhaps was new to that team (which might have explained not seeing her as new).

  45. Nannerdoodle*

    Several potluck stories all from the same 10 person team. This team had monthly (and then switched to every other month) potlucks, each themed.

    Overarching issue: I cannot eat gluten. One of my old coworkers is vegetarian. She and I banded together to each make food that both of us could eat. Unfortunately we were also the best cooks on that team by far, meaning all our food was gobbled up by everyone and we were both left hungry at the potlucks.

    The breakfast potluck (one of the first potlucks for the team): I’d insisted that we have a sign up so that everyone didn’t bring the same thing. I brought gluten free pancakes and a griddle to cook them. Vegetarian coworker made gluten free scones. Somehow, even though they all signed up for different breakfast items, 6 people brought fruit. Each fruit tray was was half cantaloupe and honey dew melons, which went uneaten. One of the other people who didn’t bring fruit brought bacon and tried to cook it in the office toaster oven, which he managed to light on fire, and then made the entire building smell like bacon for the whole day.

    The soup potluck: Everyone brought a different type of soup for the team and we used mugs and would eat a little of each of the soups. Everything was delicious, minus the watered down broccoli cheese soup. Coworker made the soup correctly, but thought it looked too thick, so the coworker added a bunch of water to thin it. It was basically cheese water with chunks of broccoli. We all tried it, but it was a rough one.

    2. Alisaurus*

      As someone who absolutely loves all melon, fruit trays like that are the best! I would’ve asked to take the leftovers and had delicious breakfasts/snacks the rest of the week.

  46. Lemonfork*

    This is not my story, but one of a friend. She’s celiac, and works for a tech search engine company that you have definitely heard of. They have regular, massice weekly catered working lunches. Enough people are gluten free that all the mains have a regular version, and a gluten free version. However, every week, the regular version runs out faster, and people “helpfully” consolidate the leftovers/sauce into the gluten free pan to make space. Thus poisoning the gluten free option for the gf people. This happened with shocking frequency, despite pleas from the gluten free employees to keep the pans separated, or maybe even let people with allergies go first in line.

    As far as I know, it continues to be a problem and my friend just brings her own lunch.

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

      I have been GF for over a decade at this point, and thus my tolerance for this sort of thing is nonexistent these days. I would probably also bring my own lunch (I started doing that at my last job even though we were provided lunch daily because the cafeteria just got too iffy), but I would also make a huge deal about the foods being mixed and probably start dropping ADA language in every bit of communication I had about it. It’s one thing to say you can’t accommodate; it’s another thing entirely to have something that’s labeled as safe that will damage people’s bodies.

      Like, for celiacs, gluten causes their bodies to destroy the villi in their small intestines. I originally cut gluten out because of a thyroid condition, and eating it can cause my body to flare and irreparably destroy part of my thyroid, which interrupts my life for MONTHS and has lifelong consequences.

      I’m not saying your friend hasn’t done this (or is in any way obligated to). I just know I would go on a warpath about this because it’s SO DANGEROUS.

  47. Tunami*

    At a Christmas potluck, my old office held the Boss decided he was going to cook his famous tuna casserole.
    We ate it, and we got food poisoning. The entire office had to shut down the day after, and it turned out that our Boss Cheapsteak McCheap had some expired tuna in his fridge. He didn’t think it was that expired and used it.
    One coworker resigned and sued him!

      1. Tunami*

        If I recall correctly, they settled before going to court (and nicely enough for him to take a year backpacking around Europe).

  48. 653-CXK*

    Three tales from ExJob (medical claims processing):

    1) We had a post-all-staff meeting in which the director announced that there would be a luncheon afterwards to show upper management’s appreciation for our work. We return to the building, expecting something really good. What we got were sandwiches from the cafeteria, of which everyone got their sandwiches and went back to their desks. Some went so far as to toss the sandwiches in the trash. I went back to the cafeteria and got a proper lunch.

    2) Another “appreciation” lunch featured pizza from a local pizzeria. There were all sorts of flavors – cheese, pepperoni, veggie, and Hawaiian – but the director (from #1) complaining to anyone who would listen about the Hawaiian pizza not being a real pizza. Of course, when the lunch was over, people lined up and took whole pies home with them.

    3) We had a three-month settlement period where we had to pay any and all claims that were available – beginning the day after MLK day and ending in mid-March. Vacations and time off were heavily restricted so these operations could be completed. In the late spring/early summer, we would have a post-settlement party, which was often catered by a local restaurant and featured awards and prizes. It was actually quite fun.

    In the last year when I was employed at ExJob (2018), the post-settlement party was a joyless, sterile affair: no excitement, the food was meh, and there were no awards or prizes. This party was two weeks before I was let go from the company.

    The director (who before all this went on a tirade about Walmart and China, and of which some if not all of the claims processors were Asian) was herself terminated when she swore at another member of upper management. By then, her bosses had enough and fired her.

    1. FuzzFrogs*

      I had a pizza buffett for my wedding, and Hawaiian was absolutely required to be there. My husband and I both love Hawaiian–although over the years we’ve drifted to subbing pepperoni for the ham.

      I have learned that a key to marriage is having a few foods you both share. (And, crucially, desserts which you don’t.)

      1. Strive to Excel*

        Haha – my childhood tactic for not having to share snacks with siblings was learning to like different snacks.

        Luckily, flan is an acquired taste.

        2. AnneCordelia*

          I used to know someone who would go out at lunch and buy Haagen Dazs, and she always got rum raisin so that no one would ask to taste or share it.

      2. Ally McBeal*

        I had never thought of subbing pepperoni from ham. I love pineapple on pizza but ham was never enough of a contrast to the sweet pineapple for me to like Hawaiian pizza. My favorite pizza is half pineapple and half black olive & pepperoni, but I’ve been scared to get all three toppings on the full pie. Definitely going to try that now.

        1. Goldfeesh*

          Try hamburger and pineapple. I tried it this year and I went from someone who didn’t like pineapple on pizza to loving a hamburger and pineapple pizza.

    2. Slippers*

      The building where our business was a tenant only had one set of bathrooms for around 100 employees total in the building. The owner of the office park set out to redo the bathrooms. They told us two weeks before they started that they would do each bathroom separately and in the meantime we could either use the remaining bathroom as a unisex bathroom or we could walk outside to one of the other buildings in the complex. (This was upper midwest, in the middle of winter). The renos ended up taking two months longer than they thought, so as penance, they offered us a free catered meal. We show up, and it’s just boxes of the cheapest pizza in the city (college town), and they rationed us to two slices.

  49. Colorado Winters*

    I worked for 12 years at the now-defunct Sears affiliate, The Great Indoors. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a high-end Home Depot + Bed Bath & Beyond. We sold $100+ wastebaskets for the bathroom. When we opened, we had a flatscreen television on display that, at the time, was over $10K. Fully working kitchens for demos. A theatre experience in the electronics department. That sort of thing.

    So, for many years, we had amazing, fully catered holiday spreads. Once Sears combined with K-mart, someone had the brilliant idea of laying people off and turning this rich person mecca into a box store. Sales went down, along with the holiday meals. At first, they provided meat and sides from Honeybaked Ham and drinks, with employees being asked to bring dessert. Then, they started only supplying a ham (still Honeybaked), with employees bringing sides, drinks and dessert. Eventually, employees were bringing in everything, and management would get a grocery store ham that they baked in one of the still-working display ovens. The holiday season before the store liquidated, we got a party sub from the grocery store.

    I’m sure nobody would be surprised to learn that so many other aspects of that job sucked, too. On the plus side, I met my husband there.

    1. Funbud*

      Just a random observation: Honeybaked Hams always seemed to have the longest, slowest delivery time of any restaurant we ever used for catering. Even just a small order of say, five box lunches, would take FOREVER to arrive. I know it takes awhile to bake a ham, but seriously…

        2. Ladybugger*

          This comment reminded me of when my now ex-husband thought he would make me a honey ham sandwich by putting honey on regular ham.

      1. Chaos Farmer*

        That reminds me of a company I worked for- the first year there was an offsite catered holiday party with spouses invited, the only time I’ve gotten to try escargot. By the last year I was there, the holiday party was an event at the end of the work day, in the warehouse- for us to bring toy donations for charity and get together and wrap them.

  50. Anon for this*

    In 2020, my company decided to do a Zoom Christmas party and have food delivered to everyone’s house. Good idea so far. We had a shared spreadsheet to mark off when we got our food, and near the end of the day, some of us still hadn’t gotten ours whereas other people had gotten theirs around 8 am. Those who got their food later in the day also noted that the delivery guy was visibly irritated. Turns out that the company had the office cafeteria prep all the meals and then loaded them onto a truck (still hot) early in the morning and had one poor delivery driver drive city to city and house to house all day to deliver our food. My food got to me just as the party was starting after work and (surprise) it was cold. I then ended up in a Zoom breakout room with the company president in the middle of a contentious union organizing effort so that was fun.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      Idly wondering how the person who arranged this would answer the “How would you transport an elephant?” question.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          It’s a reference to a post from earlier today – someone’s boss wanted them to use it as an interview question.

    2. Another Kristin*

      I quit a job in December 2020 and had a virtual leaving party. The company sent me a box of goodies to enjoy during the party…which arrived 2 days late and contained several things I was allergic to. Oh well, at least they sent me booze!

    3. ZinniaOhZinnia*

      Oh! My nonprofit tried to do a Zoom holiday party as well. My boss (roundly disliked for being a real Nonprofit Boss complete with Founders Syndrome and a massive martyr complex), proudly distributed little packages to everyone’s homes during the pandemic and insisted we not open them until the Zoom party so she could see everyone’s faces and their gratitude.

      The packages contained: 1 expired bag of chips, 1 individual sized bottle of sparkling grape juice and 1 $5 gift card to Starbucks. She also announced at the holiday party that everyone’s raises would be less than the increase to COL that year :(

      Not a very festive party.

  51. Drargula*

    During a potluck, someone (the office never discovered who!) went to the meeting room where the potluck had to be held and took a single bite out of every biteable thing. Scones, bread, fruits, pizza slices. Just one single byte.

  52. Ama*

    At my last in office job, we moved to a new building in early spring and were told by employees of the other companies who rented in that building that the building management’s office holiday lunch was the stuff of legends (multiple people apparently mentioned this to our CEO in her introductory conversations with them). Come December, our senior management got an email from building management with all the rules for the lunch — you only get three tickets per office, you have to go down to the basement and get your food between 11 and 12:30 (there was a meeting space and a catering kitchen down there). We were a nonprofit that regularly held catered events so this didn’t seem like a “legendary” type event to our senior management but they thought maybe the food was just that good.

    A few of the department heads went down to check it out in case it was a good opportunity to network (as we were always looking for corporate sponsors for our programs). They came back completely mystified — the food was nothing special, lukewarm fried chicken and bbq from the deli across the street, and there was no place to sit so no one *could* network, you just had to take your food back up to your own office. And yet, they said people were lined up all the way down the basement corridor and got snippy with each other if it looked like someone was saving spaces for their coworkers. (To be fair none of the other tenants in the building were the type that would host events regularly — a mix of legal and construction firms, mostly — so maybe they were easier to impress just with free food.)

    After that first year, we just politely told building management to give our tickets to the larger offices in our building.

  53. Lemonfork*

    At a previous job, I was in charge of a monthly staff catered lunch for about 20 people at noon. There was a rotation of favorite local restaurants I’d get take out from, for a modest budget. Most restaurants opened at 11am or 11:30, so it could be a little difficult getting food by noon but I made it work. Additionally, on the selected day, there was one team of 4 that had a regularly scheduled meeting with outside clients until 1. We always saved food for them, but it felt silly to have an all staff lunch that not everyone could attend.

    I floated the idea of moving the staff lunch to 1, which staff responded positively to. In fact, it worked better with everyone’s schedule. I e-mailed all staff to announce the change. In response I got a bombastic response from the CEO (who mind you, never showed up to these lunches, or to work in general) that it WAS A TRADITION that these VERY IMPORTANT TO STAFF COHESION lunches were at noon, and THEY HAD ALWAYS been at noon, and MUST CONTINUE to be at noon, and he could ONLY MAKE IT TO NOON lunches, and anything else was an insult to the concept of the noon lunch being at noon. Alas, we kept them at noon and he never made it to the noon lunch.

      1. Rhamona Q*

        This sounds like an instance where they should have changed the meeting to 1pm but let him think they were still happening at 12pm. If he happened to call, just have whoever run back to their desk really quick while someone stalls him “er, they’re in the restroom, I’ll let them know you’re waiting” etc.

  54. BitterButterBitey*

    I work for Big Tech. Once the parties my company used to throw were legendary (think of Casinò Night, Candyland, and stuff like that). While the company still does well, it wants to contain non-necessary expenses. After all, the CEO himself took a cut of his million bonus, right(wrong)?

    Anyway, two years ago they decided to cut the catering costs. At the “soiree” we eat one slider, one sausage roll, and one muffin per person. That was it.

  55. slr*

    I have one awesome potluck story. I used to volunteer with an ESL program for newcomers and the parents threw us an end-of-year thank you party. All the moms had a friendly competition to see whose food the volunteers liked best. I have never eaten more (or better!) samosas, curry and chai than I did that day, those women rocked.

  56. Bunny Girl*

    I can’t remember if I shared this before or not, but I had a coworker who just hated me right off the bat. I never did anything to her but I seemed to be a special target for her.

    We had a potluck and I brought in mini orange cheesecakes with a burnt sugar top and this absolutely enraged her for some reason. She went in during set up and moved my platter to another table out of the way away from all the other food. Then she went around and told everyone about her cheesecake that she would make and how it was always from scratch. She was very seriously about her homemade cheesecake and how “other people” didn’t make cheesecake from scratch. She never asked me, but mine were scratch made as well. The cherry on top was she hadn’t even brought in a cheesecake.

  57. nora*

    I worked at a domestic violence shelter/counseling agency. Stressful work made worse by terrible management. Because of schedules and whatnot it was rare for all of the front-line staff to gather together all at once. We decided to have a holiday party, with a potluck, baked goods from a beloved local bakery, games, secret Santa, the whole bit. Upper management was on board, though most of them didn’t participate. The CEO was known for being mean and vindictive, and if anyone crossed her things would go horribly wrong. Well, someone must have done something to her in the days before the party because she arranged for a MASSIVE donation from a big box store to be delivered 20 minutes into the party. We immediately had to stop everything and go unload a box truck full of whatever it was. And of course everything had to be inventoried right that very second. No more snacks, no more games, it was a miracle that we even left work on time that day.

  58. Little Bobby Tables*

    Catered outdoor event that was open to the general public. The venue officially does not allow bringing in alcohol, but unofficially it was another story. REALLY another story.

    A co-worker was trying to light a campfire in a fire pit and poured gasoline into a red Solo cup. A drunken guest somehow thought he was hiding moonshine in the gas can and tried to walk off with the cup of gasoline. He had to forcibly take it back before it could be swallowed.

  59. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

    I work for the government and our ethics department once told us we could not eat the catered lunch at an all-day meeting, because it was bought by a law firm that we encountered in our work. I guess we’d be tempted to hire them based on getting the exact same turkey roll-ups, salad and cookies that every other law firm served at such lunches. I don’t remember how it came up because certainly no one asked.

  60. Preschool Guy*

    I work in the office of a large preschool, and in prior years we would do monthly(!) staff potlucks to celebrate each month’s birthday-havers, as well as on parent/teacher conference days. We are a tree nut, peanut, sesame, and shellfish free school, and we have a number of staff with food allergies and intolerances as well, so we require dishes to be labeled if they contain common allergens. The monthly potlucks weren’t especially popular, so the majority of dishes were provided by the handful of teachers who enjoyed them.
    One day last year, on a parent/teacher conference day, we had our usual brunch potluck. All was going well until one teacher, who has a severe tree nut allergy, comes tearing into the office, her face red, saying one of the dishes definitely had nuts in it, and she’d eaten some. We found her epi pen, she administered it, an ambulance was called, and she was transported to the hospital just in case, and made a quick recovery… with all the medical bills that come along with all that.
    Meanwhile, we tracked down the dish in question–a chicken salad with finely chopped (and thus difficult to see) pecans–and the teacher who brought it. We questioned why, knowing there were severe allergies within the staff, she put nuts in it and didn’t label it. She replied that there was “only a little” nuts in the dish and she thought it would be okay! She was quickly educated about the seriousness of food allergies, though we were all very concerned she got it so wrong considering how much annual training is devoted to food allergies–and she’s been with the school about 25 years.
    This school year, we’ve ceased with the monthly and back to school potlucks, and they’re being reserved for parent-teacher conferences. The next one comes in a couple of weeks, and you can bet I’ll be quite strict with the labeling. Because no one deserves to rack up medical bills from chicken salad.

    1. Rusty Shackelford*

      She replied that there was “only a little” nuts in the dish and she thought it would be okay!

      Someone who knew my MIL was allergic to pecans once brought her a cake with “only half the normal amount of pecans, since you’re allergic.”

      And I’m surprised your coworker’s medical bills didn’t turn out to be worker’s comp!

      2. Irish Teacher.*

        That is really bizarre. I can kind of understand forgetting somebody is allergic or not realising something “really” counts, like the mention a few days ago of somebody saying something didn’t contain any nuts when it contained peanut butter, but “I know you’re allergic but I’ve still put in some of what you are allergic to…” Like what?

        1. Preschool Guy*

          Right! Like I have absolutely no idea why she thought it would be fine–she cited how *small* the pecans were chopped. As though the body doesn’t recognize allergens if you can’t see them.

      3. Preschool Guy*

        I don’t know why the bills weren’t worker’s comp, other than that my director is incompetent (I could fill an entire month of AAM posts with her antics and how the school is falling apart under her, and that’s just the stuff I’ve witnessed myself in the three school years I’ve been here) and the colleague is quite young and maybe didn’t know her rights/options. We don’t have a union for oversight–private school as part of a larger religious organization, though I’m encouraging several teachers to organize to talk together with our grandboss about everything.

  61. NJ anon*

    my old office provided lunch every day. at the time there were kosher employees
    twice a week they ordered from kosher the other days from non kosher venues. no problem and very thoughtful and everyone knew what days so they could bring from home or order.
    one day there was an issue on the kosher day so they ordered from a non kosher place but didn’t tell anyone .
    when we came in, the ordering person could not understand why giving kosher people a heads up would have been nice. since now they had to figure things out in their own.

  62. arachnophilia*

    This is not a potluck gone wrong – this is a potluck that was delightful, and I miss it. When I first started in my current position (and the unit I worked in was much smaller), we would have a holiday party/potluck, and people were encouraged to bring food from their culture/heritage. We had people who were Vietnamese immigrants, Greek immigrants, a first-generation Korean colleague, those with Italian heritage, a first-generation Turkish colleague who was also an observant Muslim, Jewish colleagues, vegetarian colleagues, I was originally from the Southern US (I currently live in a totally different region of the country), and numerous other food traditions. It was completely optional, and those who didn’t want to cook but still wanted to participate could bring beverages, plates, napkins – whatever. People labelled their food with the ingredients (we had several people with various food restrictions – religious, dietary, allergy, etc.), and made sure to show off whatever they loved from their cultures. I really miss those days when we could essentially take the day off, and all the kitchen outlets would be taken up with rice cookers and crockpots and the fridge would be filled to bursting. I still miss the “Turkish pizza” my one colleague would bring, and the fresh Vietnamese spring rolls (vegetarian and with shrimp) that one colleague would hand roll the night before, and the Korean beef that would make the entire office smell delicious. Plus the homemade biscotti and the Finnish baked goods, and the giant salad (and many bottles of wine) our big boss would bring. They were the best parties – no complaints of food poisoning, no weird hairs in the food, no gross person who didn’t wash their hands. Just a lot of people brought together by sharing the food we loved with each other. I still have potlucks for my much smaller team from time to time (again, optional), and I provide beverages, main dishes, sides, and appetizers that all meet the dietary requirements of my team, so everyone can enjoy.

  63. HumbleHedgehog*

    I have a success story!

    When I was in graduate school, our open house for admitted PhD students was atrocious. We know (1) because each of us in the program has been through it and (2) because we did a survey of all the current students (80% response rate!) that told us so. In particular, the first night where all students ate a catered meal in a dark, dingy common room was highlighted as a problem.
    After the lackluster dinner, traditionally the group split in two— 1 to go to ice cream (which the program would pay for) and the other to go drink (which they would not). Typically, after the soulless, awful catered meal in a dark dingy common room, 90% of the group went (heavily) drinking. So the ice cream bill was cheap (this is later relevant).

    Young and full of hope, I approached the program administration about taking the students out somewhere to eat in the big northern US city our school was located in. After first accusing me of lying for personal gain about the perception of the catered dinner (I do still wonder what personal gain I could have gotten from this; maybe this is why I am still not making big bucks!), they assured me I could not find somewhere to take the admitted students at the same price point ($13 a head). A group of 30+ students on a Monday night in a cold city in winter (and this was many years ago)? In days, I had competing bids from restaurants to host us (to be fair, I promised we’d buy drinks also—this was on our own dime but easy to predict!) So, they begrudgingly approved letting the admitted students annd graduate student hosts off campus to eat. They grumbled, even though I both saved them money and I organized it. I did, however, take a tiny revenge.

    After the (delicious and two course) dinner at a fun local restaurant, I told the whole group we were going to ice cream together and then anyone who wanted to come out for drinks could go afterwards. The ice cream place of choice was a local gem that charged about $7 per bowl. Instead of 5 ice creams per usual, 35 students got ice cream.

    Oddly, the administration’s understanding of this was that the dinner out must have been a success since so many people wanted to go out for ice cream. So… success!

  64. CampusStaff*

    I worked in an office with a staff of 3 and a board of about a dozen. My boss considered himself a foodie and so he wanted the 3 of us to cater a 3 day retreat. But everyone had to have access to the main entree (no making of multiple dishes though you could have add ons that were not universally acceptable. This meant every dish had to be Kosher, vegan, AND gluten free. (Not to mention the fact that I am not a cook, and nowhere in my job description did it include “cater multi course meals for group meeting,” but that’s a different issue. And on the list of reasons why I quit that job, this didn’t even break the top ten.

  65. JSPA*

    In some languages, one uses the same word for meat and for beef.

    In some, meat = flesh (the muscle solids) not the broth, cracklings, schmaltz, tripe, tendon (etc).

    These incomplete translations seem to sometimes embed into family tradition and word usage for an additional generation or even two, as food words are so often learned very young, and in the home.

    It’s a little graphic, but “I don’t eat things that were part of any animal” is harder to misconstrue.

  66. Cherry Sours*

    Not an office party, but one for service members based on a ship and their family members. The majority of attendees lived on a 7 x 11 mile island in the Mediterranean, and the ship was stationed at a smaller island nearby.
    The organizers got the word out, and did a great job providing transportation, via a landing craft (for those coming from the ship), or ferry & bus for those traveling from the island. The cookout was on a gorgeous beach with pink sand…couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful site.
    Food and equipment were off loaded, tables erected, burgers and other meat cooked, and sides (cole slaw, macaroni salad, potato salad), plates, and beverages put out for those who were eagerly awaiting a tasty meal. It was only when people were encouraged to begin serving themselves that a collective groan filled the air. The silverware (aka plastic utensils) had never departed the ship. The person in charge radioed the ship, who sent someone to deliver the much appreciated items in the captain’s boat*.
    (My apologies, I know there’s a proper name for this craft.)

    1. Amanda in the Midwest*

      Typically the small boat that’s used for transportation to/from shore or a dock from a larger vessel (boat/ship) is called a ‘tender’ (or maybe a ‘Rib’). Is that what you’re thinking of?

      They’re often heavy duty inflatable vinyl boats with a reinforced floor (or sometimes the entire keel – the bottom) made of fiberglass or a similar material.

      Ribs are just a nickname related to the construction of the small portable boat (the floor boards used for stability can look like ribs).

  67. Sulcata Turtle*

    Here’s a positive one. This one’s for you, broke college students.

    Back in college, I was a student worker in the university communications office. The office loved a good potluck. This wasn’t a “pick up Costco chicken” crowd. Oh no, that was child’s play, and we were a university, dammit. We had folks like Eric who smoked his own turkey, Amy with at least three chiffon cakes, and just about any dish you could ask for. All of it was perfection. We didn’t have afternoon meetings on potluck days because it always left us in food comas for the rest of the day.

    There was an unspoken rule in the office: student workers ate first and took the leftovers. We were just quietly handed a huge baggie of cookies or cups of chili. No mad dashes for the fudge bars, Sarah would already pack it up for us. We were also banned from bringing anything. As someone who was far away from home, those potlucks held me over until I was back in my mom’s kitchen during breaks.

    2. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      My library always gave our student staff free access to our potlucks – they were told not to bring anything, just come and enjoy.

      The one exception was the annual soup lunch because that was a fundraiser for the food bank. People brought in crockpot after crockpot of delicious soups (including vegetarian, vegan, gluten free and kosher) and you paid $5 for as many bowls of soup you wanted. For an additional $5, you could buy a hand thrown soup bowl made by students at the pottery studio on campus (the money was split between the student potters and the food drive). For another $1, you could vote for your favorite soup (bragging rights only for the winner).

    3. Ally McBeal*

      I used to work in university comms and oversaw many student workers over the years. Our potlucks were not nearly as bountiful as yours, but still delicious, and yes – student workers ate first. I wish I’d thought of bringing takeout containers so they could take some back to their dorms.

  68. B.K. Lee*

    My previous law firm used to host a catered breakfast every Friday from November 1 through Christmas. We had a colleague – let’s call him Dan – that used to literally just dig his hands right into the food. He wouldn’t use tongs or other provided serving utensils; Dan would take his bare hands and literally dig into the food. One Friday, as I was entering the restroom, I noticed Dan was using one of the urinals. Instead of washing his hands, he just left and returned to the office. After I washed my hands and returned, I went to the conference room for the breakfast, where I noticed Dan was a few people ahead of me in line. Dan takes his (presumably unwashed) hands, reaches directly into the pan and grabs a handful of bacon. I was so mortified that I just got out of line, grabbed a closed container of yogurt, and returned to my office. I think that was the last straw, because the breakfasts went from catered buffets to prepackaged options only two weeks later. To this day, whenever my current office has a holiday meal, I think of Dan and respectfully decline.

  69. Shelby*

    Pre-pandemic my office had a big Christmas potluck. I made some fun finger foods for my first contribution and brought them in a Tupperware. It was a little daring but nothing too radical.

    A couple of people got through the line, grabbed something I made, and gave me a thumbs-up. The office crank picked up my tupperware, still mostly full at the time, sniffed it, made a face, and threw the entire thing in the garbage, Tupperware and all. I’m still mad about it.

  70. Mostly Managing*

    Not an office, but a community group that had two potlucks every year.
    Nobody really signed up for anything, but it always worked out that there was a reasonable balance of mains, sides, desserts.
    Until one memorable spring, when everyone brought potato salad. With pickles, without pickles, various degrees of spiciness to the dressing… but all potato salad.
    We laughed and shrugged it off.

    That Christmas, everyone brought dessert.
    And we started having a sign-up sheet!

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

      My former church used to do a big Thanksgiving meal together and started using a sign-up sheet after The Year of the Pies . We did have turkey, and I know I usually made a savory side and these particular cookies, but nearly everyone else brought pie.

  71. TinkerTailorSolderDye*

    Nothing quite so heinous as “cheap ass rolls”, but my part-time job currently does a weekly potluck on Sundays due to the weird hours the store is open. I’ve not participated in about two months, partly due to money, partly because only three of the managers take on the burden of the main dish, and the owner is a shameless thief who doesn’t reimburse any of us. My full-time is talking about a monthly potluck, but the main dish will be provided by the top earners, and our CEO is the kind to reimburse everyone anyway, so that one I’m actually looking forward to.

    As for potlucks of years past…

    – The Turkey: The store manager hadn’t thawed the bird out fully before deciding to deep fry it. The scorch marks still remain on the yellow brick out at the loading dock.

    – The Ham: This was entirely my fault; I melted a ham by putting WAY too much pineapple between the spirals, and cooking it too long. On the plus side, the ham & bean soup was absolutely incredible.

    – The Pie: I won’t even attempt to pretend I know how to make pecan pie, but even I know that the pecans shouldn’t be FROZEN on top. Our coworker was adamant that was correct.

    – The Homemade Rolls: This one’s pretty wholesome. Back in the middle of the summer in 2020, my grandmother was in hospice care, and slowly fading due to cancer. I was her main caretaker during this time, and while she was lucid, she was adamant that I ask for anything I wanted from the house. I agonized, because I knew so much would be tossed out by family when she was gone, but in the end, I decided against the monetary items, like TV’s and the laptop. I asked for her homemade roll recipe, the ones she’d made for decades from us, and while soon after that we lost her, I still have the recipe, and I still make it for the holidays. Now, with her rolls and a few quilts, and the family train sets, I consider that the richest gift I could have been given.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      My grandmother made incredible homemade rolls too. I can smell them rising in her house right now. I love this.

    2. Elle Woods*

      I love the story about your grandmother. I’m sorry for your loss. Having been through that, having just a couple of precious items and some family recipes is one of the richest gifts I could have been given.

    3. Strive to Excel*

      That must have been the tenderest dang ham in the history of hams.

      For those unfamiliar with food chemistry – pineapples naturally contain an enzyme that breaks down meat. This is why eating too much of it results in a stinging mouth; it’s not just fruit acids.

      1. Mentally Spicy*

        I consider myself reasonably fluent in American, but that sentence broke me. Absolutely no idea.

        I generally find that the US and the UK are surprisingly similar in many ways, except when it comes to food. Food words and concepts are completely alien between the two countries. The words for ingredients and meals, the words for cooking processes, the measuring systems, even the words for the equipment you cook on.

        (On that last point I nominate “crock pot” as the most American word ever. “Crahk paht”.)

        I’m not hating, America, I love you. But your food and the words you use to describe it are completely alien to us!

  72. River*

    There was a staff member that was known to be difficult but for petty reasons. This staff member also was suspected of being difficult on purpose because she was unhappy and wanted the easiest job as possible. She made it known that she supposedly had a gluten intolerance. She was pretty upset the week leading up to the company holiday potluck and was saying things like “oh there won’t be anything there for me that I’ll like. It’s always the same food people bring in. I can’t have that because of my gluten allergy” etc etc.

    Her manager special ordered and picked her up a meal from a pretty nice restaurant in the area. Later in the evening she was seen eating cookies and sweet bread (which have HUGE amounts of gluten). Maybe she didn’t care at that point or maybe she didn’t actually have a gluten intolerance. Or maybe she was just being her usual character and being fussy on purpose for attention. She ended up quitting a year later after people stopped paying attention to her negativity. So wherever she is, hopefully she’s better, healthier, and happier.

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

      I had a similar situation with someone during my first executive assistant position. I was in charge of arranging the catering for this week-long training thing that several of our employees from other states flew in to attend. One of the ladies wasn’t eating gluten and made a big thing of it, refusing to eat the food provided and going out for special meals on her own, etc.

      Here’s the thing: I can’t have gluten. It makes me tremendously ill. Like, it’s a long story as to why I don’t have an official diagnosis, but I react very similarly to someone with celiac. I take food sensitivities VERY seriously and try to make sure everyone has a few options. But, that wasn’t good enough, I guess.

      Anyway, on Friday we had a birthday and cake was brought in. No GF option for the cake (I don’t think I was in charge of that, but it’s been so long, I can’t remember), but the lady who had been making a huge fuss all week had a slice.

      I get so annoyed by this stuff because I feel like it makes people in general take gluten-free requests less seriously, and for me that is incredibly risky and harmful.

  73. Summer's Soul*

    Our office had a holiday potluck just before our coworker Christina went on maternity leave. I was also pregnant but several months behind her. Christina had always been a squeaky wheel about nonissues, but with both of us pregnant, she tried to pull me into most of her complaints. She’d cc me on ranty emails and include me in angry meetings with HR about accommodations like changing the cleaning products our maintenance team used, saying that she needed a very expensive air purifier, and so on and on. Every day, she would email our bosses or call HR about nothing and say, “Summer’s upset about it, too!” She included me in this stuff so frequently that it almost impacted my yearly evaluation. I had to have a very serious heart-to-heart with my boss (who was also pregnant), explaining that I didn’t agree with Christina on basically anything. The final straw for me was when she included me in a formal complaint to corporate that we were left out of a training because we were pregnant. The training had nothing to do with our job function, and several men didn’t go either. Her complaint caused a massive investigation, during which I was almost suspended without pay. I wasn’t her biggest fan.

    I was very over her antics by our holiday potluck. Our holiday potluck menu was circulated weeks in advance and included dishes like lasagna, soup, salad, GF, and Vegan options. Everyone had something they could eat/would like. Christina complained the whole time that nothing offered was safe for pregnant women to eat, gearing up for another meltdown, and she said, “This is so dangerous, right Summer?” so with my mouth full and pasta sauce all over my face, I said, “Nope! Delicious!”

    1. RagingADHD*

      Oh, I used to try to work things out privately with people who dragged me into public issues without my consent, but those days are long gone. That’s a reply-all situation, stating “No, I do not agree with this and Christina did not consult me about it. If I had an issue with anything, I would raise it myself.”

    2. Ally McBeal*

      You know she probably ate ALL those “unsafe” foods at home, too. What the heck is unsafe (for pregnant people) about LASAGNA?!

      1. JustaTech*

        Right?
        The only time I ever commented on the food that work was ordering with regards to when I was pregnant was when it was going to be deli sandwiches (again) and there was currently a nationwide recall of all deli meat from everywhere for listeria.
        (Listeria is bad for anyone but very very dangerous for pregnant people.)
        So I asked the person who was doing the ordering, hey, could we have something else? And I said “if it’s too expensive or hard that’s fine, I’ll just pack lunch.”
        Not a problem, we got non-deli sandwiches from the (nicer) box lunch place and everyone was happy!

  74. I'm so old I'm historic*

    I’ve posted this before, but here is the reason our company doesn’t ever do any type of potluck. We had a chili cookoff competition and it went horribly wrong. No one thought to list their ingredients so one team member had to leave due to an allergic reaction. One team member spilled his crockpot in his car and made his wife bring in the small bowl she was saving for dinner. And the piece de resistance: Halfway through the day we noticed roaches crawling out of a crock pot! And when we called the person to let her know, she said, “Oh. I thought I got them all.” And she was a little miffed when we told her we put her crock pot outside. Because, you know, ROACHES.

  75. Irish Teacher.*

    I told this story before but it amuses me.

    In one school where I worked, there was a tradition that every Friday somebody baked something for the staffroom. “Baked,” however, was flexible and if you couldn’t bake, it was fine to buy something or whatever. Anyway, the deputy principal didn’t bake so he brought in a chocolate fountain and a load of marshmallows and strawberries.

    Ye can probably guess where this is going.

    A couple of us helped him out, cutting the strawberries and arranging them on the tray. Then I went out to do some planning, which was a good thing because while I was out, the deputy principal turned on the fountain and chocolate went everywhere, all down his shirt, all over the staffroom floor.

  76. Elle Woods*

    A friend of mine works in a large multi-team department that has a holiday potluck each year. For about five years in a row, the potluck consisted of nothing but a few appetizers, a bunch of dips, and all kinds of holiday cookies. Then someone decided they should assign each team a different type of item to bring with the idea being that there would be more variety and that there would be some heartier food items as well.

    Sounds good, right?

    The team assigned to bring a main course type food decided to make things easy for themselves. About 20 minutes before the potluck started, all seven members of that team arrived carrying a Costco rotisserie chicken in each hand. Yep, they bought 14 rotisserie chickens. Fortunately, someone had thought to bring a knife and carving fork with them so they were able to carve up the chickens.

    The next year, the potluck went back to a “bring whatever you want” format.

  77. Decima Dewey*

    This is a equity fail story. My system had meetings at the main location for managers and everyone else. The managers got a lovely lunch spread and raved about it. Come time for everyone else? One paper plate of Hershey’s kisses per table and nothing else.

    Luckily, when we have meetings at locations not our own, we’re allowed an hour of travel time, during which we all grabbed actual food.

  78. girlie_pop*

    At my last job, we used to have a Halloween party where we always had chili for lunch. Usually 2-3 people would make it at home and bring it in crackpots and we had all the fixins. Then when COVID kicked off, we all went remote, and in 2021 we had out first post-WFH Halloween party.

    The person who usually planned the Halloween party had been replaced, and the new guy decided to do a baked potato bar instead. People were SO mad. For two weeks beforehand people were acting like they had cancelled Christmas! One of my more dramatic co-workers said to me, “I look forward to the chili bar all year!” I resisted asking her if she knew she was allowed to make chili at home.

    Logistically, the potato bar did not go as smoothly as the chili. We didn’t have an oven in our office, so the guy who planned it had his wife bake all the potatoes at home (at least 75 of them – nightmare) and then he went and picked them up an brought them back to the office. By the time we got started, they were cooled a lot, and the topics were not super well executed – like there was roasted broccoli, but it was big florets of it instead of being chopped into smaller ones, so we had to cut it up if we wanted it on our potatoes. Not anything that like, ruined the lunch, but just not perfect. My upset coworker said that she hoped they “learned their lesson” after everyone complained to the party planners and went back to chili next year.

  79. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

    It was my first year in my first job out of college. We were having a company potluck dinner at my manager’s house. I showed up a day early. Extremely embarrassing. Fortunately, there were no negative repercussions, and I wound up working for that manager for 17 years!

  80. Sweet Tooth*

    I used to work for a theater company and part of my job was coordinating audience pre show and post show events. Sometimes these were public events organized by us, but we also had our event spaces available for groups that bought tickets and wanted to have a private reception for their group. In these cases, all the food decisions and purchases were done by the group. I was just there to help. There would often be leftover food and if the group didn’t want to keep it we would put it into the fridges and offer to the staff the next day.

    We had one group that had a pre show dinner at least 3 times a year, and they always got a local (amazing) Italian restaurant to cater. They never took their leftovers. There wasn’t usually much main course left but there was always a LOT of Tiramisu. Sometimes an entire pan. And y’all… This tiramisu was soooo good. And it turned into a THING amongst my colleagues. When staff knew [group name] was attending that week they would start talking about the Tiramisu. It wasn’t uncommon to hear “IT’S TIRAMISU DAY!!!” in the halls.

    I think you know where this is going. One time the caterer brought a beautiful assortment of Italian cookies for dessert. No tiramisu. They were still put out for staff to enjoy. They were still delicious. But they weren’t tiramisu. The audacity.

    A reminder that this was NOT OUR FOOD! It was leftovers that we were lucky to have. That did not stop the outcry. It was everyone’s favorite topic all day. And even though I did not order the food I was the one that heard most of the complaints. And the next time [group] attended I heard a lot of “there better be tiramisu this time!” as if it was up to me. Luckily for me, there was indeed tiramisu, and thus cookie-gate was over.

    To be fair tho- I still sometimes have dreams about that tiramisu.

  81. Roy G. Biv*

    My previous job my company, an ad agency of about 20 people, had earned a reputation of “What the heck are they doing now?” in our building. We were sandwiched between a bank and a law firm. Our office suite had a fully functioning kitchen, while all other suites in our building only had a fridge and microwave. A vendor had given us a turkey, so we had an all company potluck, and the art director cooked the turkey in our kitchen. He was testing out a recipe for his family Thanksgiving the following week. It smelled divine, and by 10:30 am we were all chomping at the bit. The office manager had to lock our front door because the other offices kept sending people down to our suite to find out when the turkey would be ready, and we were not planning to share. At noon, when the turkey hit the conference table, we were like a pack of wild dogs ravaging a carcass. It was delicious!

    And then we all realized we were being watched. The conference room door was open, and we could see several people from the law firm pressed against the glass front door, watching us partake. Like street urchins from a Charles Dickens novel, they beckoned us to unlock the door and let them in.

    The art director walked over, plate still in hand, and pushed the conference room door closed with his foot. Problem solved!

    The week after Thanksgiving our office manager got a call from the site manager, requesting we no longer cook in our kitchen. Bunch of spoil sports!

    1. Strive to Excel*

      I hope he told them that if you weren’t allowed to use the kitchen you wouldn’t pay for the kitchen on the lease.

  82. My Brain is Exploding*

    Reading this just makes me think of a cruise we went on, where before entering the dining area, women with hand sanitizers would approach you, chanting, “washy, washy,” and make sure you sanitized your hands. Also reminded of potlucks where my dad worked, where management would cook and serve the people who worked in the manufacturing plant.

    1. Irritated*

      That phrase “Washy Washy” on Cruise Ships makes me irrationally angry it sound SOOOOOOO patronizing !!!!!

        1. Chocolate Teapot*

          “Washy Washy Happy Happy” is the version I hear. Still, I have never had a problem eating on a cruise ship, so I am happy to grin and bear it.

    2. Judge Judy and Executioner*

      I just did a Royal Caribbean Cruise and one of the washy washy people had a sash that said “Miss Washy Washy” and a crown. She was my favorite.

  83. Sel*

    This was before my time, but many of my colleagues have told me about it.

    My workplace used to have a holiday party that included a deviled egg competition. Maybe 20 or so people would compete, and show up having made huge trays of deviled eggs to enter into the competition. The problem? Our offices did not (and still do not) have a refrigerator large enough to accommodate dozens and dozens of deviled eggs. One year, everyone who ate the deviled eggs got horrible food poisoning. Was the competition called off? Not until we hired an events coordinator a couple years later. People still complain about missing the deviled eggs. I’m just glad I missed them entirely the first time around.

    1. Tech Industry Refugee*

      I can’t stand the sight or smell of eggs. That would be a planned PTO day for me!

  84. Figgie*

    My spouse worked for a plumbing supply chain with a large showroom. The showroom had everything from kitchens to bathrooms and there were multiple areas full of different fixtures.

    They decided to do their Christmas party in the showroom, which seemed okay when thinking about the fact that there were lots and lots of counters and areas set up as kitchens. Which did work out fine. Except the caterers decided to set up the desserts in the bathroom areas. Which meant for the most part, that they were setting out desserts on clear plastic platters on top of the showroom toilets. Nothing quite gets your attention like a plate of brownies sitting on a toilet seat on a toilet!

    No one else seemed to think anything about this, as I guess the people who actually work with plumbing supplies don’t pay attention. However all of us spouses who weren’t used to this stayed completely away from the desserts that year. Fortunately, next year they were back in a restaurant and it hasn’t happened since!

    1. Recycled cold cuts*

      We did a lunch and learn when I was in grad school where we took turns providing the lunches. One woman who was vegetarian insisted no one do sandwiches because it always meant she got stuck with a cheese sandwich which fair enough!

      Except when it was her turn, what did she bring in but cold cut sandwich fixings! The kicker was when, once we had our sandwiches assembled, she proudly mentioned the cost savings cheese sandwich in hand because she was reusing cold cuts she’d served to her church group the night before. Talk about an appetite killer.

  85. Jonathan MacKay*

    Some years ago, I was on the social planning committee at my work where we were planning out a Christmas lunch to be held in the early afternoon so that both shifts could attend. Some weeks before, a much beloved coworker passed away unexpectedly, so it was decided to turn it into a memorial dinner as well.

    The dinner portion went as well as expected…. but the memorial……. there was much disrespectful behavior on the part of the afternoon shift who did not know him as well, enough that there has never been such an event held again.

  86. Santonio Holmes*

    I’m already leery of potlucks because of horror stories and my firm belief that you can’t eat at everybody’s house but my first potluck at my current job affirmed that. The mild aggravation I felt when I realized nobody brought serving utensils for their dishes and expected me to magic some up was replaced by revulsion when I realized that the three people who volunteered to bring meat had neither refrigerated it or kept it at a safe temp from them getting there at 7am to the luncheon at noon. One even volunteered that he had heated the ribs the night BEFORE and then put them in foil until the potluck. This year I’m pushing for everybody to contribute $10 and we order pizza.

  87. No cherry on top*

    We had a birthday chain where people on the chain bought the next person’s cake. Several people were very specific and demanding and loudly disappointed when they didn’t get their cake of choice.

    My birthday was right next to someone else’s so the woman whose turn it was decided not to ask us and just make a cake (most bought one). She was not a very good baker but the icing on a terrible cake was when she bragged that she’d recycled leftover chocolate fondue to make the icing. Blech!

    1. Lou's Girl*

      We had sort of the same thing, except the guy whose turn it was to make / buy mine didn’t like me (I work in HR and he was not a great employee so we’d had a few meetings). We had a list of favorite treats, he ignored mine and brought in his favorite. Not a huge deal, more funny than anything. Just his little dig at me/ HR.

  88. lizzay*

    Our division (maybe 15 people or so) had a chili cookoff, there were maybe 5 or 6 chilis, and everyone left their leftovers in the fridge for the next few days. The next day (or maybe the second, I forget), one of my coworkers went in to get a bowl & found the guy who was legendarily cheap with a HUGE bowl of it, like serving bowl size, just chowing down, like it was perfectly normal and not at all weird to eat about 4 servings so nobody else could have any. Kicker is, I don’t think that guy was one of the ones who brought any chili in.

  89. NMitford*

    I feel like I’ve told this story before, but here’s the final nail in the coffin for an underperforming office manager, and it has to do with catering.

    A place I worked at was holding a week of Lean Six Sigma Green Belt training, and staff from other regional offices and mostly important some bigwigs from headquarters flew in to participate. Breakfast and lunch were provided during the training, and then the out-of-town participants were on their own for dinner at restaurants near their hotels. The office manager was in charge of catering, and she tried to have different caterers different days of the week to provide variety. She was in charge of meeting the caterers when they arrived and helping them set up. Some days we had hot food involving sternos and some days we had cold food.

    On, say, Thursday, I arrived at the office to find a Panera delivery person standing outside ringing the doorbell. No office manager. So, I escorted the Panera delivery person in and helped her set up a spread of bagels, pastries, fruit salad, coffee, and juice. Then I noticed that the conference rooms we were using hadn’t been tidied — there were still dirty coffee cups and empty paper plates sitting on the tables. It was the office manager’s job to make sure the room was presentable every morning because, again, bigwigs from HQ were going to be there.

    I grabbed a Hefty bag and started shoveling trash from the tables into it, emptied the overflowing trash cans in the rooms, and wiped the table down with Clorox wipes from the kitchen. By the time my office’s leader walked in, I was out of breath and sweating profusely. She was not happy to see that I was the person taking care of things.

    Fifteen minutes into breakfast, the office manager strolled in. My office’s leader asked her where she’d been, because I’d had to do the set up and cleaning that morning.

    Folks, this was suburban Washington, DC, and all she had to do was utter one work — “Traffic” — and no one would have batted an eye. Instead she told the office leader that because the food that morning didn’t need heating and much set up, she’d decided she could sleep a little later.

    Yeah, she didn’t last long after that.

  90. not again*

    For our annual holiday dinner, my employer (the business owner) took our small department and plus ones out to an expensive steakhouse. One of my co-workers was known for taking full advantage of the employer’s generosity; she would arrive early with her spouse to have appetizers and drinks at the bar on the employer’s tab, and she tended to order the the priciest options and multiple items so that she would have plenty of leftovers (think at least 3-4 meals worth of leftovers for someone with a moderate appetite). I’m sure our employer noticed, but I don’t think he particularly minded. After several years of this, however, it became apparent that our employer’s spouse was irked by the practice. As this co-worker was ordering, the employer’s spouse remarked loudly: “You go, big girl. Be sure to get enough to really fill up.” And followed up with, “Wow, someone sure has an appetite, big girl. Can’t imagine what your grocery bill is.” Then, for the rest of the evening, the employer’s spouse addressed this co-worker repeatedly as “big girl.” I’m not sure it matters, but the co-worker was of average size. It was incredibly awkward for all of us at the table, but it also was kind of epic.

  91. Meep*

    This one is low stakes.

    I work for a start-up that historically had 5 people, including the owner, working full-time at a time for YEARS. We also tended to hire people fresh out of college who had never held a job before except for *maybe* a grad student TA position.

    Back when my horrid former manager was in charge and was scamming interns/contractors by underpaying them while hanging a full-time position over their heads (It was “competitive” rates but often she would only let them work 10-20 hours and then give them 60 hours of work and stressing if they didn’t impress the owner, they wouldn’t get getting a job so at the end of the day, they were probably being paid worse than servers with no tips), whenever we had a potluck, I would also bring extra sides to claim so they could be included and not have to spend money on it. It wasn’t that big of a thing since we really only had 2 interns at a time and the dishes weren’t anything impressive, but always on theme. They knew that they could come into my office right by the entrance in the morning and pick a dish. Only payment was washing the pan and giving it back to me.

    Eventually, she got fired and we actually started hiring people and paying them fair wages, so we tripled in size in like two months. Apparently, the concept of a “potluck” wasn’t explained to ANY of the newer full-time employees (all recent college grads to be fair), but it WAS known, apparently, that there was always extra food.

    The first potluck we had after this shift, I was out on PTO. I didn’t think much about it other than ordering the main dish since it was a time we didn’t even have any interns. After I got back, the owner, who also brought nothing, complained to me that all that was there for 15 people to eat was a single homemade apple pie and some cookies for dessert (from the two vet employees), a side pasta salad (from one of the new hirers who understood the assignment), and the pre-ordered main dish. Oops.

  92. Exit Stage Left*

    I worked for a small and tight-knit company (~12 people) that decided to celebrate the hiring of a new president after a very long search with a dinner at his house. The company would cover all the food costs, but some employees were cooking and bringing the different dishes. There were a number of unusually good cooks in the company so there was some big talk and reputations on the line when planning the menu.

    I had been getting really into American BBQ at the time which was still a novelty in Canada (“BBQ” is typically used here as a synonym for “backyard grilling” – while in parts of the US it’s a distinct cuisine of slow cooked smoked meats). I had agreed to smoke a whole Beef Brisket (which was an amazing opportunity since the company was covering the meat, and that’s not something I could normally afford to cook).

    Beef Brisket is kind of a signature dish of BBQ as it’s an extremely large, dense, beef cut – so is delicious, flavourful, and tender when cooked properly, but tough and unappealing when it’s not. It also takes an extremely long time to smoke (>18 hours is not uncommon so usually has to be started the night prior).

    The night before the potluck a huge unexpected storm blew in out of nowhere so all night it was pouring rain, hail, and extremely windy. These are not good conditions for mainting an even temperature in a thin steel drum with a small charcoal fire. I was up much of the night trying to make constant adjustments and makeshift shelters, but still couldn’t get consistent temperatures. The next day with the party hours away nothing was close to being cooked.

    (Protip for aspiring BBQ chefs: This is the point where what you *should* do is bring your meat inside, and just finish roasting it in an oven in a nice dry kitchen. Works great and you still keep most of the smoke flavour. I was not that smart).

    So now, I’m outside on my townhouse deck – storm still raging – trying to stoke a *much bigger fire* than a smoker is meant for to speed roast the brisket. Every time I open the smoker to stoke the fire a huge amount of water gets dumped in – cooling everything off and causing billowing clouds of steam and smoke to go everywhere and get ash over everything. I persevere.

    When the meat is finally to “this will have to do, I’m already 2 hours late” temperature – I try to lift it out of the smoker with plastic oven mitts. In the rain. Of course I drop it immediately back into the smoker, landing it directly in the coals, and knocking over a drip pan full of hot rendered fat and water that caused a massive fireball. Somehow I managed to find some tongs or something, and somehow get the brisket out and into a pan without burning my deck down.

    “That was stupid, I’m really lucky I wasn’t burned” I thought to myself at the time, as I brought in the burned chunk of meat. Then I walked it into my kitchen and noticed the really strong smell of burned human hair.

    Anyway, all this is to explain why I showed up at house of my brand new boss, hours late, soaked, cold, looking like I hadn’t slept, and missing a chunk of my hair and most of one eyebrow.

    The Brisket however was *delicious*, I’m not sure I’ve ever cooked a better one, and I am absolutely never going to replicate the cooking method.

    1. Blue Spoon*

      I’m glad it at least tasted good… I’m in a part of the US with a strong BBQ culture, and I cannot wait to show this story to people.

      1. Exit Stage Left*

        Hope they enjoy – I know I sure love hearing about other people’s “it all went south” disaster cooks. Love the food, but it does lend itself to everyone having at least one good disaster story… mine was just slightly more of a gong-show than most!

    2. Gennx*

      Similar to a pig roast I did one year in the rain. Couldn’t keep the temp up really. It was miserably cold. And the pig was unrepeatably good.

  93. Just the Tips*

    My colleagues and I hated the annual holiday party for our department to the point that we actually tried to get out of going. It was one of those parties that used to be an evening thing with nice food and cocktails at a local venue, but while I was there it was moved to a lunch in the middle of a work day as a way to cut costs.

    The first year they did it this way, the organizers had put Christmas cookie decorating station on each table, which is a cute idea. But they didn’t want to pay for actual pastry bags so they filled Ziploc sandwich bags with frosting instead. Long story short: they weren’t made for that and popped, spraying frosting over whoever happened to be trying to decorate their cookie.

    The food was always from the same terrible local place because our director “Pam” loved it. There was also only sweet and unsweet iced tea to drink. I asked if there was water or anything else to drink and was told there was a watering fountain in the hall.

    But the worst part was when Pam would begin her award ceremony. Our department was a little weird in that Pam oversaw a group of about 80 people (including me) that specialized in “llama breeding” whereas the other half of the department was “llama sweater design.” Pam’s background was in sweaters, and she inadvertently made it clear several times that she was clueless about what we did. As a result, she showered praise and awards on the sweater people and we just kind of sat there unacknowledged.

    My last year there, we tried to hide in the bathroom to avoid going to the party but our boss found us and forced us to go. Not long later, Pam left and the company had a shakeup that included making llama breeding its own department.

  94. I'll have the blue plate special, please.*

    I worked at a major museum, known for its amazing dinosaur collection, that puts on a yearly holiday party. It’s a catered onsite affair but it involves buffet style bar foods that you could eat standing up. Each year, they’d serve dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets and they were at times lukewarm. They were cute at first but after a while people got tired of them. And the museum had a major endowment with plans underway to add on a new wing.

    1. Dragon_Dreamer*

      I think I know which museum, cause I heard the same story repeated over drinks at SVP last year. ;)

  95. Tinkerbell*

    My public library (fairly large system, so well over a hundred employees) did a Thanksgiving potluck where they provided the turkey and we were all asked to bring everything else. The bigwigs then invited all the important people in our city to come and jump to the front of the line. We all had to wait through an interminable long prayer by a local pastor (Bible belt, people) and then while all the friends of the board members got their plates first. By the time the first employees got their food, some of the dishes were already gone. By the time I got to the front, there were a ton of empty casserole trays and almost no turkey. The employees who got stuck manning their desks (with the promise of getting food at the end) got nothing.

    Oh, and our former director, who had just left for another large library system, came back for the day and spent the entire time trying to recruit her cronies to come work for her in her new city.

  96. Cactus*

    I worked at a highly competitive office. Not professionally competitive, recreationally competitive. We all collaborated so peacefully on work projects, but when it came to more important things like company walking contests the gold star stickers had to be kept in a locked drawer. That department knows what they did.

    Anyway, we had an annual Pi Day Pie Contest on which I was on the committee. There were, naturally, three total people on the committee with the inside joke that there were 3.14 because I was just a few weeks pregnant. We were only ten minutes in when the situation turned cutthroat. People demanded store-bought crusts be disqualified. People demanded hand pies be disqualified. There was significant outrage over a turcakenpie. Departments were forming alliances and voting blocks. Someone put a gold star on their pie when you know good and well those are supposed to be locked up.

    Meanwhile I, who had spent far to much time planning this event, gleefully prepared myself a plate of every pie and was wiggling with delight like Winnie Pooh about to tuck in. I took one large glorious bite of blueberry…..and began to profusely and immediately upchuck. More or less in front of everyone. Hello morning sickness! I haven’t looked at a blueberry since, but my pie did win tied for third place most aesthetically pleasing and I think that’s what counts. It certainly is what I tell people every time I bake it.

  97. The Wizard Rincewind*

    I work in a small office with a lot of different dietary needs. Lots of vegetarians, vegans, and some intolerances. For a potluck, I made a dip and wrote out exactly what ingredients I used and taped it to the container before putting it in the fridge.

    Come lunch time, the person organizing the potluck THREW OUT THE NOTE!! So I ended up fielding the gauntlet of “what’s in this?” from a dozen people that I’d expressly hoped to avoid. I guess she thought I wrote out the ingredients for…fun?

    I know, it’s mild at best, but I’m still annoyed, years later.

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

      I’m annoyed on your behalf! As someone who can’t have gluten and has had to be on a number of special diets to figure out health issues in the past, I’m always really thankful when someone provides that information!

  98. Alan*

    I was on a project at work that decided to reward everyone with a pizza party. Unfortunately, our company also has a sizeable number of interns every summer, interns for which the company plans activities often including free food, so our project party was overrun with interns unrelated to the project who grabbed up the free pizza and left. It was funny in a way but a bunch of us had to find other lunch.

  99. Potluck's Wife*

    My husband and I met at work, and he is and has been in any job, the person who wants to organize a potluck. Love him for it, he stays up late making new things/new treats, making our kitchen allergen friendly etc. I, to his dismay, am buy a veggie tray and call it a day type of lady.

    When we first met, he was organizing a potluck at the end of the week. He does the usual call for allergies, intolerances etc. and I mention I’m allergic to Mango –like if I eat any food contaminated by it, I have to go to the hospital. Easy to avoid, and he makes a note on the sign up sheet, that we can’t have Mango, or Walnuts.

    Day of the potluck, I bring my grocery store fruit tray bought the morning of, he brings in a cheesecake and everyone else brings in chips, or something like that. And then, This Guy brings in a fruit salad, full of mango.

    Not Yet Husband asks This Guy if he missed the email reminder about allergens. This Guy says no. Not Yet Husband puts the fruit salad (that would kill me) on a table on the other side of the room, to try and medicate cross contamination. This Guy moves it back to the table with all the other food. Not Yet Husband moves it again, explains to This Guy that due to allergens we want to keep the potluck food safe.

    This Guy and Not Yet Husband spend a day passively aggressively/aggressively moving the fruit salad (that would kill me), back and forth across the conference room. But it was too late for me, someone had already served themselves food from the fruit salad and I couldn’t risk it.

  100. This Old House*

    Nothing fancy, just the office lunch where the RSVP form that had a spot to list dietary restrictions, and then did absolutely nothing to accommodate them. I was used to bringing my own lunches to things by that part, but because they asked, I thought they would be providing something – or at least let people know if there was nothing they could do for them. Had to run back to my desk to get a granola bar and was *very* hungry by the end of the day.

  101. DJ*

    A few examples of company catering
    1. Used to hold evening events so staff would share the food catered for the attendees. Staff would wait until meeting started then grab left overs and sit down with attendees and eat. Manager didn’t give a proverbial about their staff so no encouragement to grab a plate and put it aside. At times we’d have no food left. Also expected to then travel home late at night without taxis provided nor onsite parking (we had to push for that one) and no concern when women would be walking 400 metres to the local early bird car park late at night.
    2. Company decided to have a morning tea completely full of high sugar high carb food. As a diabetic nothing to eat. Interesting diabetic/low car diets never included in examples of dietary requirements.
    3. Section I worked for used to do decade birthdays and celebrations mainly for senior staff (we were all expected to put in). A colleague had a non-decade birth between 2 senior staff’s decade birthdays. I found out what type of cake (a little on the expensive side) she liked so took upon myself to purchase and bring in. Everyone happy to eat it but no one offered to give me some money for it. My colleague was very appreciative!

  102. tjames*

    It’s always disappointing that Cheap Ass Rolls never sent in an update. I wonder if they know they’re a legend on here.

    1. Blue Spoon*

      I believe one of her coworkers (or at least someone claiming to be one of her coworkers) did.

  103. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

    I remember one potluck at a previous job. We weren’t originally a large group, but we’d started growing, and we had a relatively new person (Daisy) who was both vegan and had dairy intolerance–I suspect the two were related. Anyway, this was a potluck where people signed up with what to bring. The office “helpful auntie”, who I’ll call Clara, swooped in and promised she’d bring an epic salad for Daisy, so she’d have something to eat besides her own food. Clara was actually a pretty decent maker of epic salads so no one thought anything about it until she proudly plopped an enormous salad festooned with goat cheese on the table the day of the potluck.

    Turned out Clara had no idea that goat cheese involved actual goats. She thought it was another name for vegan/non-dairy cheese.

  104. A Nonny Nonny*

    My friend, let’s call him Pat, was working as an admin at a large firm. They had an ice cream sundae event, and at the end (around 3pm), admins were invited to help themselves, and Pat grabbed a couple cans of whipped cream. He puts them in his bag, finishes his day and commutes home, where he puts them in the fridge.

    The next day– Pat is hosting a cookout. I brought some pies, and Pat brought out the whipped cream. Y’all, I have never seen an adult put so much whipped cream on a slice of pie. But whatever, he enjoys it and the rest of us enjoy our pie with a moderate amount of whipped cream. We hang out outside for a few hours, enjoying the day, then help Pat clean up and head home.

    Day after that– Pat is down for the count. He has a nasty stomach bug, and he can’t figure out where he got it. The only thing he ate was things that other people ate, and no one else is sick. By afternoon he’s feeling better so he has some pancakes and whipped cream, but by evening he’s feeling worse. He calls me so I can help him figure out what’s going on.

    The culprit was the whipped cream. It had been unrefrigerated for up to 6 hours on Friday, then in the summer heat for another 3-4 hours on Saturday. The rest of us had only a tablespoon, but Pat had been dousing his food in it.
    PSA: Always refrigerate your dairy products.

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

    In my former industry, it is very common to have a fair number of contractors working alongside employees — often out in the field, but also for long-term roles and temporary projects in the office. Those temporary projects can last YEARS, so a good contractor might be around and interacting with other employees for quite awhile.

    I was a contractor starting out and the executive assistant on our floor, “Tanya”, made it very clear that she thought all contractors were to be treated poorly as a general rule (well, when she found out that my mom worked at the same company and was someone she knew, she started treating ME kindly, but still treated all the other contractors terribly. My mom and I were in completely different departments with very little interaction, and I didn’t bring her or our relationship up apropos of nothing, so it took a number of months for her to find out and the change was instantaneous. I truly got the full Tanya experience!). She was rude and huffy about anything relating to our work or space needs (and this wasn’t a matter of us going to her for things. This was like…the person managing us requesting a larger office for us to all share, and Tanya being irritated that some seasonal decorations would need to find a different home so we could have space to work, and taking that out on us.).

    Anyway, I got hired as a permanent employee in a different department after a number of months, but I still had friends who were contractors and one of them told me that they had been banned from the floor potluck. This wasn’t something like the company party, which I know could be seen as an employee perk or benefit that contractors aren’t allowed to partake in; this was a departmental thing that I don’t think the company was contributing to in any way aside from allowing it to happen. The sign-up sheet was posted in the kitchen, which contractors were allowed to use. If I remember correctly, the contractor that told me about this found out because she had signed up to bring something and Tanya either crossed her name off the list or told her she wasn’t allowed to attend.

    It was very strange, and honestly pretty crappy. I worked there for years and never saw anyone else treat the contractors the way Tanya did.

  106. DeeDee*

    When we were a much smaller workgroup, our office “Winter Party” would be hosted at a colleague’s home. We have one colleague who’s super bossy when it comes to party games and puts in a lot of time and effort. While creative, they had to be played “her way”. When some people were chatting and “not paying attention” she had an actual toddler style meltdown in the middle of the room complete with tears and shouting and stormed out. This woman was in her forties at the time. A colleague surreptitiously took a video of the meltdown and the following year at the next party (which she didn’t attend) showed the video with soundtrack added. It was hilarious.

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

    Oh, another comment just reminded me of this. It’s a plea to every event organizer out there wrapped up in a story.

    A couple of years back, a colleague and I were set to attend an annual conference. We both had similar-but-distinct dietary restrictions (I can’t have gluten, she can’t have wheat or soy), so I sent a message weeks ahead of time to the email that was provided to us and was assured that the buffets during the conference would all be labeled and we wouldn’t have any issues.

    The buffet items were absolutely labeled with some of the dietary information. And we would walk down the line repeatedly going, “Okay, can’t eat that. Or that. Or that.” For breakfast, everyone else got scrambles and muffins and granola. I was able to cobble together a yogurt and a banana and was hangry a couple of hours later. Snacks were generally cookies and other sweets neither of us could eat. Lunch and dinner were somewhat better, though one of the lunches was a build-your-own-sandwich bar with no gluten-free bread options, so we were just eating lunch meat and cheese with some tomato slices and pickles.

    I generally trust no food situation while traveling, so I usually have protein bars and other snacks with me. But I had been so thoroughly assured that there would be plenty of options for us that I hadn’t brought as large of a variety of snacks as I usually would for trips like that.

    (Also, the labeling was sus. There was some Shiner-Bock mustard that was labeled as gluten-free. Shiner-Bock is a brand of beer, a beverage that is famously chock full of gluten. And while it’s possible it truly was gluten-free, I didn’t trust them enough to try it. Additionally, while they labeled things as gluten-free and soy-free, wheat-free was left off. And I know that sounds nitpicky since gluten is in wheat, but there are products that are certified GF that are made with wheat starch — the gluten protein is removed, but it’s still an issue for anyone with a wheat allergy.)

    By day three of the conference, the hotel gave us the number of the chef, who we would check with ahead of time and find out what was okay for us to eat — and if it wasn’t sufficient, he would kindly make something that was just for us.

    The lesson here: labeling is great! But if you label everything and then take a step back and realize people won’t be able to eat a proper meal day after day with what’s available to them, you’re doing it wrong.

    Honestly, I would have preferred to just be told I was on my own for meals rather than being assured that I’d be taken care of and left hungry and cranky because of lack of options.

  108. Grey Coder*

    Our branch office traditionally had a significant year-end party — sit down dinner, wine, music, etc. One year when profits were down, corporate tried to axe all parties. However, the committee had already booked the venue and it couldn’t be refunded. The sit down dinner turned into a meagre buffet, with the committee members hovering anxiously and discouraging people from taking too much food. I think we may have been asked to chip in as well.

  109. Annie Mouse*

    Big boss wants to have an in person staff retreat (a 1 day during work hours thing), but doesn’t want to be involved in planning it. When the pot luck sign up goes around, big boss signs up to bring chips and salsa. Middle manager plans a Mexican entree around that. Three days before the retreat, big boss realizes that was a dick move and decides to bring pie. We therefore had a Mexican meal with with no chips and salsa and 7 desserts.

  110. TrixieDelite*

    We recently had a small celebration here at work, and in the tradition of potlucks, folks signed up to bring various items. Several of our office staff (including me) are diabetic or pre-diabetic, so imagine my delight when I found a brand of soda (Olipop) that was root beer flavored, very low in sugar, contained 9g of fiber, and is recommended for those following vegan, gluten free or Paleo diets.

    I brought a case of them in for my teammates to enjoy. About half of the box was consumed during the luncheon, and then everyone went back to work.

    But not for long.

    Within 20-30 minutes, people were wandering the halls with strange looks on their faces, and there seemed to be a fairly large exodus towards the restrooms. A few minutes after that, the upstairs stalls were full and folks had to go to another floor to use the restroom.

    And then, all hell broke loose.

    Unbeknownst to me, the soda contains a “prebiotic” called inulin which is not digested in the stomach but remains in the bowel and aids in the growth of “beneficial bacteria.” And let me tell you, that bacteria is WICKED when it’s expelled from the body. And LOUD. Holy hell. It felt like I had a bouquet of helium balloons in my gut and they were bursting all at once.

    The crop dusting in the office was legendary, and people were evacuating their own offices because they were literally offending themselves with their gas.

    Since only about 5-6 people had consumed the soda, the rest of the office didn’t experience those side effects, but the hovering stench in the hallways was a dead giveaway that something had gone wrong. Someone broke out the emergency rations of Febreze and toilet paper, and the poor souls who drank that freakish soda spent the majority of their afternoon trekking back and forth between bathrooms. When people started comparing notes about what they had eaten or drank, it became clear that the common denominator was the soda. Finally, someone looked up the product online and discovered that the inulin was what was causing the stink, and the rest of the soda was thrown out.

    The next day, one person filed an RA for a new desk chair because they had literally sharted on theirs. I still laugh out loud even thinking about this.

  111. Katherine*

    I’m very unusual in that I don’t like tacos because I hate the spice that is used in the meat. The first church Christmas party we had after lockdowns ended, we had a potluck dinner with the main dishes paid for by the church and cooked by a family in our congregation.

    The very nice Hispanic family who cooked the main dishes used taco spice in every single main dish! Even the ones that weren’t specifically tacos (burritos, some kind of chicken main dish, etc.). Besides dessert, the only thing I could eat was the fresh fruit. Worst church Christmas party ever (for me). And I had to stop at a drive through restaurant on the way home because I was still pretty hungry.

  112. Jamboree*

    I’m a little afraid to read this column, since I just three hours ago volunteered to organize my church’s first Friendsgiving since the pandemic. In the beforetimes they’d get 40 people but no one has any idea what this year’s response will be.

    1. Good Luck*

      In my experience as hospitality chair for church a few years ago…elderly people go first, parents with small children go next (like if they have to carry the little ones or hold their hands), everyone else goes next except teenagers, and they go last. Otherwise the fast teenagers get three chicken legs and devilled eggs each.

  113. Retired Professor*

    I am a retired professor. In academia when we hire, the finalist candidates are brought to campus for a whole day interview which typically requires an overnight stay. Many years ago when I was a new professor, my department had a tradition that when we hired new faculty, the finalists were given a department potluck dinner, the day of the interview. The dinners were hosted at someone’s house and the food was very good as we had faculty from many countries and cultures. I had just bought a house near campus and I offered to host the next potluck. The department head had left and the search was being led by Al, someone outside the department. I asked Al about putting up the sign-up-sheet for food and he said we don’t want to go to the trouble of a pot luck and not to worry about it. We had a communication gap and I understood that he would have it catered. I have no clue what Al thought he meant. It would be the first time I had my colleagues at my house and I spent a lot of time cleaning and arranging things.

    Late afternoon the day before the dinner I asked Al when the food would arrive so I could be sure to be home by then. He said ‘Oh, you take care of it. Just buy some chips or something.’ What? 20 plus people were going to show up at my house the next day expecting dinner and I was supposed to serve a bag of chips? No drinks? No other food? There was no way at that late time to get everybody to make something and there was no way that I could pull together a dinner for 20 in one day, even if I wanted to. I started panicking. I was very junior at the time and terrified that I would get the blame for this fiasco. I got up my courage and went over Al’s head to the Dean. The Dean told me ‘Of course you don’t have to cook a dinner for 20 plus people and of course you need to serve more than chips.’ He found money and pulled strings to have campus catering bring food off campus to my house with less than 24 hours notice. It was not as interesting as our usual pot lucks but everybody was happy.

    In retrospect, I think Al was traditional with a wife who took care of the household and had no idea what went into a party. It just happened in his house. I don’t think he even noticed that I had it catered.

  114. MapleLibrarian*

    Every so often I see an ad on TV for King’s Hawaiian Rolls. This site has RUINED those ads for me because I always think CHEAP ASS ROLLS!

  115. Illogical Spock*

    I’m a teacher at a middle school with about 80 teachers. One evening a colleague who chairs our Party Planning Committee sent out an email to the staff saying something along the lines of, “Hey folks, after tonight’s student award celebration, we have plenty of sandwiches for lunch tomorrow.”
    What she should have REALLY said was, “Hey folks, we’ve got enough sandwiches for maybe 20 people, so first come first served.”
    As you can guess, the food ran out by 9:30 AM. There were TONS of reply all emails with complaints about not having packed a lunch that day and how they were now starving or asking if people were taking multiple sandwiches. People were saying they couldn’t believe they had been so mislead and because we’re teachers (basically can’t go out to pick up food easily) they were outraged. By about noon the email fuss had died down but it was the talk of the school as we’d pass each others in the hall. The chair who had sent the email showed me the messages sent only to her and some were crazy critical, like “How could you!?”
    People, it was big-box-store sandwiches.
    I was surprised because the email sender could not figure out how such a miscommunication happened (she’s rocket surgeon smart but really blew this one) and equally surprised that so many of my colleagues were checking their emails at night or in the morning prior to coming into work. A few teachers and staff knew enough about the event and figured there wouldn’t be enough so didn’t count on it. I lucked out as I almost never check my work email once I clock out of the building so I had my normal packed lunch.

  116. Cedrus Libani*

    I worked at a STEM camp for high school students. They had a “fancy” dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, but they were too cheap for the regular menu, so they got burgers and hot dogs instead. Mistake. Everyone who ate the burgers got violently ill. I woke up the next morning to vomit trails in the hallway, leading to the bathrooms, which were packed with miserable teenagers who had spent the past several hours in there together.

    We were scheduled to do a comparative anatomy dissection workshop, which was affectionately known as “Bag of Dead Animals Day”. This was…sparsely attended. It was just me and the vegetarians for most of the morning session. (I’m an omnivore, I just prefer hot dogs to cheap burgers.)

    If you’re going to order catering, order what the vendor normally makes!

  117. BW*

    CEO’s wife was in charge of the Christmas party for the employees. 50 employees. She brought one bag of chips and one liter of soda.

  118. ex admin*

    I worked as an admin in a small manufacturing company (40-50 people). Before Covid we would have a catered lunch brought in around the holidays. One year, the main course was beef tips and pork chops in gravy .The cater brought one small 9×9 pan of mashed potatoes for 40 hungry men. The owner’s wife called up and said they must have not delivered all the potatoes. They said they only planned in 1/4 cup per person. She was livid and said even she eats more than that.
    Another year the caterer brought the meal a good hour before we requested without any way to keep it warm. The caterer would not listen to me and just kept unloading the food. It wasn’t until the owner came in and said the same exact thing did, he leave his warming containers.

  119. nonprofit llama groomer*

    I told my husband about this potluck at work gone wrong request and he told me I had to share our experience because we still laugh about this one 20 years later.

    I worked for a nonprofit at the time that encouraged employees to invite their partners/significant others/children to our Christmas/Winter Holiday potluck. We can’t remember whether this was my first or second year with this nonprofit because I was pregnant during each one, but so newly pregnant that I hadn’t shared yet with work either time. I’m pretty sure it was my second year and husband was there with my toddler.

    My older coworker (I was at least the same age as her kids) was cranky as heck but truly a gem and mentor. I had a specialized degree and she was a self-taught guru, but she taught me so much. She kept asking me to try her special dip. She was soooo proud of it. It looked like a cheese dip so I put some on my plate and immediately tried it with a chip. Y’all, it was not cheese dip, it had fish in it and I don’t know why it was yellow. My newly pregnant belly just couldn’t handle it and I had to spit it out into a napkin. Luckily I wasn’t having severe issues with nausea so I was able to play it off.

    Same event, a different older coworker (again, her kids were around my age) was super proud of her slow-cooked overnight turkey. My husband went to cut a piece with the carving knife and the whole turkey kind of exploded into a mess of turkey sawdust and you could almost hear the *poof* sound. That turkey was weirdly super moist and delicious despite the appearance.

  120. Azure Jane Lunatic*

    The day that company-internal Catering got the wrong day for our team’s big all-day event was exciting. Fortunately I had email receipts detailing that I, at least, had the day right.

    They managed to pull something together at the last minute, but aiiiiiyyyy.

    1. AngloNemi*

      We had the opposite issue at one of our events – the catering company put two teams on our order so we got two deliveries of delicious and inclusive cold buffet. Enough GF/Vegan for the curious omnivores to try without leaving those with dietary restrictions to go hungry, and senior management insisting (and I mean INSISTING) that we all took sizeable packages of leftovers with us after the event.
      Since I didn’t have multiple families to feed at home, I dropped my bounty off at our nearby satellite office, where it was swiftly and joyfully dealt with.

  121. Pizza*

    One time, my office held a $5 pizza lunch (each person who wanted pizza would contribute $5 and a bunch of pizzas would be ordered for the team to share). It was a fairly popular event and the lady organising it requested that we email all dietary requirements to her so she could ensure that everyone could eat pizza who wanted to, so i dutifully did so.

    When the pizza arrived she made a big show of pointing out the pizza with lactose free cheese and the pizza with the gluten free base for the people who couldn’t eat cheese or gluten. Unfortunately for my Muslim coworker and I (a Jew), literally every single pizza had copious amounts of pork on it. We’re both fairly easygoing people so I jokingly asked him “who ordered this nonsense?” and we had a good laugh about it while staking our claim on the fruit platter that another colleague had thoughtfully brought. What wasn’t as fun was explaining to all of our colleagues multiple times why ‘just picking the pork off of the pizza and eating the rest’ wasn’t appropriate.

    (To the credit of the organiser, she was appropriately mortified, gave us each a personalised apology after the fact, and now orders at least two vegetarian pizzas each time.)

    1. C*

      I wonder if it’s be appropriate to say that you’d no more pick pork off food and eat it than you’d pick a dead roach off food and eat it….

  122. SMac*

    I worked for a nonprofit, and every year there was a few months long period where every department would do some kind of fundraiser for the nonprofit. My department was famous for a lunch time chili cook off that included, of course, voting for a winner. It was my first year there, and my boss kept talking about how popular the chili cook off was. We were advised we needed to quadruple our normal recipe to have enough for everyone. One coworker launched in right away with BIG talk about her recipe. And the day of the cook off, kept going around and checking out the competition and making allusions to her to secret ingredients. When the judging was over, we learned that she won and she was ecstatic….But then it came out that she’d been buying votes all afternoon! When the accusations were revealed, she refused to give up the trophy. Oh, and remember the quadruple recipes. Turns out that was bananas, and since everybody ate only a couple spoonfuls of each chili, there was an exorbitant amount left over. Another coworker carried her crockpot of leftovers back to her car and spilled that triple recipe of chili all over it.

    1. lol*

      I misread that as bananas being the secret ingredient in the coworker’s chili…that would certainly be an unexpected flavor!

  123. Waving not Drowning*

    A few years ago I had the most awkward end of year function at work.

    Boss was a bully. There was a toilet cubicle where staff would go to cry after a meeting with him.

    Staff morale, particularly in our wider team, was flagged as a major issue. Bully bosses solution was to have a team bonding activity – we had a Head Office, and a satellite office. His bonding activity was for an end of year function, however, he wouldn’t spring for the satellite office staff to come to Head Office for an afternoon. His solution was to videoconference our end of year function, and that we’d eat and talk. The food didn’t arrive at the satellite office in time, so they got to sit and watch us eat. Noone wanted to be there, and there was only very minimal polite chit chat. Once the first person faked a meeting to leave….we all did.

    Six months later, HR FINALLY dealt with the Bully Boss and his contract was not renewed. He was permitted to stay til the end of the contract, and it was framed that he was resigning to move to be closer to family interstate – however, we know he was interviewing locally!) We then had his farewell function. We all tried to get out of it, however, it was made VERY clear that attendance was compulsory. This time he had the satellite team come to the Head Office, so it was actually nice to see them in person, however, again, there was NO conversation, very average food was eaten, and we all counted the very very VERY long minutes until it was over.

    (side note, when his car pulled out of the car park on his last day, we actually popped the champagne and toasted his permanent absence)

  124. Wolf*

    My story happened in academia.

    The boss was a bully. The kind of person who screams at people for 15 minutes over a small mistake. So, there were complaints about her.

    Her response was that she thought people must be depressed. And the solution would be a bake sale to collect donations for a mental health charity. Now, most of us were students or PhD candidates, with very low income, and half of us lived in apartments without full kitchen, but we didn’t dare to say No. Still, we managed to bring a cake each. Unsurprisingly, if 30 people bring cakes to sell them to each other, there’s way too much cake. Nobody wanted to buy more than 1-2 slices, or could afford to (after just having spent money to make that same cake).

    The boss then bragged for months about her amazing initiative for mental health.

  125. Nacho Mama*

    Work friendsgiving was scheduled where the higher up management people (C-suite) were supposed to (and volunteered!) to bring the ham/turkey and desserts while the rest of us were to provide side dishes and drinks.

    Day of friendsgiving I show up to a few side dishes (it was obviously by the number of people standing around that more than half of them didn’t bring anything) and no turkey, no ham, one bag of store-bought cookies and an already open bag of chocolates. I waited for the “we are a family” speech and promptly left to get lunch at a local sandwich shop. Management claimed later they were “too busy” to provide food for us.

  126. o_gal*

    I worked in a department that always did catered holiday lunches in December. Each manager would order in box lunches, or whatever they wanted to have, for all the employees in their group. My group had 20 people. One year, my manager (Karen, yes that is her real name) ordered box lunches from a local restaurant that everyone really likes. I went with my coworker to pick them up prior to our holiday lunch at 11:30.

    We get to the restaurant and wait patiently in line at the counter to do the pick up. I notice there are a couple of platters of cookies waiting for pickup off to the side. Then my coworker has her turn and says she’s there to pick up for Karen. The counter person points to the platters of holiday cookies and says there they are. We confusedly say no, it should be 20 box lunches. Counter person gets the deer in the headlights look and quickly runs back to the kitchen. Yep, someone else who was supposed to pick up 2 platters of cookies for Karen instead picked up huge bags with 20 box lunches, for Karen.

    They scramble to remake 20 box lunches, at the height of their lunch rush, while my coworker calls back and says it’s going to be another 30 to 45 minutes before we get back. The restaurant was very apologetic and made it right, but I’ve always wondered what they ended up doing with 2 huge platters of cookies. And what was the reaction when the person who was supposed to pick up the cookies ends up bringing in 20 box lunches, all with names on them, which probably would not match names of anyone at their location.

  127. Abrupt Pigeon*

    I used to work at a hotel that had a monthly employee lunch. Aside from the few front desk staff, most of those in attendance were housekeeping and maintenance staff doing hard physical labor, and everyone had to clock out for this so it was their only chance to eat lunch. The General Manager was in charge of food, and was very into Fitness and had the appetite of a bird; she never ordered enough.

    The one I’ll always remember is when she had chicken wings brought in and instructed everyone to take no more than three. There weren’t even sides. There was a similar situation with pizza, where everyone got two slices.

    1. Spooz*

      My parents have the appetites of sparrows on a diet. When I was growing up, 1/4 of a medium thin-crust pizza was “a full meal”. When they bought a sandwich on a cafe they would buy one and eat half each.

      It was absolute bliss becoming a grown up and being able to buy AN ENTIRE PIZZA ALL TO MYSELF. Or going to a cafe and eating a whole sandwich AND a slice of cake.

      They were simultaneously worried about how thin I was as a child yet also there were Comments Of Astonishment if I declared myself still hungry after eating my regulation 1/4 pizza. So I stopped bothering.

  128. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    One time during meal planning someone suggested we could just get 3 frozen pizzas to provide lunch for everyone. There were 30 people.

  129. Radiant13*

    We had a potluck where this lovely young lady who had just graduated and started with us made a delicious cake. First time trying out this particular recipe. However, after the first bite, everyone realized we couldn’t eat it.
    Readers, it was a rum cake and she didn’t know how much rum to add. So she had ended up pouring most of a bottle over the cake after it was baked. The bottom 1/2 inch (1 cm) was more rum than cake. When the first piece was cut and removed, there was a layer of rum on the bottom of the pan. The break room smelled of rum for the next few hours. At that time, I worked in a hospital cath lab, and we knew that having that much rum at lunch before going back to patient care would not be good. But fear not, it was divided and put in storage containers so everyone who wanted could take a piece or two home to enjoy.

  130. Wanderer*

    I couple years ago we had a little reception at our little office. At the end of the year, our manager invited a few business partners to a little get-together to celebrate the projects completed in the ending year and keep the contacts maintained. When the guests arrived, they were offered a glass of sparkling wine and there was an ample amount of snacks to be had.
    There were three of us. Jane, out manager, Aliyah, a colleague I had a goof connection to, and myself. Since the office was small, we would prepare the drinks and snacks ourselves. Aliyah early on made it clear that she preferred not to handle any alcoholic drinks, so I offered to take care of all drinks and let Aliyah set up the snacks. Everyone was fine with that.
    When the guests arrived, Jane greeted our guests and helped a little bit with offering them their sparkling wine. Once they were all there and the first round of drinks was had, Jane invited the guests to the more formal part in a meeting room.
    At this point, three glasses of sparkling wine were left over. Jane said we could help ourselves to a glass and took one herself, as did I. Aliyah politely declined. Jane, probably trying to be nice, I guess, told her it was fine if she had a sipp. Aliyah, already feeling pressured, declined again, stating she would rather stick to juices. Jane somehow didn’t get it and said “It’s cool, we won’t tell.”
    At this point, I decided to intervene, downed my glass behind Jane’s back and loudly decleard “Hey, that really isn’t bad.” and took the last glass. Aliyah beamed, Jane shrugged and returned to the guests.
    Honestly, this was the only time I witnesses Jane being insensitive towards Aliyah and she rightfully held her work in high regards. I guess this is also a story about how weirdly normal it is to pressure people into drinking.

  131. well*

    I worked in a two-person satellite office of an organization headquartered several states away. Their annual holiday event was a lunch near headquarters. Satellite staff were expected to take a train for several hours, then a long drive via car service or Uber, to headquarters and then eat lunch and do it all in reverse. The lunch was always pleasant enough and the travel and meal were paid for by the company, but it made for a VERY long day…especially with cold weather and sometimes snow causing delays. No matter how many times I suggested we meet somewhere in between, the satellite office get a budget to do something else, we all get carryout and eat together on zoom, or the satellite just skip it, I never succeeded in getting out of it!

  132. Pam Beasley*

    We had a team potluck for a colleague’s baby shower. About half the team was straight out of college, we worked in academia, and this was during the 2008 recession, so money was tight and free food was always a nice perk. Our grandboss, who easily made three or four times what the rest of us did, showed up with a tray of store bought cookies. She stayed for 20 or 30 minutes while everyone ate and chatted. No one had started on the dessert options yet when she said she had to get to a meeting, congratulated my colleague, picked up the untouched cookie tray, and left.

  133. Dz*

    I worked at a health-related nonprofit that had a holiday party in the function room (basement) of a local restaurant. Light food (mac and cheese balls, sliders, etc.) was provided, we each got two drink tickets, and we each got a plus one. This is actually pretty lavish for a nonprofit party, and people appreciated it. The next day, over half of the attendees came down with horrific food poisoning symptoms. Colleagues were texting each other to compare notes on the onset and frequency of their diarrhea and vomiting, and since many of them were healthcare workers, they did not hold back in their descriptions. So many people got sick, the state health department did an investigation. We all had to fill out a survey indicating which food items we had esten. They eventually made the determination that it was norovirus. It was a disgusting bonding experience for the whole staff and was THE topic of conversation for weeks.

  134. Kimberly*

    Every year the 4th and 5th grade teachers would go into the potluck to find nothing. So each set of teachers brought their own lunches and ate together in our team leader’s room instead of going into see crumbs left for us. This and the fact each we didn’t bring a dish to share ticked off the PTO president and principal. It also meant that the food ran out by the time 3rd grade went to lunch.

    At a faculty meeting we got told off in front of everyone by the principal. We actually stood up for ourselves and said we never got food not even our own dishes so we wouldn’t be participating in the potlucks . The younger grade teachers were shocked – they thought we were getting plates earlier, bc the PTO president told them to finish up because we already had been given plates. (She didn’t like the fact we refused to change our science/social studies/and ELA lessons to match her religion. And the fact I stopped her from praying over my students. This was a public school).

    The threatened write ups never happened and they were both removed from campus due to an unrelated investigation into financial shinanicans.

    The new incoming principal and PTO president changed celebrations to catered lunches and they were planned so new food was put out for each lunch period (K/1, 2/3, 4/5)

  135. Jo*

    Many years back, a co-worker made a big batch Ground Beef Queso Dip that was devoured by everyone. Later – when just the two of us – he confessed there had been a “small mishap”.

    Early that morning, he’d carried in the food with tomatoes, still in their produce bag, tucked inside the crockpot. Put cheese and cooked beef in the fridge, leaving everything else on the counter until later. When he went to assemble the dish mid-morning and give it time to heat, he found someone had plugged in the crockpot, which was set to “high”. The plastic produce bag had melted around the tomatoes. He decided to just “go with it” and simply mixed in the other ingredients. He felt the dish still turned out okay.

    I was dumfounded. 40 people had eaten that plastic-infused dish. The luncheon was long over. In the end, I said nothing. What could anyone have done? And no one reported being sick.

    (I may have shared this in a previous year for similar gathering of stories.)

  136. ArtK*

    I have a non-disaster story. There are two parts to this. Note that our work was only tangentially related to food, but…

    First, we had a B-list celebrity chef on our staff; he was on “Chef vs Child” and a couple of other shows. Besides consulting with us related to what we did, he had a couple of restaurants.

    Second, or CEO was the owner of a major food company and our offices included the food company’s test kitchen.

    The result was that we had amazing food for our holiday parties!

  137. Lulu's pies*

    I may be the ridiculous one in this story, and may have told it before. In 2018, we had a Thanksgiving potluck. I decided to make a homemade pumpkin pie since I already had all the ingredients (including a batch of homemade pumpkin to use in the filling. This was back when I had energy for that kind of thing, now I just use canned pumpkin) and made a perfect looking pumpkin pie.

    I brought it in with a can of whipped cream because, well, that’s what one does with pumpkin pie. Put it next to the pie on the serving table, and go stand in line. Then I watched in horror as a coworker I didn’t know very well took the can of whipped cream and sprayed the entire can, without shaking it, all over my pie. HE DIDN’T EVEN TAKE A PIECE OF THE PIE.

    If you don’t shake the can, the whipped cream comes out all runny. It looked disgusting, no one wanted to eat it (including me, because I don’t actually want whipped cream on my pie), and I was more than a little devastated. I took home the whole pie and scraped the whipped cream off, but the damage was done, it had soaked into the crust and the crust was all soggy and milky. I ended up eating the filling like pudding for breakfast, and tossing the crust.

    I still have a slight grudge against this coworker. He’s a nice man, but I just look at him and mentally go “you ruined my pie, what the hell is wrong with you. No pie for you ever again.” I take pie a little too seriously.

  138. Never The Twain*

    I must confess to a sneaking sympathy for the Steves, who had probably all skipped lunch and maybe even breakfast in order to do full duty to a plate of cow.
    I hope my silence wouldn’t have been furious, but definitely at least plaintive, interrupted by a little growling as my stomach laid off all the heavy duty myosin-splitting enzymes and called in their brassica-degrading colleagues at short notice.

  139. Dragon_Dreamer*

    My first University famously does an ice cream social during the last night of Orientation. I mentioned offhandedly to the Dean when I met him that I am lactose intolerant, but looked forward to seeing him there anyway.

    He went out and specially bought lactose free ice cream for the social, enough that I and a few other intolerant folks got to take home a half gallon each! He said he wanted to make sure we all felt welcome. :)

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