share your funniest office holiday stories

by Alison Green on December 5, 2024

We have once again entered the season of forced workplace merriment, holiday party disasters, and other seasonal delights! Thus it is time to hear about your office holiday debacles, past or current.

Did you pass out naked in the break room? Did your manager provide you with a three-page document of “party procedures”? Were you given a nude, spray-painted gold Barbie? These are all real stories that we’ve heard here in the past. Now you must top them.

Share your weirdest or funniest story related to holidays at the office in the comments.

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{ 394 comments }

{ 394 comments… read them below }

  1. Classically Ambigous English Prepositional Phrase*

    Last year, my coworker puked everywhere for the first half of the holiday party and then sat in my lap for the second half. I was undecided whether to report this to HR, but since I work remotely and my coworker was my cat… probably nothing they could do about it!

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      Puking at inopportune moments and hogging your lap are in every cat’s job description. HR would give that cat a commendation and a raise.

    4. KateM*

      Are you sure your cat is your actual coworker, not just someone you share a coworking space with? In the second case, your HR can’t do anything indeed.

  2. FricketyFrack*

    This is less weird/funny and more “the thing I still cringe about a decade later.” My department decided to have a last minute holiday party and somehow I ended up organizing it. I only had a few days, so we decided to get pizza from a place that does individual pizzas and go to a nearby bar where you can BYO food. The division director, super nice guy, says he’ll pay for the pizzas out of his own pocket. Cool, we’re good to go.

    Day arrives, we get there, the pizza guy shows up and I start distributing food. Guess whose pizzas I failed to order. The god damn division director and his wife. They were so nice about it and we had some extra pepperoni, but man was that a huge fail on my part.

    The next year, we went fancy and had hors d’oeuvres and cocktails at a restaurant, but then about half the attendees went to a nearby bar, got absolutely smashed, one coworker cried about how much her husband (who was there) sucked, another tried to come back to my hotel room with me, and I decided I was done planning Christmas parties.

  3. Juicebox Hero*

    Oh, good, I love these. Our boss always says we should do something for the holidays and we never do, so I have to get my wacky holiday work stories from somewhere.

    1. BellaStella*

      Yeah the team head where I work loves parties etc but never plans them, just wants them to happen, and this year we instead will have 4 going away parties in the next 2 weeks….and one holiday lunch at the office. That employees must pay for themselves.

    2. Paint N Drip*

      My current work situation, our “holiday party” is we order lunch (sandwiches and salads, very exciting) and eat together – none of us like the same lunch hour, so that’s the biggest drama :)

  4. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    The bogs were full and I needed to get changed for the office party so I ducked into the server room for a quick change behind the racks.

    Realised later they’d just installed the LAN room monitoring system..

        1. Bunch Harmon*

          Thank you for this! My first thought was bladder, and my second was menstrual pad. Neither seemed like a good thing to deal with in a server room.

    5. Faberge*

      There is one particular spot in our data centre, about a square foot immediately behind a pillar, that isn’t covered by the cameras.

      My former coworker used to go and stand in that square foot of space for about three hours, playing games on his phone.

      This made even less sense because there’s an entire room next door which has a physical key (no logs of when you went in), no camera coverage whatsoever, and a lovely comfy armchair to sit and have a snooze in.

      Don’t ask how I know this.

  5. Llama lamma workplace drama*

    I might have posted this before and it’s not really a ‘ha ha funny’ thing but we were all sitting around a big conference table doing a ‘White Elephant’ gift exchange when a pregnant coworker’s water broke. She was sitting in a wheely chair so one of the guys jumped into action and wheeled her over in the chair to the elevator while another person ran and got her coat and stuff from her desk.

    I guess we broke HR rules though because another coworker drove her to the hospital and you’re not supposed to do that. I’m not sure what happened to that office chair and we all chipped in to have the car cleaned and detailed for the coworker who drove her to the hospital since the passenger seat ended up ‘not fit for use’ afterwards.

    We did all go back and complete the holiday party and gift exchange without those 2 coworkers.

    1. Ginger Cat Lady*

      People can walk after their water breaks. People walk in labor all the time, it can actually be a helpful thing. It’s so weird to me that you wheeled her out like that when walking was totally possible.

      1. Sovreignry*

        Adrenaline? Wanting to be helpful and being confused on how? Wanting to help a pregnant woman?

        Just because walking is possible, doesn’t mean it’s what the pregnant woman wants.

        2. Silver Robin*

          exactly.

          Chair may have also been/appeared to have been faster; the office is not where labor should happen so it seems pretty obvious that getting their coworker to the hospital, where the requisite support exists. Coworker can walk around and do whatever there.

          More weird to expect random coworkers to know the best practices for labor than for them to prioritize speed.

      2. iglwif*

        I feel like, in a very startling situation like “we’re all at the work holiday lunch when suddenly someone’s water breaks”, people want to help and want to help FAST, and wheeling her to the elevator and out to someone’s car does that.

        She herself may also have wanted to get to the hospital as fast as possible, and gladly took the wheely-chair ride rather than walking because what harm could it possibly do? (Certainly couldn’t do any further harm to the chair…)

      3. Juicebox Hero*

        One time I nearly keeled over at work (ended up being benign paroxysmic positional vertigo; treated by an ENT and was fine) and the paramedics actually wheeled me in my office chair to the front door of the building because it was easier and faster than trying to finagle the gurney inside and through my office door.

        1. H3llifIknow*

          My husband suffers from BPPV and when it occurs, he literally crawls because he can’t stand up or he’ll basically just fall over and he’s a large man and I’m a small woman, if he fell while trying to hold onto me, we’d both go down and not be able to get up! The chair was a smart idea for your coworkers to use!

        2. Jay (no, the other one)*

          My MIL was ill while we were visiting and eventually had to go to the hospital. We called the ambulance and while waiting for them to arrive we wheeled her to the front door in her desk chair. Yes, I do know that EMTs have stretchers with wheels. Yes, it was a ranch house – no indoor steps. And yet she insisted she had to be at the front door when they arrived and it was just easier not to argue with her.

      4. boof*

        I would hope if the person in question really wanted to be walking, they would have said something! Whether or not wheeling someone out in a chair is best depends a whole lot on the exact situation, sounds like everyone did a good job and everything came out all right in the end (double endendre intended!)

      5. Llama lamma workplace drama*

        She was embarrassed to stand up in front of everyone because of the ‘mess’. She did stand up at the elevator and walked down to the car.

      6. Observer*

        It’s so weird to me that you wheeled her out like that when walking was totally possible.

        Not weird at all. In addition to what @Lama says about her not wanting to stand up (which I can totally understand), there are many women who cannot actually walk, or walk easily at that point. It’s very individual, but it’s very common that water breaking happens more towards end of labor (even if it’s *also* towards the beginning).

        Also, in many cases, the issue is not walking per se but speed. Many medical practitioners want women whose water has broken in a more controlled environment because the risk of infection goes up at this point.

    4. Anonymous for biohazard pettiness*

      I probably tell this story here every year, but my water also broke in a wheelie chair at work, albeit not during the Christmas party. I cleaned myself up and changed into clothes from the go-bag I was keeping in my trunk by that point in my pregnancy and drove myself home.

      Then I was distracted for a while with having a baby.

      While I was out on leave, a remote member of my team moved in-house and commandeered my office. We were in the same role, but he had seniority so our boss allowed this. The guy not only took my lovely office (where I had planned to pump after returning to work) leaving me with one of those three-glass-walls offices but he was also a yeller and not a team player.

      Anyway, I returned to work after the holidays and never told him what happened in that desk chair.

  6. Another Kristin*

    My first year in my current job, a bunch of my coworkers were pregnant and gave me their drink tickets. I ended up getting a bit sloshed on tiny glasses of terrible white wine and accidentally photobombed the picture our comms team was taking of one of the VIPs!

    (I wasn’t super drunk or anything and other than my walk-in on someone else’s picture, didn’t do anything inappropriate. Just got a bit more elevated than I probably should have at 2 PM on a Thursday.)

    1. Dahlia*

      Those tiny glasses can be trouble! I had a tiny glass of this coconut rum sangria thing and ended up slightly tipsy at the hardware store completely by accident.

      1. Arrietty*

        I am picturing you accidentally finding yourself at the hardware store and having no idea how you got there, and it is very amusing. Equally amusing is the possibility that you were at the hardware store on purpose and that’s where you had the rum sangria.

      2. Ginger Beer*

        Of course, if you felt tipsy at the hardware store you could always solve the problem with a level.

  7. anonymous armadillo*

    At my first job out of college, every holiday party was awkward in one way or another. One year the party was at an ice skating rink and the CEO insisted on holding hands while skating with young, female associates. Another year, I was aggressively asked if I was pregnant since I wasn’t drinking. And during my last year there, the HR director planned our office holiday party shortly before quitting her job. And she planned it as a final middle finger to the company.

    The party was at a Moroccan restaurant, where the food was served from communal dishes and they refused to give us utensils (I like Moroccan food but I don’t want my coworkers’ hands all up in it – yuck). We were given one drink ticket per person, although the CEO had…a lot more than one. There was terrible karaoke. And then the belly dancer came out. Some colleagues didn’t mind, others were visibly uncomfortable. The CEO, having had many drinks, began tucking dollar bills into her top. Suffice to say, attendance at the holiday party was low the following year.

    1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

      Sounds like HR was trying to deal with CEO and getting nowhere. This was her way of saying he’s really your problem now.

      1. JSPA*

        My invented back story would be that there had been several private complaints and H.R. couldn’t get him gone (or in treatment) without violating privacy of the complainants. But HR could at least make sure, as a parting gift, that every female on staff knew EXACTLY what they were dealing with, and that everybody would be primed to believe their coworkers.

        Lower inhibitions, provide the opportunity, and let it all ride. (Bonus points if the org was big enough to have a board and if any board members were present or would hear about it.) Yeah this is fan fic, remove if it is too unlikely to be useful to someone (but it feels like a departing HR stroke of genius to me, not a simple middle finger).

      2. Observer*

        This was her way of saying he’s really your problem now.

        That sounds reasonable. Or maybe “This company and the CEO deserve each other!”

  8. CatPerson*

    It was my first Christmas after starting my first job out of grad school, and our boss invited her team, about 6 of us, for a holiday lunch. We had a private dining room and it was very nice. The salad course had a large cherry tomato on each plate, and thinking I would be careful I decided to cut it in half before eating it. The silverware was very heavy and not very sharp, however.

    When I pierced the tomato with my fork, did it shoot off my plate and skitter into the corner? I wish. No, dear reader, the tomato exploded. All over my boss, who sat catty-corner to me. She had tomato on her jacket, her white blouse, and in her hair.

    The only other thing I remember about that humiliating lunch is that when the waiter came to clear the plates, there was a solitary, untouched tomato on everyone’s plate (except mine, of course.) I will say that my boss was very gracious and laughed it off.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      As someone who once squirted herself right in the face with a cherry tomato at a fancy restaurant, this is making me giggle like a loon. Those suckers are dangerous.

    3. Eldritch Satchel*

      This reminds me of one time I attended a conference alone. The conference lunch had the usual lackluster salad with iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, and three grape tomatoes. When I bit into one of the tomatoes, it exploded out the other end, squirting tomato onto the plate of the conference-goer seated next to me. Now, I don’t think what ended up on his plate included my saliva, but it was gross that it had come from my mouth. I was absolutely mortified.

      1. Abogado Avocado*

        This story merits a list of “dangerous vegetables” that one shouldn’t attempt to consume at job interviews and office parties. First on the list, cherry tomatoes. Next, peas. . .

        1. iglwif*

          Also if your drink or your plate comes with a lemon wedge, DO NOT SQUEEZE IT, because it WILL end up squirting someone in the eye.

          2. Pep*

            I was a very junior person at my first business lunch when I took a full lemon shot to the eye. I was mortified as the tears streamed down my face, but the man who caused it was oblivious.

        2. Seashell*

          I’ve edamame fly away when trying to get it out of the pod more than once, so I’d say to avoid that.

    4. Milltown*

      I have a similar story where I bit into a cherry tomato during the passed appetizers at a wedding. Tomato juice sprayed over the shoulder of a suit-wearing stranger with the bad luck to be standing near me — and he didn’t notice! I was too mortified to say anything and he eventually wandered away.

  9. Plenty Of Orange Fruit*

    At 19, I was the youngest employee in a large office. After the Christmas Party was announced, my coworkers began asking me “who are you bringing as a plus one?” Everyone else was married or partnered so they were VERY curious who my date would be??

    Two weeks before I had gone to Shopko and had a great experience in their Electronics Department with one of their salespeople. Ryan was handsome, funny, and good at his job.

    Now I needed a party date. I called Shopko, got transferred to the Electronics Department, and then requested Ryan come to the phone.

    “Hi, this is Plenty. You sold me a portable DVD player two weeks ago and I had a question for you. Are you single?”

    There was a long pause. “Uh, single? Yes.”

    “Great! Will you come to my company Christmas party with me? I need a date.”

    “Oh! Yeah, sure. I can do that.”

    “What’s your number and I’ll text you the details? Thank you so much!!”

    The night of the Christmas Party, we met up outside the venue. Ryan had accidentally matched his tie to my dress so well it looked pre-planned. I asked him to pretend we had been dating awhile since I didn’t want my older coworkers to know I had got him at Shopko the week before.

    What I didn’t anticipate was the CEO greeting everyone as we walked in. CEO and I had few interactions but he prided himself on “knowing his employees” (even when he didn’t). Upon meeting Ryan, he said with a hearty handshake, “You must be Plenty’s boyfriend! I’ve heard all about you. She’s one in a million, isn’t she?”

    I froze. This was off script. What to do what to do what to do…

    Ryan grabbed my hand and leaned into me saying, “Yes, I’m very lucky to be with her.”

    The rest of the evening he played my boyfriend to all my coworkers. Charming, witty, everyone was so impressed with him. We lied our tails off about our marvelous fake relationship to everyone.

    We walked out to the cars afterwards, I thanked him profusely, and then we never contacted each other again.

    I waited until January and then told everyone at the office who asked, “How are things with Ryan?” that we broke up on New Years Eve.

    It was the most romcom movie experience of my life and even now sixteen years later I am shocked it went as smoothly as it did to bring a stranger to my company Christmas Party.

      1. HB*

        I was too but at the same time I think it’s kindof awesome that it didn’t? It’s this beautiful bubble of an experience that is lovely on its own – irrespective of what it did or didn’t lead to. It’s also the perfect opposite of that story where a woman was invited by an acquaintance to his school’s Christmas party and he really thought it was going to be his RomCom moment and it… was not.

      1. Funbud*

        This is brilliant! Ryan sounds like a gem who was game for anything. No strings and everyone had fun. I can imagine him telling his version of the story: “This one time, when I was working in the electronics dept, this crazy girl…”

      3. Puggles*

        Me too! NGL I was slightly disappointed the last line wasn’t “We celebrated our 10 year anniversary last summer.”

    4. Charlotte Lucas*

      Yet another reason to be sad Shopko went out of business!

      I think Hallmark has its next holiday movie idea.

    6. Anne of Green Gables*

      This is the best story I’ve ever read. I have tears coming out of my eyes from the laughter. “since I didn’t want my older coworkers to know I had got him at Shopko the week before” is just killing me. I love it.

    9. Dogbythefire*

      “… had got him at shopko the week before” had me giggling! I wonder where Ryan is now and whether he has fond memories of the xmas party.

  10. Maglev to Crazytown*

    We had a white elephant gift exchange at a holiday party for a smallish division (~20 people). Among the cute smalls gifts of gift certificates to local businesses, holiday sweets, small items like coffee mugs, etc… someone had included a Justin Bieber CD. Because it was one of those white elephants where the next person to open it up could keep or steal, that poor CD got bounced around so much. It ended up with a really friendly much loved employee with a dry sarcastic sense of humor. It’s inclusion was viewed as a fun good-natured amusement, as the group was howling with laughter over the shenanigans to foist it off on others. That CD made an appearance the next year when it’s recipient flexed his sarcastic sense of humor by repackaging it in a nice large and fancily-decorated present that everyone was trying to steal early on… yo the eventual reveal of Justin Bieber making a comeback. That CD made the rounds of several years of white elephants, and all of us every year had either forgotten from the previous years or were naive about it reappearing… because it got us shocked and howling with laughter every single time.

    1. AMH*

      I love the white elephant gifts that reappear every year; it’s a weirdly effective bonding moment.

      2. Middle Aged Lady*

        Yes! At one job, it was the indoor-decor birdhouse all fancied up with twee little fake birds; at another, it was some kind of animal horn, like a ram.

      3. Caffeine Monkey*

        At a convention I used to go to, it was a signed photograph of Nicholas Brendan (Xander from Buffy) that reappeared as a raffle prize every year.

        When the convention sadly ended, I was the proud possessor of the photo, and it’s been pinned to my noticeboard ever since, in the vague hope that the convention will be resurrected.

    2. The OG Sleepless*

      I used to go to a church that threw amazing parties, and they had the most epic annual White Elephant gift exchange I’ve ever seen. It was a true White Elephant in that you weren’t supposed to spend any money on it. Grab an unwanted item that was sitting around and wrap it up. There were a couple of items that appeared year after year. I remember we had custody of an ugly acrylic paperweight for a year, and dutifully brought it back the next year.

    4. Wendy the Spiffy*

      It was a set of Axe body sprays that made the rounds for a year or two and was the most hotly-traded White Elephant item at my office. So funny.

      1. Nina*

        Why are those a thing??? I just moved from a country where they are emphatically not a thing to a country where they really are and I just… who are you supposed to want to give this to? How can you give this to someone without conveying either or both of ‘you smell bad’ and ‘I think about what deodorant you use’?

        1. Caffeine Monkey*

          The equivalent in the UK is Lynx, and they’re such a Teenage Boy Who Uses Them Rather Than Showering thing, that they’re very, VERY clearly a gag gift.

          My friends’ white elephant a couple of years ago had some Marmite Lynx as a present, which I sadly ended with!

    5. Jonathan MacKay*

      My office just had one of those…. my gift ended up being opened last, though if I had wrapped it as I planned it probably would’ve been grabbed first. If I’m here next year, I’m going to play the box-within-a-box-within-a-box gag.

    6. 2 Hot Dogs and Buns*

      We had a pop up hot dog toaster make the rounds for years at the White Elephant gift exchange. It might still be in the mix, I’m not on that team anymore.

    7. WoodswomanWrites*

      The recirculating item at our department’s annual white elephant event was a small photo of the CEO in a stand-up plexiglass frame and disguised in a much larger package. It had already been going around for years before I started. In my first year there, we got a new CEO. Whoever had the frame at the time snuck in a photo of the new CEO on top of the old one and when it showed up this time, we were beside ourselves laughing.

      Part of the fun of that gift was that throughout the year, it would end up on different people’s desks around our wing of the building. Every once in a while the CEO would stop by our area and there was a scramble to hide it so he wouldn’t discover it. I’ve long since left that job but I still smile about working with that fantastic team.

    8. Mockingbird*

      We had two cookbooks that used to reappear regularly for a few years in my husband’s work Christmas white elephant exchanges: An Elvis Presley favorite recipes cookbook called “Are You Hungry Tonight?” (the name killed us) and a Forrest Gump-inspired one called “Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Cookbook.” The Bubba Gump one actually came home permanently with me after a couple of years; it sounded like it might be useful. Sad to say, I’ve never actually tried any of its recipes though I believe it’s still in my old cookbook collection. I believe “Are You Hungry Tonight?” also eventually found a permanent owner who appreciated it!

  11. Hijinx*

    I’m finishing my job at the end of December, and starting a new one in January. New job has invited me to their Christmas lunch to meet the team… which is randomly taking place in the same restaurant at the same time on the same day as my Christmas lunch with my CURRENT team. Will hijinx ensue?

    (… probably not, tbh.)

      2. Pie Fight*

        Yes, this is hilarious! I’m picturing a Mrs. Doubtfire situation where you have to change outfits and go back and forth between the two parties. (I realize you are only attending the “new job” party, but the visual is in my head now.)

        1. Hijinx*

          no, I’m attending the Old Job one! Much rather hang out with people I know than make conversation with people I haven’t met yet!

          1. Pie Fight*

            Aha! Then if you haven’t met the New Job people, you might be able leave the trench coat and fake mustache at home. :-)

        2. CeeDoo*

          “Oh, man, I’ve got two dates to the Spring Dance. It’s sort of like that old episode of… well, every show.” Malcolm, Malcolm in the Middle

          If Hijinx weren’t starting a new job and want to put her best foot forward, they could have a lot of fun with this.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      …Does your current team *know* you are starting with a new one? I’m assuming yes but the answer significantly impacts the hijinks levels!

      1. Hijinx*

        They do! It’s the end of a fixed contract, so everyone knows I’ve been job-seeking and there is no skulduggery required. But it would definitely make for a better sitcom set-up if they didn’t…

    3. Zombeyonce*

      Please tell me you’re going to pull a sitcom “run back and forth between each lunch and pretend you’re only at one” scenario. Be sure to report back.

    7. Zephy*

      What in the Mrs. Doubtfire?

      Your life is a movie, sorry. Are you also perhaps engaged to a high-powered exec from the big city but going back home to your small town for Christmas, where your high school sweetheart still works the family farm?

      (all jokes, as problems go this is about the funniest one you could have at this time of year)

  12. Irish Teacher.*

    Best I can do is the “Poison Fish.”

    At last year’s Christmas party, there were crackers at the table in the restaurant where we were eating. One of my colleagues won a puzzle and declared that she was going to make the “poison fish” that was one of the challenges in the puzzle. When she made it, she started showing people her “poison fish” until one of the French teachers looked at the instructions and pointed out they were bilingual and it wasn’t a “poison fish”; it was just fish written in French – poisson- as well as English.

    1. iglwif*

      … were the crackers from Canada XD

      Earlier this year I got involved in a massive online discussion about best before dates on tins, because someone American saw a tin that said “BB/MA 10 OC 24” and was absolutely convinced it needed to be thrown away because May 2024 had been and gone … despite dozens of Canadians in the comments explaining that “MA” in this case is simply the French version of “BB” (best before / meilleur avant), the date is always printed Day-Month-Year, and the date on this tin was October 10, 2024, still well in the future.

      1. Clisby*

        I thought Irish Teacher meant crackers as in Christmas crackers that you pull to make a loud popping noise.

        2. iglwif*

          Oh I’m sure they did! But we do have Christmas crackers here and sometimes the jokes are bilingual. (Fortune cookies, too.)

      2. Anon this time*

        I work for a French company with a large presence in the US and as a lab-based employee I am forever having to put dates on things. The convention across the company is to use DDMonthYYYY to avoid this sort of confusion!

        1. iglwif*

          You know, I would like to think a 4-digit date would’ve helped here, but I’m not certain–the person in question simply refused to believe that “MA” wasn’t short for “May”, even though “10 OC 24” was RIGHT THERE.

        3. Bitte Meddler*

          I’m American and work for a German company with offices and locations all across Europe, Turkey, Mexico, India, and South America.

          I’ve quit using all numbers to specify dates, just like your company’s convention. I hope it catches on in my company because if my brain hurts interpreting 12/01/24 to be January 12th when I get documents from Europe, then it must also hurt their brains to interpret it as December 1st.

          1. londonedit*

            Can confirm: am British and my brain will not interpret 12/01/24 as anything but January 12th.

    3. MigraineMonth*

      Unlucky! If only it had been one of those generic-word-in-other-language-becomes-specific-in-English (like naan bread, sombrero hat or salsa sauce).

  13. Koala*

    I work for a public social service agency. A few years ago some employees decided to have a holiday party; however, upper management decided we could not only not have a budget for something frivolous, but neither could we take non-billable time. So the committee compromised by having a….festive training event.
    So we watched a presentation on elder abuse, and then sang a carol. Watched another presentation on the opiate epidemic, played a game. So on. For four hours.
    We haven’t tried having a holiday party since.

    1. Bird names*

      That was certainly a choice on their part. I suspect most were not terribly sad about the lack of further holiday parties.

      1. Dry Cleaning Enthusiast*

        “Thanks for the thorough presentation on elder abuse. Now, let’s all sing ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer’.”

          1. KaciHall*

            luckily I wasn’t drinking. I did try to swallow my giggles so much that I started coughing/choking, so maybe it would’ve been better if I had been drinking lol.

    3. Another Kristin*

      Going to try this if I ever get to plan the company party. “Hi folks, welcome to your mandatory FESTIVE CYBERSECURITY TRAINING! Today we’ll learn why Santa NEVER clicks on suspicious links in emails and ALWAYS uses the VPN when logging in to work devices in a public place!”

  14. Artsy Fartsy*

    Back when I worked for a performing arts organization, our holiday parties were fun and people looked forward to them. This was a full family affair so everyone was invited. The employees were as young as 5 since some of the artists are children.

    A major incentive for attending the party was the door prizes that were provided by the rich donors and board members. There were probably 200 door/raffle prizes that were handed out, enough for more than half of the staff to win something, and they ranged from gift cards to local restaurants, hand woven blankets, year long memberships to museums, fancy hotel stays, straight up $100 cash, and the top/last prize: a 3 Martini lunch with the head honcho.

    The winner of this 3 Martini lunch is a 16 year old girl.

    And they didn’t redraw.

    I assume she didn’t redeem her prize.

    1. boof*

      Ooooo you’d think for alcoholic etc gifts some sort of age stipulation for winners would be in order!

      1. boof*

        (although I am kinda hoping head honcho went along with the lunch with the teen, a guardian, and the teen got to order 3 mocktails!)

        1. The OG Sleepless*

          She would have suffered the same fate as my daughter, who became obsessed with Shirley Temples when she was about 4, and drank three of them when I wasn’t paying attention when we were at a formal restaurant. I spent the rest of the meal hearing “mommy, I gotta go potty” and taking her back and forth to the ladies’ room.

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Aw, poor kiddo. That’s really a shame that she won a prize that was useless to her, and also that it was the final prize so they couldn’t choose a different prize for her.

      When I was a toddler my parents entered me into a raffle and I won tickets to a table at the Boston Pops. I didn’t get to partake in that one either, but since I’m now a classical musician and have played myriads of holiday pops concerts myself, I’m totally fine with never going to any pops concerts ever again (unless I’m getting paid to play).

      1. anon bostonian*

        When I was young one of my parents worked in Boston’s classical music scene and so for work reasons our whole family went to Pops at least once a year from the time I was perhaps 2. While I did in fact grow up to be a classical musician also (around a different day job), the thing I remember most fondly from all attendances before, roughly, age 9 was: being allowed to have a Dove bar during the concert

      2. Summerlin*

        Or maybe she is planning on being a business major in college, en route to becoming a head honcho herself. She can pick his brains while showing off her impressive knowledge of how his business operates, taught to her by her amazing parent who works for him and should definitely get a raise.

    3. Tiny Clay Insects*

      My stepson won an enormous bottle of cherry Southern Comfort at a restaurant’s viewing party for a world cup game. He was 8 years old, had no idea what SoCo was, just knew his raffle ticket number had been called and strode right up to collect his prize.

      They gave it to him (I know they saw his dad jogging up behind him, but there really wasnt any hesitance to hand it over), and we joked we’d save it as a gift for when he turned 21. We’ve actually been saving it, and he is almost 19 now, so there isn’t much longer.

      1. Jonathan MacKay*

        That’s a long enough gap that I’d assume there’d have been some reminders about it over the years.

        1. Tiny Clay Insects*

          Oh yeah, I make sure to bring it up from time time, otherwise he’d just wonder why we got him some gross liquor. (I haven’t actually had cherry soco, but i feel confident it isn’t good.)

    4. WS*

      When I was about 9, I won two casks of wine at my dad’s workplace Christmas raffle. My parents very kindly “bought” them from me for $5, and I was thrilled with the cash!

  15. SuburbanBonfire*

    I worked in the mailroom for a very large corporate office, which meant that every holiday we would receive boxes on boxes of gifts from clients. Usually these were fine, but since we didn’t have any refrigerator for perishable packages and didn’t have the manpower to hand-deliver gifts to 10000+ employees, sometimes things went wrong, including:
    – entire turkeys that rotted in the mailroom during the height of COVID while no one was in office
    – a month old box of cheese that I could smell without even opening it, that my boss proceeded to accidentally stink bomb *her* boss’s office with
    – spending a morning opening un-picked up bottles of wine and googling how expensive they were. Then, leaving the about 50 bottles in grandboss’s office as a surprise

    The best one though, was when someone got delivered a whole box of wagyu beef for the holidays. It was for a department we didn’t technically service, but they had an admin who would pick up regularly. We emailed the admin and moved on with our day, not noticing the admin did not in fact come down. When we returned after the weekend, the ice packs in the box had melted, and a large pool of beef blood had spread across our floor. We got rid of the box and called janitorial services to let them know we had some blood that needed cleaned up, and when he arrived it was pretty clear from his double take that he was expecting a ‘bad papercut’ level of blood and not a ‘many pounds of dead cow’ level. He asked very seriously if someone had lost a limb.

    1. Lenora Rose*

      I genuinely have no idea why people deliver this kind of perishables as random gifts (planned, directed gifts, okay).

    3. JustaTech*

      Way back in the 90’s my mom was witness to one of the most epic “return package” incidents of all time.
      My mom was waiting in line at the UPS depot to drop off some packages for the holidays when a very well dressed woman came in and requested a cart for her packages.
      The woman came back in with the cart stacked high with boxes, all of which were dripping blood.
      It turned out that her husband had gone on an elk hunting trip to Alaska (or somewhere) and actually bagged and elk, which was processed and packed up to be shipped on dry ice back home.
      And then UPS lost the shipment. And then delivered it thawed.
      So this lady has all of this ruined, dripping elk and UPS is trying to not pay for it even though they got the insurance, and they’re going back and forth getting higher and higher managers. She was very upset but not shouting or rude, just determined and loud. Finally someone calls for a mop, and so when she was finally escorted to a private office there was some guy with a mop following behind, cleaning up the blood.

      1. SuburbanBonfire*

        Thankfully the rotting turkeys was shortly before my time there and I heard that one secondhand, but the cheese, yeah for sure. Straight up TOLD my boss ‘do NOT open this one it has gone so very bad’ and the next thing I know, she and grandboss are sprinting out of the office to buy some febreeze. She’d just wanted to show grandboss how ridiculous it is that people were not picking up packages to the extent we had food going bad in the office, and immediately forgot it was Nigh Hazardous lol

  16. Jules*

    Years ago my company used to go all out for the holiday party. People were known to crash them after they had left the company. Lots of alcohol and bad decisions. Every year they did a raffle to raise money for charity and give away various prizes – extra PTO, a gaming station of your choice, and among other things, a Westin Heavenly bed. With all the accoutrements this bed was a $3000 value and the second highest prize you could win. When they were calling out the winners, I was already pretty toasted, but I knew I had won something when the CEO said “Julia…. ” long pause. I knew it was me because my last name is tricky to pronounce. No idea what I had won, so I slowly make my way to the stage while he is reading off more winners, people congratulating me, eventually finding out I won the bed. But what was WILD is that multiple people, coworkers I assume as I’d never met them, were like “Oh, you bitch” And not in a joking way. I was nonplussed and just made my way to the stage. It wasn’t until the next day that I was like… what a weird response to a coworker and stranger. And multiple people!!

    To end positively, the best part was that they offered to order me the bed OR give me $3000 in gift cards to Macy’s to get it myself. Those gift cards served me well in that I was able to get a bed, dishes, a KitchenAid, etc. I milked those gift cards for years!

    1. Paint N Drip*

      I swear the games/raffle section of a work party really brings out the worst in your coworkers! One year my husband won a large TV from a work party raffle and someone tried to trip him on his way back to his seat… psycho behavior, blamed on the general intoxication level of the guests

      1. Lizzie*

        It’s like when you go to charity events, like tricky trays, where you buy the tickets and put them in to win specific prizes. I am always amazed at the grumbling and whining when someone or a table wins a lot of prizes, and others win nothing. It’s basically gambling, an always for a good cause, so I just spend what I can, and if I win something, great, if not, so be it.

  17. KateM*

    For some reason I read it at first as you watched an elder being abused! So I guess it could have been worse?

    1. anon24*

      “nobody likes Bob, but we can’t fire him because of age discrimination, so have it it everyone! Cookies are on the table!”

        1. A Simple Narwhal*

          I think we’re all accompanying a handbasket’s infernal journey with this one, it got me too!

  18. Zombeyonce*

    The first office holiday party I went to was hosted by one of our vendors and it had bottomless wine. I was young and felt awkward, so kept a glass in my hand to drink whenever I didn’t know what to say. It turns out that an awkward woman around a lot of people she barely knows, including VIPs, often doesn’t know what to say. Many, many refills later, I found myself lounging in a sitting area with some random people at the party, boisterously recounting stories about horses*. They seemed only mildly interested, but that didn’t stop me from continuing until it was time for me to catch the last bus home.

    *I don’t know anything about horses. I have no idea how I got started, where the stories came from, or if they were true or even coherent. Likely neither.

  19. Where’s the Orchestra?*

    I think I’ve shared this one before – but Sock Girl comes to mind (and her exploits ended all holiday parties at that job forever).

    Deep South in the USA – working at a hotel, they sent out invites for the Annual Winter Party. Folks were brought in from a sister property so all the staff can attend, formal catered dinner taking into account all religious and allergy dietary restrictions, and all decorations are snowflakes, dressed up snowmen, and various shades of blue. After the dinner there was a dance floor with a local small band and DJ – all really classy. The only potential for problems was the same one for most – the open bar; but this one had all the Safe Serve certifications on display so that should have prevented issues. Sadly it didn’t work out that way.

    So Sock Girl is a 19 year old who we all later found out was also the niece of one of the ownership group members. She showed up to an advertised as formal event wearing a tube dress that very heavily resembled an athletic tube sock. She somehow got a glass of wine at dinner – which was not great – but well maybe uncle got it for her, she’s eating and in front of family, how bad can it be? Total disaster ensues as soon as the dance floor opens as she somehow gets more drinks – including a few shots. As the night goes on she’s getting more and more drunk and the dancing is getting more and more inappropriate (including an attempt at grinding on the local GM who was older than her own father). Several of us keep taking drinks from her and trying to get her to drink water, but somehow she still kept being served liquor. Eventually the housekeeping manager gets a hold of Sock Girl’s phone, figures out which number is her mom, and calls mom saying you really need to come get her she has figured out how to get just beyond fall down embarrassingly drunk. While housekeeping was calling I and one of her other teammates are trying to get her off the dance floor and to drink some water. Mom is pissed off and comes right over – and I get puked on as we’re loading her into mom’s car. It was impressive how large a volume came out of her – but the manager had me expense report my cleaners bill for my dress so they did their best to make me whole.

    Found out three days later Sock Girl’s had gotten a fake ID and was using it to keep getting drinks. Bar tenders got sent for remedial fake ID training. Oh, and yeah no more Winter Socials ever. The next year they just had a cookout the first weekend of December at lunchtime on property (the Winter Social was always held in a nice event hall off property). It was a mess – and lots of folks blamed Sock Girl’s for the loss of the party.

    The only silver lining was that Uncle was sooo pissed off at Niece Sock Girl that he insisted she be fired for her behavior. Ownership just didn’t want the liability if someone else did similar things at the next party.

    1. MsM*

      Sounds like the bartenders also needed training in “when and how to cut off a guest who’s clearly had one too many.”

    2. iglwif*

      There shouldn’t be anything wrong with a 19yo drinking alcohol at a party,* but HOLY MOLEY didn’t the bartenders ever do SmartServe training? Most of it is “how to cut off someone who has had too many.”

      *Yes, I know the US has bananapants laws about this.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        My theory about 19 y.o.s drinking in the US is mostly from my own personal experience, but when I was in college and still underage, I never knew when/where my next alcoholic beverage was coming from, so any time some kindly senior was nice enough to provide me with alcohol, I made the most of it, or – in other words – drank as much as I possibly could because, again, the future of my alcohol drinking was so uncertain. And immediately after I turned 21 I never felt that way again and thus was much better about drinking responsibly. (Also, I did not go to a party school and probably drank a total of 10 times at school when I was underage.)

        I think my point here is that our bananapants alcohol laws can lead to a lot of underage drinking problems, but unfortunately we’d have to have an entire culture shift here in the US before we could safely change the drinking laws. Just look what happened when they changed it briefly to 18 – lots more drunk driving accidents, sadly. But it is totally bananapants how it’s supposed to be this forbidden thing and then when you’re an adult you’re totally supposed to know how to deal with it? Yeah, that’s a mistake. (Same goes for other adult activities. The US really is bananapants about a lot of things.)

        1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          Oh totally – if you don’t show folks how to handle stuff responsibly you’re going to get people making total fools out of themselves. I honestly think this may have been her first time taking advantage of that fake ID with predictable results of her personally not having a clue when she should have stopped and called for a ride home to sleep it off.

        2. StarTrek Nutcase*

          But shifting it from 21 to 18 only means shifting the 18 to 15. Being legal to drink doesn’t mean knowing how to drink responsibly. IMO what’s more banana pants is in US at 18 you (guy) can be drafted, own a gun, is an adult in court, can sign contracts, etc. but somehow drinking is a step too far. Either you’re an adult with all rights of an adult, or should have no rights. But most countries have their own variations of stupid laws.

          1. Arrietty*

            I’ve always pondered the wisdom of letting teens drive at 14 but not drink til 21. Heaven knows the UK has its problems with underage drinking AND drink driving, but at least by getting the heavy drinking stage over at 14-16, it’s done before driving starts at 17+. Seems like someone who’s been driving for years by the time they’re old enough to drink is more likely to believe they’re a good enough driver to get away with it, than someone who’s been drinking for years and only just started driving. Except that now I write it out, I can see how overconfidence either way is equally plausible.

            1. menopausal ninja*

              it’s actually a bit of a myth that letting kids drink younger prevents any particular poor outcome. raising the drinking age greatly reduced car crashes in the US. Also, the data show that individuals who do not drink until age 21 have exceptionally low alcoholism rates

          2. Nina*

            A key difference in my country is that most kids still live with their parents up to 18 (the legal ‘buy alcohol’ age, distinct from the legal ‘drink alcohol’ age, which is whenever your parents choose to give you alcohol), and if they’re going to move out, do so after they’re allowed to drink – so it’s a lot easier and more common to learn where your alcohol limits are at home, in a safe environment, under parental supervision, rather than at a rager at uni.

      2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        In fairness – the bartenders did get sent for a refresher training in Safe Serve after the event (we were told because our lead barkeep at the hotel was friends with one of the outside guys at the event). It’s been a while, but I don’t think the bar was facing the dance floor, so if she was sober seeming I could see her getting served and them not knowing about the dance floor antics.

    3. Yes And*

      Canceling all holiday parties forever due to the misbehavior of one person seems like a wild overreaction. Surely there are more moderate ways to solve for this particular problem?

      1. Where’s the Orchestra?*

        They did but didn’t cancel. No more full up catered night time events – but we did still get a nice lunch with winter themed decorations. I think they were just scared about the liability of what could have happened but fortunately didn’t because we were able to find her phone and call mom.

  20. Snarkus Aurelius*

    I read this one in a Miss Manners column.

    Management announced that they were “giving” employees an extra half hour at lunch so they could go to a fancy restaurant for the holiday party. There was normally a very strict one hour lunch rule that didn’t apply to upper management. The glitches: 1) employees had to pay for themselves; 2) employees didn’t make that much; 3) the restaurant was very expensive; and 4) the restaurant was a 60 minute drive round trip.

    The letter writer asked MM how to say, “this isn’t really a gift.” I forget what the exact answer was (something like no one will probably show up so you don’t need to say anything), but that’s one of the dumbest “perks” I’ve ever seen.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      UGH I have so much anger in my heart for events that are ‘open to everyone!’ but all the stipulations CLEARLY show exactly who they wanted to actually invite – then those who don’t come (as designed!!) get a double-helping of false generosity and judgment (‘you got a gift, you should be grateful’ and ‘if you didn’t come you’re not grateful’)

      If you want to have a management party/lunch just have one!!! Don’t play in my face with an invite that “the rest of us” will have to self-select out of

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      Years ago at an old job, the VP of our division gave us a Christmas “gift” of a donation in the division’s name to the Humane Society. While many of us supported their work, it felt like she really gave a a write-off on her own taxes for Christmas. (We didn’t have parties, unless they were at the team level. Except upper management. On of my coworkers had an SO who tended bar at the local club where the C-suite always had a very nice holiday dinner on the company’s dime.)

      1. Lily Rowan*

        I worked at a nonprofit that people would give to as a “gift” to others — they would send us $50 and ask us to send cards to 25 people! We cancelled that part of it, thank goodness.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Lol. I follow a blog about nonprofits and he has some great insights about “bad donor behavior.” Making a donation and then asking the org to send 25 cards out to ppl you donate IHO was very high on his list.

      2. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

        At a place I worked, everyone (in a large division) received a card informing us that a donation of a cow had been made to [RANDOM VILLAGE] in the company’s name.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Best part: we didn’t even get cards or anything! A notice was posted by the elevators.

          1. Charlotte Lucas*

            And I agree that the nonprofit shouldn’t have to create the cards, but it was so generic.

            Since there was no actual proof, I have always wondered if she ever really did make a donation in anyone’s name. (Maybe it was to The Human Fund?)

      3. Nina*

        Where I’m from that kind of gift usually comes with a copy of the donation receipt so the recipient can claim it on their taxes. ‘I donated in your name’ without giving them the receipt is just tacky.

  21. MT*

    My former employer was right across the street from a gas station. One fall, someone drove her car straight across the road from the gas station and smashed into one of the pillars in front of our office. Thankfully, the driver was seriously injured, but the pillar was wrecked. It was just a plaster façade over a metal frame, so it looked awful. There were orange cones and caution tape out front for weeks, along with piles of crumbled plaster and random bent metal scraps.

    The president of our division complained constantly about how ugly it was. He was out of the office for the first week of December, so the VP (my grandboss) went outside and brought in as much of the filthy old caution tape as he could carry, along with an orange cone. He then recruited a few of us (including me; I was definitely in heels at the time) to help him haul an old Christmas tree out of storage and set it up in the president’s office. We proceeded to decorate it with caution tape and top it with the orange cone.

    The president tried so hard to be annoyed when he came back, but he cracked pretty quickly and admitted that it was hilarious. If memory serves, the tree stayed up through the holidays.

      1. CeeDoo*

        Now I’m cracking up. I assumed it was something like “seriously injured but nobody died” and that’s why you were thankful.

      3. Scrimp*

        I was so confused when I read that, I thought it was uncharacteristically mean of someone in Alison’s comment section to be *thankful* that someone was seriously injured.

        Then I remembered that we can’t edit comments and I figured you were the victim of a terrible typo and I’d find out what you actually meant in the first reply.

  22. UsuallyLurking*

    I was an undergraduate lab technician in the zoology department at my university. My friend worked in the same building in the botany department, and we both lived within walking distance.

    Each department had a separate holiday party. The night of the botany department’s I got a
    phone call from my friend, saying her lab was in charge of booze, but the party ended early, and would I like to help finish off the extra?

    I arrived to the building to find three grad students and two undergrads staring at a small mountain of booze. Needless to say all the normal things (throwing up, accidentally breaking things, making out in corners) occurred but at one point we spent a considerable amount of time excitedly staring at my friend’s microscopy photos for her thesis project. This is what happens when nerds and alcohol mix.

    2. Wolf*

      One of the best discussions I had at research conferences was at 2am after the biologists had brought homemade moonshine.

  23. Galinda*

    At my department’s Holiday party we had a White Elephant gift exchange, food, and an elaborate festive photo booth. Our White Elephant gifts are usually funny and prankish. But years ago, some people got carried away with the terrible/prank gifts (like a jar of lint), so a minimum cost was added.

    Recently, we had at least 30 White Elephant gifts in the pool, piled all together in the room for people to select and open. Everything was fine until one person opened a nicely wrapped present and got… nothing. It was just empty. Perplexed, everyone looked around, wondering who was the Grinch that gave an empty gift?

    It turns out the gift was grabbed by mistake from the photo booth, which featured wrapped boxes as decoration. Oops!

    1. Csethiro Ceredin*

      We did this too, on a larger scale.

      For years we had a buffet dinner at a nice local hotel, and the room had decorations including Christmas trees. Our Secret Santa was a version where you could choose and steal gifts but we didn’t unwrap until everyone had one at the end. People would smuggle their package in and under the trees, and we’d try to wrap them in enticing or misleading ways. It got quite raucous and was a lot of people’s favourite part of the event.

      On the year in question, finally we were done and ready to unwrap, though a bit puzzled that there were still a few smaller gifts under the tree. Then some folks who had triumphantly walked away with large, impressive gifts opened them to find empty boxes marked things like TOILET BRUSH MULTIPAK. Of course it turned out the hotel’s decorations had included wrapped “gifts” under the trees and everyone just assumed they were someone else’s secret gift.

      After that we asked the hotel to skip the boxes under the trees, and for years when we made the reservation and said this, their event planner would remember and start laughing.

      1. White Elephant on steriods*

        We also have White Elephant style gift exchanges – except in my country the rules are fairly different in that the gift distribution is determined by throwing dice that are passed around the table. You roll a 6 you get to pick a gift (wrapped), potentially stealing it from someone else if all gifts have been picked (some versions also include “Robin Hood” numbers or other variations). The game ends at a random time after all gifts have been distributed but nobody is guaranteed a gift. On the other hand, some people may end up with a bunch. Only after the time ends, gifts will be unwrapped. Because of the random factor, this game can get quite hectic with passing the dice and running around to pick the best gifts, hoping nobody steals them from you. Inevitably some people get nothing, so gag gifts are highly encouraged and there is typically a spending limit of less than 5USD.

        Cue my current company. I work in a foreign branch with some colleagues from my home country and a lot of local hires. We do this game at the office Christmas party and the local colleagues go insane! It’s complete mayhem with people not really understanding the concept, forgetting to pass the dice, fighting hard to keep people from stealing “their” gifts, hiding gifts under the tables, even unwrapping gifts in the middle of the game and sending the empty box back in circulation! Funniest of it all, though, is that some of the colleagues who grew up with the game cannot stand the rampant cheating and get really upset that people are not respecting the rules of this harrowed game, instead of just letting the locals have fun with it (which they do).

  24. LadyMTL*

    My former boss and I got along well; one year we were seated side by side at our office’s holiday party. It was a pretty nice affair, with a 3 course plated meal, dancing, and for some reason a rose at next to every person’s plate. She and I started joking about how fancy it all was, and she decided to whack me (playfully) on top of the head with her rose…and it burst apart. There were petals everywhere, and I started laughing so hard that I nearly wet myself. She spent the rest of the night with a bare stem at her plate, and even though it’s been easily 12-13 years it the memory still makes me laugh.

    1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

      I thought this was going to progress to everyone hitting each other with roses and/or rose pedals being thrown around the room.

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        Me too, sort of like the old Bloom County cartoon where they all hit each other with ice cream cones and the sound effect was “splut.”

  25. CantBelieveImWritingThis*

    I have a colleague who is… well, let’s just say he’s a character. I’ll call him Dalì.

    My company organized two Christmas events: one for employees only, and another for those with children (great for people like me who don’t have kids for whatever reason).

    Dalì and his partner decided to attend the event because no one explicitly said it was for children (the event was called something like “Bring Your Children to Meet Santa”).

    He proceeded to complain to everyone in attendance that the entertainment, such as face painting and arts & crafts, was clearly geared toward kids.

    There was no alchol, and Santa refused to let him queue with the kids to “have a chat”.
    He didn’t like the food and thought that the small cups for babyccino were for mulled wine and he felt misled.

    There is a glorious photo of him resentfully staring at “Santa” surrounded by children, holding a small teacup.

    2. Bibliothecarial*

      I love this one. Very well-written. I have a very vivid mental picture of him glaring at Santa.

    3. Csethiro Ceredin*

      That’s hilarious!

      And a different human would have leaned in and had fun with it, so serves him right.

      1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

        Or realized the error and left after fifteen or fewer confused minutes! But no, it seems like this guy completely melted his clocks over the radiator and then yelled about it.

  26. ThatGirl*

    Not that ridiculous, but my second Christmas at my current company we had a fun but awkward party. The awkward part is because the party was a week after a round of layoffs that had included the party planners, so nobody knew quite where things were supposed to go.

    It was an overall nice party, with cool balloon sculptures, lots of food all day, and a big raffle. They had put everyone’s name in a computer and it randomly drew people – there were a lot of prizes. They would show the prize, then put the winner’s name on screen. At one point the prize was a big wine carafe. I was standing with a bunch of people who were doing commentary on the prizes and I said “I would have nowhere to put that.” And then my name came on the screen.

    After that, a few of my friends around me started saying “I would have nowhere to put that” after every prize they thought was cool.

    1. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

      I’m so glad I’d already finished my cuppa before reading this, because I’m in absolute fits of giggles!

    2. Wolf*

      I’ve seen wine carafes in so many gift exchanges, and I have yet to see anyone use one. Feels like they solely exist to be gifted and regifted.

  27. ElinorD*

    Right before the holidays, I was hired in a field I’d been trying to break into full-time for years, starting in January. My future Boss invited me to their Christmas party with a white elephant gift exchange. I brought something boring but safe — like gourmet popcorn and sodas if we were in the movie theater business — assuming the party would have at least some of my new colleagues. Great opportunity to meet my new department in a laid-back environment, right?

    Silly me.

    Nope! It was Boss’s boozy neighborhood Christmas party. My fellow Newbie and I were the *only* attendees from work. The gifts everyone else brought were either 1 – top-shelf alcohol or 2 – purposefully cheesy/tacky gifts. My gift got tossed in the corner with disgust, and one of Boss’s neighbors spent the rest of the party making fun of it. It was nearly voted “worst gift,” second only to a tacky painting someone brought as a joke. I knew it was boring, but I’d never met these people before!

    I am not against drinking at all! I enjoy a cocktail or three, but I was trying so hard to make a good impression with my new colleagues, and I didn’t know any of these people. I’d been desperate to break into this field for years. Boss and Newbie never mentioned it again, but I learned quite a bit about my new manager’s priorities from that. I left that job after 4 months, having found a much better situation, and I’m still there 12 years later.

    I still wish I’d kept my gift for me.

    1. ElinorD*

      I should also add that the party got a bit raunchy, and the neighbors thought it was great fun to embarrass me — I come off a bit prim and awkward, but I was AT MY NEW BOSS’s HOUSE, for crying out loud. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

    3. MigraineMonth*

      Inviting two new employees to a boozy neighborhood party where there aren’t any other coworkers is inappropriate and terrible judgement.

        1. ElinorD*

          An excellent point. I was thinking about it this morning. Boss was probably looking for allies in the dept because they were far more interested in being friends than in managing. I was not. lol.

    4. Lizzie*

      Not a work party, but for a service organization my BF is a member of. They have an annual party, with a gift exchange. the one where you choose a number, and you can either choose a gift, or steal from someone else. Most of the gifts are various kinds of alcohol, and those are always the ones stolen.

      So last year I had an idea; i had a set of cute stacking boxes, a holiday treat tower, I had kept since they were really nice. Instead of buying a gift set or bottle of something, I bought mini bottles of booze, and put it in each box, stacked them up, and put it in a plastic bag tied with a big bow.
      Since it clearly looked like food, it was one of the last selected, and everyone was commenting how it was food. the person who ended up with it, didn’t even want to open it, but they eventually did. And then suddenly, everyone was interested in it!

  28. Scott R*

    One year, grandboss thought it would be nice if people brought their kids to work for the holiday party which was immediately after work. This caused some grumbling as a lot of parents had to commute home to pick up their kids, then come back again.

    It was all worth it, though, when grandboss asked the young (I’d guess 7-9 years old) son of one of our employees “What do you think of the holiday cookies” and junior replied “They taste like sh*t!”

    Several of my co-workers couldn’t contain themselves and ran off to the break room to laugh. The mother of the kid was, of course, mortified and said “[name], we don’t use that language or say things like that, it’s rude” to which junior replied “But you told me to always tell the truth!” which elicited even more laughter.

  29. Manager*

    Our company does a big holiday party where everyone is gets a nice gift in a raffle (think: tvs, iPads, etc). It’s planned by our HR director who is also our company event planner. One year one of my employees missed the holiday party because an immediate family member passed away and the funeral was that day. We went to the HR director when they returned to see if they could claim one of the extra gifts. We were told a stern NO because how dare they miss the party!

    4. Wolf*

      That’s how you get half the company sick, because someone didn’t want to stay home with a virus and miss the gifts.

  30. WavyGravy*

    Partner’s holiday party. I think this was the first year they did drink tickets, but of course lots of people don’t drink, don’t come, etc. so there’s a bunch leftover. An employee’s annoying boyfriend (now husband!) proceeds to not only get hammered, but snags a bunch of leftover tickets and as the event is ending orders multiple glasses of wine which he then decants into empty water bottles to take home. He invited us to participate as well and we politely declined for obvious reasons (also it was cheap gross wine). He said, okkkayyy I guess you’re too good for free booze.

  31. Stuart Foote*

    I once worked a sales job with a lot of younger, right out of college guys, and management with absolutely zero boundaries regarding their employees personal lives. Our holiday party was always a big deal, and it was highly important to management that all the guys bring dates for the holiday party, I guess for motivational purposes so we’d work harder in order to impress our dates. The first year I worked there I wasn’t dating anyone, and my manager offered to personally find dates for anyone who didn’t have one (I declined).

    The second year they booked the party at a hotel ballroom with the option to book rooms for that night. I’d only been on a couple brief dates with the person I was seeing, and I wasn’t sure about the optics of booking a hotel room following a work holiday party, given we were nowhere close to spending the night together at that point. For some reason, it became extremely important to my manager that I book a hotel room. I was called into lengthy one on one meetings with him about this issue. Eventually he wore me down and I did book the room, and it wasn’t an issue for my date, but looking back I can’t believe how few boundaries there were at that job.

    As it happened, my date was (and is; we ended up getting married) very attractive, and my manager was vocally extremely happy since I was a top sales rep at that company and he thought if the other guys saw me with an attractive woman they would work harder on the assumption it would help their dating lives. The thing was that the top sales reps made a bit over $100k, which is solid but even in 2010 wasn’t exactly crazy wealth. As you’d imagine, it was an extremely dysfunctional place.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Why yes, us women definitely find successful sales reps to be the sexiest of all men (#sarcasm). Your story reminds me of a time when my friends and I – in our early 20s, not sure if we were still in school or not – were walking through Harvard Square and these two bros were talking really loudly and one of them said to the other, “Wow, six figures! That’s so great that you make six figures, that’s awesome!” in a manner that you know they were only doing to impress us young ladies walking by. We, dear readers, were completely unimpressed and also completely ignored them until we were out of earshot and then completely cracked up. (This would have been early 2000s, so mayyyybe kind of impressive for 20-something bros, but honestly, none of us were nor are impressed by people who make a lot of money.)

      1. Ellis Bell*

        “Honey, I know we’ve been living together for five years, but Martin is top salesman this quarter. I have to go with him, now.”

      2. MigraineMonth*

        When I dated men, I specified my income range on my dating profile to try to screen out guys who were going to have a problem with me making more money than them. That didn’t stop guys with half my income from promising that if I were “their woman” they’d take care of all my financial needs and I wouldn’t have to work any more. Or possibly wouldn’t be allowed to.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      This sounds exhausting, having your boss weigh in on whether you need to book a hotel room early on in a budding relationship. Did your former boss go into the PUA field, by any chance?

    3. goddessoftransitory*

      Uggh, that’s so sleazy (not you getting married, of course!) but everything about it drips toxic masculinity, chauvinism… just oilier than a can of sardines from the dollar store.

      1. Stuart Foote*

        It was a super toxic place. Shortly after I walked into the holiday party my boss took me aside and congratulated me on my date’s looks and reminisced about a former co-worker who would evidently take his pay stubs to the bar to use them to pick up women. I guess that works sometimes, but it’s not something I’d brag about (not that I ever did it).

  32. MillicentFenwick*

    Back in the 1990s I became a manager for a large company which had a super hard line between employees and managers. With my raise and benefit information I was told I’d be invited to a managers only holiday party and that attendance was expected. It was at an executive’s home.

    I worked all day, drive home, got into the right degree of formal party clothes. Drive to the executive’s house. They had catered food for well over a 100 people.

    I was the only person who showed up. All night. I didn’t think I could leave but I completely exhausted my well of small talk. At the closing hour stated on the invite, I said my goodbyes and left. It was the most awkward work event of my life.

    1. Paint N Drip*

      Ooooooh that’s breathtakingly awkward! ‘Expected’ means something else in management language apparently?

      1. MillicentFenwick*

        Yeah, amazingly dozens of people found a reason to not attend. It was my worst nightmare socially since I could just blend into the crowd.

    4. Wolf*

      That’s the childhood nightmare of the only guest at a birthday party, plus extra layers of awkwardness.

  33. Dittany*

    This was pretty humiliating at the time, but: One year, the Christmas party happened to coincide with a bad breakup. I wasn’t really up to socializing that night, but figured that I could probably tough it out for an hour or so. Also, the party had an open bar.

    You can probably see where this is going.

    Long story short, I got absolutely hammered and wound up sobbing into my manager’s shirt. (Thankfully, she was a good sport.)

  34. RabbitRabbit*

    My first day at my job in my new department was on the day of their winter holiday party. Fortunately I had worked closely with a good chunk of them for a few years so it wasn’t awkward.

    The awkward part was the open bar, with the administrators’ assumptions about what that would involve, and the IS team lead insisting that as many people as possible join him in tequila shots.

    (I had two.)

    The next year, we had drink tickets.

  35. CzechMate*

    I used to work for the world’s cheapest and most thoughtless person. Like, he regularly tried to skip out on paying service people, like the plumbers or the agency that ran the SEO campaign. Whenever someone brought a complaint or a grievance, he would respond, “Are the checks bad??” (as in, if you’re getting paid, you have no place to complain, no matter how low the wages are).

    We as staff would regularly hold a Secret Santa gift exchange. Morale and pay was low, there was no such thing as staff appreciation or an end of year party, so we actually went all out for the Secret Santa–every day for four days, you gifted your person a small gift with little clues or hints as to your identity. On the fifth day, your person received a much larger gift. The full investment was only about $40, but the gifts were always very thoughtful and personalized.

    One year, the cheapskate owner learned that the staff was having a Secret Santa and demanded to be able to participate. We reluctantly allowed him to join, because, how could we not?

    First day of the gift exchange, one person receives a $5 Subway gift card. Sure, practical, okay, fine. The next day, the person receives…another $5 Subway gift card. The next few days? $5 Subway gift cards. Final day of the gift exchange arrives. The owner proudly reveals that HE is the person’s Secret Santa and gifts them…four $5 Subway gift cards. The sheer force of will it took the employee to act surprised was everything.

    We later discovered that the $5 Subway gift cards came from a coupon book. From, like, Costco or the Boy Scouts.

    2. Potato Potato*

      Oh no. You worked for a gender-swapped version of my grandma. Every year my family does a Secret Santa. And every year, people get thoughtful gifts except for one. My grandma’s recipient gets an old book, or maybe a hand-me-down jacket that’s the wrong size, or a $5 Best Buy gift card (what can you get at Best Buy for $5?). When it’s our turn to draw names for the Secret Santa, my sisters and I rig it so that we can get actual gifts.

      1. Expelliarmus*

        I’m surprised you can even charge a Best Buy gift card for $5! Are these gift cards already used by the time they are gifted?

        1. Wolf*

          Worst one I got was a gift card for a sports shop. It was technically a 10€ gift, but you had to spend 100€ to use it.

  36. Clearance Issues*

    I’ve helped plan team holiday celebrations for 3 years (happy hour, white elephant gift exchange), but this year I totally forgot, so it’s just the whole office stuff happening (ugly sweater day, hot chocolate fixings in the break room for the month, the big fancy party…)
    Only one person noticed, so I think I’ll “forget” again next year.

    the good news is, we finally stopped putting up the “not-christmas trees” that represent our departments.

    1. Wolf*

      I can imagine a few noticed, but they’re all playing the game of “if I don’t mention it, I’m safe from having to take over organizing it”.

  37. Seriously done*

    I was working at a nonprofit I hated and could not wait to leave, mostly because my team involved people whose work was actively harmful to the people who were trying to help and whose response to any sort of critique, however mild, was a strangely unthinking, cult-like defensiveness. Plus, there was a lot of mandatory ass-kissing, a chronically cranky, wooden, distant supervisor, and disconnected, ambivalent senior leadership. I was dreading the Christmas party — but there were huge raffle prizes given out to many employees, and you could not win one unless you attended, so I went. The raffle was held in the atrium of the building, and the decorations included a trellis with a nearby table stocked with paper stars and markers with a sign telling us to “write your Christmas wish for yourself or the world.” I decided to do one on my way in that morning, and I wrote my heartfelt wish/advice for the entirety of global society: “Let’s be done with the Kardashians.” Later, after I had had a single, miserable wet taco, hid from my bullying coworkers, and silently sat through a looooooong raffle (in which I won nothing), I and every other employee filtered past that trellis on the way to the elevators. I passed it after many had already gone by, and I realized that the trellis was still totally empty of stars, except for mine. “Let’s be done with the Kardashians” was the only Christmas wish in that whole company of lazy, bitchy zombie cult members, it appeared. At the time, it seemed as good a sign as any to get the hell out of there. I waited out the paid Christmas holidays, quit in January, and never looked back.

  38. Ruby Tuesday*

    I haven’t witnessed this yet, but I’m looking forward to it in a few weeks!
    At my fiance’s holiday party, managers are strongly encouraged to not drink too much (ok, reasonable). The party has historically gotten so out of control that the managers are told to stay sober enough to handle the chaos. And to top it off, each manager gets a “handler” assigned to them, who will basically babysit them to ensure they don’t drink too much.
    If that’s the lengths you need to go to, maybe…don’t have the party?

  39. Longtime Lurker*

    My first job out of college was in a warehouse full of all kinds of things. (For example, the large box labeled “cigar” singular, the box labeled “watch out for imposters w/ beaver,” the waist-high statue of Anubis, and the box labeled “big dumps.” Don’t ask.) It was a small business, 12-15 people, so we had a formal Christmas lunch with the owners, but we also had a Christmas scavenger hunt throughout the warehouse for everyone else. Two teams looking for a bunch of clues to lead them to a final prize. These hunts were best described as “chaos.”

    The first year we did it I remember racing my supervisor through the warehouse at top speed, diving into a giant bin of old paper, and lastly, everyone converging on the break room, convinced the next clue in the hunt was somewhere in there. The final person to come tearing into the break room was the youngest employee, who went straight for the keurig coffee pods and threw the boxes all over the floor with a level of exuberance I had never previously seen him display.

    Pods everywhere. Ringing silence from everyone else. Until we all saw there were also two envelopes on the floor, one for each team. The last thing I remember is our lone HR person, who organized the hunt, smiling beatifically and taking a photo of us all diving down amongst the pods like children, having abandoned our dignity much earlier in the day. I believe the grand prize was a $10 dunkin gift card and bragging rights. We all had a blast. Such a pity (and no surprise) that that job went up in flames two years later.

  40. Homeburger*

    Holiday lunch and white elephant exchange was ruined by one colleague who started off by complaining about the rules of the gift exchange claiming we weren’t doing it “correctly” and when that didn’t get a rise out of anyone – because she was someone we all tuned out whenever we could – then moved on to aggressively questioning and commenting at our one Jewish employee (her direct report, no less) about Judaism managing to use the phrase “you people” every time she opened her mouth. She was the worst. What a relief when she was fired in early January.

  41. coffeespoons*

    I work at a university, and our division throws an annual shindig for staff. It’s never been a wild and crazy sort of party–just some small nibbles and drinks and chatting with co-workers. Some years there is formal entertainment, some years it’s just mingling. Many years ago, someone had the idea of booking students from the theatre program to provide entertainment–just a few song-and-dance numbers, like a winter holiday cabaret. In theory, it’s a nice idea–it’s a performance opportunity for students, and it’s nice for staff to connect with the students we serve, right?

    Now, at that time, we had one faculty member in the theatre department who absolutely believed himself to be the second coming of Bob Fosse. (Readers, he was…not.) I love dance and musical theatre, but you could always tell when you were seeing his choreography in a piece. This is someone whose idea of subtle messaging was to bring out flashing lights (no, I do not mean that figuratively). He seemed to be under the impression that if you weren’t holding up a sign clearly stating your message, the audience might not pick up on it (again…I don’t mean that figuratively, I’m sorry to say).

    So, we’ve got student performers for the holiday party entertainment, and, as it happens, this faculty member had been selected to work with them as their musical director and choreographer. They began with a few numbers that were flashy but well-executed by the talented students, and not at all out of line for what you’d expect in a fun little winter holiday cabaret. Unfortunately, this faculty member had decided to make it less “a cabaret,” and more like CABARET, as choreographed by his idol, Bob Fosse. And this led to the most uncomfortable, seat-squirming performance of the event, in which a female undergraduate student came out in a costume best described as “A Very Special Christmas at the Kit Kat Club,” complete with fishnets, leotard, and red bowler hat. She sang, if memory serves, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” while dancing on and around a chair (because: Fosse). It felt kinda squicky in context–university administrators watching one of our students in a very sexualized costume, performing moves straight out of the “Mein Herr” musical number. Everyone squirmed in their chairs. Then, the piece de resistance: she walked away from the chair she’d been dancing on and around, strode into the audience, where she began dancing on/around the most evuncular of our older Deans, at one point draping herself over his lap as she crooned. The poor, bewildered Dean, who had clearly NOT been notified that he’d be participating in one of the performances by serving as sentient furniture, responded by gripping the seat of his chair tightly with both hands and wearing a frozen smile that did not reach his eyes. The audience stared in horror, wishing that it would end so we could all pretend it never happened. The number finally finished, the stunned audience applauded out of politeness, and the choreographer, watching from the sidelines, beamed in delight and was later heard exclaiming how pleased he was with his work this year, especially at “getting the audience involved”.

    Readers, since that year, the winter holiday gathering has scheduled no performances from the theatre department.

    1. Zenfrodo*

      Yikes. That’s even cringier to anyone familiar with the actual musical or the film — Cabaret is set within pre-WWII Germany, as Hitler is taking power, and its main theme is how people ignore, or refuse to believe, or even see the horror rising around them, until it’s too late to escape.

      Your poor Dean.

      1. coffeespoons*

        I do love Cabaret–the play and the movie, even as different as they are from each other. I have to say that I get the sense that our would-be Fosse faculty member is probably the sort of person who focuses mainly on the eyeliner, chair dancing, and racy costumes, and not so much on the very political messages at the core of the story. I’m quietly relieved that our theatre dept. never staged a production of the show while he was working here.

        1. Zenfrodo*

          Yeah, you dodged a major bullet there.

          If you want a really good sexy eye-opener for Cabaret, though, check out the Broadway Backwards version of Mein Herr on YouTube. ;)

  42. Zenfrodo*

    This happened at my husband’s workplace, but I was involved.

    I used to send out homemade baked goods as gifts for family and friends. My family had a “super secret” recipe that had taken me years to finally get, and whenever I made it, my family made a huge show of comparing my attempts to The Family Grand-Matriarch’s Baking…and usually my stuff was found massively lacking in various ways that no non-family member noticed. Yeah, my family were real jerks about it.

    So one year, as I was making the Super Secret Family Holiday Pastry, I ended up with several “failed” attempts — perfectly edible, perfectly tasty, but with something wrong that had made The Family deem them inferior in the past (not rolled tight enough, didn’t “look right”, etc etc). Husband was getting frustrated with my stressed-out perfectionism, and finally said, “Screw your fam, those things are delicious. Mind if I take them to work and share them with everyone?”

    I didn’t, so he did. And when I picked him up that night, he was grinning ear-to-ear, no pastries in sight. He plonked a cheap Christmas coffee mug filled with cheap candy and a mylar Xmas balloon the dashboard and announced that he had managed to piss off a lot of his older co-workers with my Secret Family Pastry.

    Unbeknownst to Husband, his workplace had a holiday cookie contest every year, and the competition was **fierce** among those particular people. This contest was a huge deal, with winners lording their bragging rights well into the new year. Some of those people would plan for *months* on what they were going to make, and passive-aggressive back-biting abounded.

    My husband is a really sweet guy who is sometimes a bit clueless socially, so he had no clue any of that was going on. He’d just brought in the tray of goodies to share, set it where other folks had put their holiday treats, grabbed a plate of assorted goodies for himself, and went about his work.

    However, he started noticing that a number of his older co-workers were glaring at him and acting pissed-off. Husband finally went to his boss to ask if he’d done something wrong, boss went “No, you’re good”, so Husband decided to ignore it and went back to work…

    …until the end of the day, when Boss set the cheap Christmas Mug and Balloon in front of Husband and congratulated him on winning the holiday cookie contest, all while those older coworkers glared over the walls of the cubicles. Husband was going, “what contest? But that’s stuff my wife did!” Boss was adamant: he’d won, and he’d better bring the recipe in tomorrow, because she and a few others wanted to know all about the so-called “failed pastry”…and when Husband was still confused, one of his teammates took him on a coffee break to explain everything else.

    So that’s how my husband won a Holiday Cookie Contest that he didn’t even know existed and pissed off a bunch of his older co-workers who were ready to throw down over a cheap Christmas coffee mug of candy!

      1. MigraineMonth*

        People who are a-holes about criticizing goodies do not deserve said goodies. Save the pastries for those who appreciate them!

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        But it’s a Secret Family Recipe! (I am curious about what, specifically, they are, based on the description.)

        1. SAF*

          Hm. I am getting a “private site” message.

          I love Czech nut roll. Also love the polish version. And the poppy seed filled one too!

          1. Proofin' Amy*

            I couldn’t access this, either, but they sound like Hungarian beigli to me, like the kind they sell at Andre’s Hungarian Bakery in Forest Hills (neighborhood in Queens, NY). I love both the walnut and the poppyseed version (but they are not cookies at all, but cake, kind of like a streudel). My Hungarian grandfather’s friend lived a couple of blocks from me, and every Christmas, she’d make both the walnut and the poppyseed version. My job was to visit her in December, have some tea and small talk, and then take home one of each kind. Then I’d slice each into three sections: one for me, one for my sister, and one for my mom. I miss Mrs. Farago. And her cake.

            1. Former Admin Turned PM*

              It sounds like beigli to me, too. I brought a loaf into work one year and the Hungarian lady in our lab passed by and did a double take when she saw it. She tasted it and said “It tastes like it does at home,” so she got a beigli every year from us until she retired.

            1. Zenfrodo*

              Weird — I thought it was set to public. Corrected, and enjoy! (And yeah, the Wayback Machine has it indexed and can pull it just fine, just in case.) sorry for the hassle, everyone.

  43. Nina A*

    I worked in an office that was in a small building with a prestigious local address. Most of the offices in the building were fairly small, but there was a law firm that had most of the second floor (where we were located). It had a retired US Senator, along with a couple of ex-state attorneys as partners so, moneyed. The first year i worked there, the firm sent notes to the offices in the building telling people they were having the firm’s holiday party in the office, so on X day, there would be many more people than usual in the building and using parking, etc. and they apologized for the inconvenience. Our office was a small one, with no holiday budget, so the manager had purchased some holiday decorations with her own money, including a door wreath and sign. pretty much all the offices had something on the doors, and building management had put up a wreath by the elevators. Next morning, all of it had been ripped down and was missing- our office door had marks from the stuff being ripped down. Turned out fancy law firm party had gotten a bit out of hand, people were judging the decorations and tearing down what they didn’t like, and giving those items as “prizes” in some kind of competition. My boss was furious. The law firm wrote apology notes to the various managers, and replaced the missing stuff. The next year, they held the party offsite.
    The same year, there was a giant kerfluffle about holiday parties in my office. Bear in mind, there were a total of 13 people working there. On paper, we worked for a very large company that had a regional headquarters, and literally thousands of employees in our city. However, we were a satellite office that reported to the East Coast, ad there was some kind of higher management issue that caused the west coast people to declare that we were not welcome at the local Christmas party because we didn’t bring any revenue to the Western region. Our main office on the East Coast told us we could attend their party, but would have to use PTO and pay our travel expenses ourselves. The arguments went back and forth until the client we provided services to arranged to give us a few hundred dollars out of his budget and told my boss that was all there was. The office voted to get together at Planet Hollywood. The budget worked out that we could spend 25 dollars a couple, and would have to cover everything past that individually. My co workers were happy, our manager predicted disaster. The day of the party, I had another party to go to down the street. A friend and I stopped by the PH, and each had a non-alcoholic drink, and spent 15 dollars pre-tax and tip. There was no food at the table yet when we left, so I saw no need to leave any money of my own, and we went on. The next day, the office admin came around demanding a bunch more money, because sure enough, people overspent and didn’t account for it. I refused on the grounds that my total was 10 bucks under the total amount, and we had left before any food was at the table. It was a huge mess.

  44. Chocoholic*

    My first baby (her birthday is today, as a matter of fact!) arrived 20 min after arriving at the hospital, about 90 min after my water broke. Still very fast for a first baby!

    My 2nd baby was born about 10 min after the doctor broke my water. It was a good thing we were already there or he would have been born at home or in the car.

  45. Annie O*

    Corporate holiday parties always remind me of the time I creeped out a clown. I was about 12 and my uncle’s company had a huge (looking back, incredibly generous and nice) end of year holiday party. Everyone was invited: spouses, kids, extended family, etc. For reasons that defy all explanation, he decided to take his two sons, myself, my sister, and another nephew. We were not exactly known for being “indoor pets” so to speak, barely civilized enough for the outdoors within 100 miles of humanity. But holiday spirit must have infused him, so invite us all he did. There were so many things to do and see for all ages: games, food, socializing, and entertainment. The entertainment for the kids included a clown who did some magic tricks and made balloon animals. The clown was named Pep-e. Now, being a 12 year old who REALLY like doing and saying weird things, I strolled on over to Pep-e and obnoxiously announced “Hey there Pee-Pee, how about you make me a balloon dog?” Again, I was 12 and this was in the 90s, I wasn’t some turn of the 20th century grifter, so I am not certain why I said it like that. The clown replied stiffly “It’s pronounced Pep-E.” At this point my little cousin has wandered over to get a balloon animal. Pep-E at this point has several children clamoring for a balloon dog (looking back, I think he ONLY made balloon dogs, I guess the company had to save money somewhere). With each dog he presents it with flourish and a comment like “hey, it is Clifford the Big Red Dog.” He gets to my little cousin and offers him a blue balloon dog. He then says “A blue dog? That’s wild, have you ever seen a blue dog?” I reply, looking him dead in the eye, with “only once they have been drowned.” Poor Pep-E looked horrified. Children looked horrified. He said only “oh God…” and back away and made NO MORE BALLOON DOGS. I have no idea what made me say this unbelievably creepy, creepy thing, but that poor clown was not ok. I guess I just really liked shock value because I certainly never harmed a dog (I love animals!). And that is the Christmas miracle that was me traumatizing a clown.

    1. Library Girl*

      Took a big sip of water before reading “Hey there Pee-Pee” and the water did not make it down my throat

  46. NoIWontFixYourComputer*

    Not really an office party, but…

    When our second daughter was born, she had to spend several weeks in the NICU. Over the next few years there were a few reunions, where NICU staff and families got together to reminisce and show off the kid’s progress.

    When daughter was 5, we received another invite to an NICU reunion. This one, oddly, was held at the local mall. It turned out to be a rush photo op with Santa. Needless to say, Mrs. NoIWont and I were extremely upset, as 1) we don’t celebrate Christmas, and 2) it wasn’t a reunion, it was a photo op.

    We wound up writing a nasty letter to the hospital’s PR department.

    (Note: Said daughter is now in her 30s, has a masters, and is a librarian).

  47. Jay (no, the other one)*

    I’m a doctor and I’m Jewish so I always work Christmas. I don’t celebrate and it makes no sense for my colleagues to miss time with their loved ones so I can eat Chinese food in my pajamas. Also it meant I never had to go to my (non-Jewish) MIL’s for the holiday.

    My first year out of residency I worked 8-6 Christmas Day. My best friend was a senior resident working nights that month. We would otherwise have had dinner with her and her husband, so we decided to bring Christmas dinner to the on-call team. She lived a block from the hospital so her husband cooked the turkey and sides that had to be hot. My husband did the salad and dessert. He loves to cook and he hates football and he was alone all day and bored so he decided to make the fanciest dessert he could think of and created a Black Forest Cake from scratch – three layers including glacéed cherries and chocolate curls. The guys arrived with all the food at 5:30 and we sat down at 6 – eight residents, me, and the attending who took the night shift after I went off. She was stunned to arrive and find an entire Christmas dinner laid out complete with tablecloth, good china, and flowers.

    She was even more amazed to discover that the husbands had cooked it. She clearly believed that men were physiologically incapable of making stuffing or from-scratch rolls or creamy mashed potatoes.

    Then the Black Forest Cake came out and she just stared.

    When we packed up and went home, my husband and I agree that we had probably made life much more difficult for her husband…

    3. Zenfrodo*

      My head-canon is that her husband discovered a love of cooking from this and is now wowing everyone regularly with his wonderful meals.

  48. Sanya*

    I was newly dating a colleague and we were at the holiday party Definitely Not holding hands. This was really kind of him since he would have been glad to shout our budding love from the rooftops, but as one of the only women at the company (and in fact the entire industry at the time), I was a lot more cautious. It was hard being cautious because he was _really_ cute.

    Spouses and kids were invited to this thing. The CEO asked someone’s nine year old if she was enjoying the party. She said “oh yes, I’ve met lots of nice people.” He asked who she’d met. Nine year olds have absolutely no chill, and she said “I met your producer and your engineering director and your [my job title] and her booooooooooyfriend.”

    All eyes shot to me and the cute boy standing an inch away from me. I blushed purple and he preened like a rooster.

    My direct boss said, “thank god, we can all stop pretending we didn’t know” and a chorus of “no kidding” came back in response from everyone in earshot. The CEO shouted out “I knew it!” (he didn’t). The CTO, who didn’t like women working at the company because we were “distracting” and once said out loud that there was no point in promoting women because we’d just get pregnant and quit, rolled his eyes and shook his head at me because clearly I was the only person involved.

    To be fair to that misogynist ratbag, I have now been distracting that cute boy for twenty three years and our youngest child is nine and blurts out secrets like it’s her job.

    1. MsM*

      Aww!

      Boo on the CTO, though. They can step barefoot on a bunch of Legos scattered by a nine year old.

    2. Puggles*

      Awww! Too sweet!

      This is the ending I wanted from the Plenty of Orange OP who met her date at Shopko a few days before the party!

  49. Go with the flow*

    Our small company is entirely remote, so all our holiday events are virtual. A couple of years ago, another member of senior management (not me) organized a wine-and-cheese tasting where the wine and cheese were sent to each staff member’s house, and then we joined a Zoom with an expert host. It started out fine — but then one of my coworkers didn’t realize he wasn’t on mute and we could all hear him yelling to his wife that he had to “pretend to enjoy this work thing,” followed by another coworker decided to take this opportunity to show off how much he knew about wine and kept trying to take over from the host. Ordinarily, this would have been annoying and unwelcome, except that the host was making subtly racist comments throughout his presentation — not a good look! As the head of HR, I could feel everyone’s eyes immediately going to my little square in the Zoom call to see how I reacted. I did my best to redirect and get the host to wrap things up sooner so we could end this trainwreck of an event, but mostly I just wanted to scream “this wasn’t my idea!!” to the rest of the staff. (I kept that to myself – and we won’t let that senior director plan any more parties.) At least I had a bottle of wine at my disposal (and some fancy cheese!) after the call was over!

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I’m curious, did you do any follow-up afterwards about the subtly-racist presenter?

      I’ve always been frustrated that a company I worked for brought in a subtly misogynist and anti-Semitic speaker and never expressed remorse or even removed the video of the presentation from our intranet, even after I complained to multiple people in HR.

  50. Katydid*

    I worked as a receptionist for an OB/GYN practice. For my going away party, they made a crazy hat which included a speculum, tampons, condoms, basically anything expired they had laying around was stapled to this hat. I wore it to the party and fun was had by all. For the holidays, we had a white elephant gift exchange (you can see where this is going) – well I brought the hat. The hat continued to make the rounds in the gift exchange for a number of years after I left and at this point, I am not sure who evens works there who would remember the origin.

      1. confused*

        I’m confused – did you go back to the practice for a holiday party after you stopped working there? Or did you leave during the holidays?

        1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          I assume that Katydid left at some point beyond that party and perhaps years later, but was updated on the future progress of the hat by friends who still worked there.

    2. Coverage Associate*

      Also worked as a receptionist for OB GYN practice. Also had repeats show up at annual white elephant, but our most famous was just a shower head shaped like Dumbo.

  51. Katydid*

    I worked at a small, private liberal arts college in Iowa as an RLC or hall director for a few years. One year for our Christmas party I offered to make Peppermintinis for everyone for this party that was at the Dean’s house. I made many peppermintinis and whatever didn’t fit in the martini glass went in my glass, which was a poor choice. I sang karaoke with the Dean (Baby Got Back) and at one point was using a tv remote as a microphone. One of my student staff members had texted me asking about a pan for making mac and cheese and my only reply was “That is unfortunate.” They have jokingly asked me to return as an alumni bartender, but I have declined.

    1. Somehow I Manage*

      As someone who attended a small, private liberal arts college in Iowa… what letter does your college start with? Mine’s a W.

  52. HonorBox*

    At a long ago holiday party, actually at the place that inspires my username, some larger gifts were given for those who had longer tenure with the company. A young man had been working part-time with the company since early high school, so it must have been 5 years. He was in college and lived with his parents. He and a couple other people got reasonably expensive jackets – think high school letter jacket. A couple others got a grill. There was rhyme and reason. Jackets given to people who were either known to have a grill OR to people who didn’t need a grill. Well this guy was incensed that he didn’t get a grill. He complained A LOT over the coming weeks. Didn’t make a scene but EVERYONE knew that he wanted the grill. I think the company ended up getting him a grill, so he ended up with both gifts.

    The funniest part of the story to me was how a buddy responded one day not long after. The kid was working at the satellite office and called the main office. My buddy (very soft spoken and not one to make any waves) happened to be in a position to answer the phone, so as he transferred the kid to the desk of the right person, as he was putting the phone back on the receiver, he said loud enough for people to hear, “How’s your grill?” My wife and I still ask one another that from time to time.

  53. Ex-Retail*

    I’ve told this story here before, but I once worked at a big-box home improvement store, at the busiest location in the region.

    Store management wanted to be able to include all store employees in a holiday breakfast but, store hours being what they were, that meant that the party was held at 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning, to make sure there was plenty of time for everyone to eat, chat, and clean up before the store opened at 7:30. (Also, all the set-up, cleaning, and take-down was done by hourly employees, not management. Management acted like it was a great honor they were bestowing on us).

    Since it was during non-store hours, the lighting was on the “overnight” schedule, meaning that 2/3rds of the overhead fluorescent lights were off.

    We had catered trays of beige and brown food.

    Being a home improvement store, lots of employees carried various helpful gadgets on their keychains or in their pockets, which was a godsend when a few people pulled out pen-sized flashlights to shine on the food so we could see what we were putting on our plates.

    We sat at folding tables set up in Lumber aisle, eating quietly because, well, it was dark and not at all an environment that said “Party!”

    The kicker is that attendance was mandatory unless you had a doctor’s note. So there were people whose normal schedules were 10:00-6:00, 12:00-9:00, etc. who had to get up at 4:00 in the morning for the world’s worst company “party”, go home at 6:30-7:00 AM, and then have to come back to the store to work their full shift a few hours later.

    The only winners were the folks who worked overnight, restocking everything, because the party happened during their regularly scheduled hours.

  54. Ghost*

    At an old office we used to do a gift exchange where we would do a white elephant gift exchange. People usually brought coffee shop gift cards, candles or cheap bottles of wine and everyone would “steal” them and have a good time. One year, someone opened their gift to find an ahem, “personal massager” in the box. It was open too. Not even sealed. Everyone sat there in awkward shock and eventually the game moved on.

    Shortly after an email went out to all staff outlining what is and is not an appropriate gift for an office setting. Nobody ever admitted to being the person that brought the item, but there was much speculation. One day, a year or two later, I was going through the storage room looking for something else and found the item there, still in the box. I have no idea why no one ever threw it out, but just I left it there. Maybe it’s still there? I’m not with the company anymore so I will probably never know.

  55. Lolli*

    Someone brought smoked salmon for their white elephant gift. It was the kind you find in a box at department stores (no refrigeration needed and like a 2 decade shelf life). The person who ended up with it was not thrilled but took it in pretty good fun. As least that is what we can assume because it was back the next year, and the next, and the next. It got to be where anytime someone was opening a box that was close to the same size and shape, everyone would be chanting Salmon, Salmon, Salmon….
    Until its final year before it was put to rest by a not so fun person. Our Admin’s grown daughter had been working with us part time and she was the recipient of the Salmon. Mama Bear was not happy at all and threw a little fit about it. That was the last year the Salmon was present for our festivities. But I was the recipient of Mama Bear’s gift the next year. It was a DVD of Christmas Vacation 2 without Chevy Chase or Beverly D’Angelo – over a decade after its release. I figured I had enough fun over the years with the whole Salmon thing that it was worth getting the $3 DVD from the bargain bin. I am sure I stuck it in one of my kids’ stockings.

  56. Shrimp Emplaced*

    In my late 20s in the late ’90s, I (she/her) was a secretary at a medium-sized family law firm. The holiday party was hosted in a restaurant private dining room big enough to have its own restroom.

    I got brown-out drunk enough that I … followed one of the male partners into the bathroom. I still remember the horrified yelling of the other secretaries trying to get me to retreat. Somehow, there were no real consequences, aside from folks thinking we were an item. We were not. (Thanks, alcohol!)

  57. Goddess Sekhmet*

    For several years I worked in a department that was part of a much larger organisation. For the 3 years I was there at Christmas, some drama (or multiple dramas) happened at every company party, and as I was usually the most senior person there, I ended up having to deal with them and the inevitable aftermath. The first year was at a Mexican restaurant where most of us had chosen turkey fajitas. The restaurant advised that the turkey hadn’t arrived yet and would we like some jugs of beer and margaritas on the house? We would, obviously. Time went by and no turkey materialised. More jugs of beer and margaritas arrived. Eventually I’d lost count of the free jugs by the time the restaurant said we think no turkey is going to arrive shall we just do chicken? Could you ask your colleagues if that’s ok? I said just do chicken. By that time nobody was going to notice WHAT was in the fajitas. Everything got riotous and inevitably a tequila slammer contest was started. It was mayhem. I think the restaurant probably still made a profit because of the tequila slammer contest, but the clean-up bill must have been astronomical.

    The next year it was in a local hotel and at that one, two women had a fight (an actual fistfight) in the middle of the dance floor over a man who was there with his wife. The friends of both women formed factions and again, mayhem ensued. I got yelled and sworn at for “taking sides” (trying to stop the fighting). A number of disciplinary meetings were subsequently held because there were other companies there and we didn’t show ourselves in the best light.

    And the year after that one of our employees collapsed at the restaurant and I had to go with her in the ambulance to A&E. While I was there, a massive fight started because of the bill (aka check – I’m in the UK), and the sister of the sick person (also senior) arrived in the middle of it. She asked where I was because I should be sorting out the issue and someone said “oh she’s gone with Hannah in the ambulance, she collapsed” (names changed for obvious reasons), to which my colleague said “which Hannah? My sister Hannah???” to which they replied sheepishly “oh yeah, your sister, she took ill and had to go to hospital”. She then abandoned them all to the bill problems and rushed to the hospital. I can’t remember how they resolved the bill issue. Hannah was fine though. I left that job and refused from then on to go to any Christmas parties, at any job, where I was going to be the most senior person.

  58. Anonymouslysigned*

    Gingerbread house decorating contest fail – the night shift would build it, the day shift would eat it. Then the day shift would build it and the day shift would eat it. On repeat until the day of the judging when our department had nothing to turn in

  59. Sheila*

    Last year was my first holiday party at a new job in local government in a small town. I was newly single as well, and a little nervous about going to the holiday party alone as (IME) it can sometimes be weird if you don’t have a plus one.
    “How bad could it be?” I thought. “I’m sure it will be fine, buck up and get over it. Go have fun.”
    It was… *so much worse than I thought*. I’d assumed there would be mingling, but when I arrived at the venue everyone was already seated. Everyone! And…there were no empty seats at all, just a few empty tables. I went over to my boss’s table, she cheerfully greeted me but didn’t offer to pull up a chair. So, I walked through the tables until I found an empty one. But once I sat down, chaos ensued as the city manager noticed and then made a big deal of finding me somewhere to sit and asking people to come sit with me. 75 people looking on as everyone is made aware I’m alone …I wanted to sink into the floor. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even have something that embarrassing happen as a teen.
    It was fine when all was said and done, but I learned then that the org is very cliquey, and also that I will not be participating at events in future. Our receptionist asked if I was attending this year, I shook my head and she said “don’t blame you”. Lol.

  60. Fidget spinner*

    We found a kiddy pool in the office that my boss encouraged me to use as my white elephant gift. During the exchange I felt bad for doing a gag gift, so when my coworker asked if they could trust me I said they could trust me as far as they could throw me. It turned out they thought I was an idiot and either misunderstood the phrase or how much I weighed. So they did end up with a useless inflatable pool, but at least I warned them

  61. PivotPivot*

    Back in the 90s when I was a single mom from the suburbs, I commuted to downtown Houston and contracted for a moneyed law firm for close to a year.
    Come November there was a continued conversation. Come to the Christmas party! The food is great! There are wonderful door prizes! You will LOVE it.
    I arranged for a babysitter. Found directions to drive the 45 minutes each way. Then on the day of the party I drove downtown. I had to park in a scary parking garage at night and find the way to a hotel ballroom. There I found some mediocre food, most of my colleagues were chatting with their spouses and the door prizes? I found out that as a contract employee I was not eligible to win any of them. Fantastic.
    After I discovered this lovely detail that I wasn’t able to win anything, I ate my food and as soon as they started drawing names for the door prizes I mumbled an excuse that I needed to relieve the babysitter and hotfooted it home.

    1. Proofin' Amy*

      Being the contract employee at the Christmas party can either make you feel welcome or entirely excluded; I’ve experienced both. That really stinks.

      1. Meow*

        When I was contracted to a company like that, they only allowed the contractors to participate if they paid for their lunch by buying a ticket, it was like $20. It was tradition that the managers pay for the contractor’s lunch tickets, but of course our manager had to emphasize multiple times how generous he was being paying for our lunch.

  62. Coverage Associate*

    No stories for myself, but I’m seeing ads for “Chanukah balls” this December. Like, that’s what the stores are calling their blue and silver round decorations.

  64. Anon!*

    Holiday party bingo-raffle-hybrid!

    When I was a kid, the company my dad worked for did a huge yearly holiday party. Park shelter, barbeque, buffet, and open bar, the absolute works.

    The main event, though, was the Raffle Bingo. Every round of bingo was for a prize, and they had incredible prizes for the final winners. One year there was a deluxe grill with fancy equipment, another year there was a giant TV. And one year there was a full set of outdoor furniture, including a freestanding swing-seat with its own awning.

    We walked up to the party, and we saw that set. My parents stopped and stared at it. My sisters and I wanted it more than anything. My parents had spent all spring and summer breaking down and carting away our old deck, digging up the ground, and putting in a patio. It was finally done, but we only had rubbery old deck chairs to use outside. My mom hated how they looked and would sometimes sigh over the coupon ads for lawn furniture. I hated them even more–it was my job to wrestle them into the garage every night and clean them if the birds had “decorated” them! We stared at those chairs, all together, and then we all started talking at once.
    “We’re going to get those chairs mom!”
    “Yeah, we’re going to win that swing!”
    My parents joined in, “Yeah, we can do it! We can each have two bingo cards, that’s 10 chances this year!”
    We couldn’t stop looking at it, we felt like it was already ours.
    “Can we get a swing like that, even if we don’t win?” one of us asked.
    My mom’s face fell. “We don’t really NEED it…” she said. And that was that. If we didn’t win this swing, we never would have another chance.

    So we HAD to win it.

    The bingo game started. We didn’t win a single thing in the starting rounds. We waved away the koozies, the company swag, the mugs. And then we didn’t win the drip coffeemaker, the walkman, the microwave, the steak knives, the boombox. We didn’t win the gift certificate to the mall or the one for a grocery store or for the gas station (and we definitely didn’t know why our parents wanted to win some boring old gas!). We three kids were convinced that it was a sign we were definitely going to win, but my parents started saying things like, “Well, it’s just fun to pretend we could, right?”

    Finally, it was time for the big prize: the lawn set. “We’re going to win!” we said.

    And somehow, my mom got the final G for BINGO. “BINGER! BING! BINGO!!!” she shouted.

    People cheered (and grumbled– we weren’t the only ones who really really wanted it! There were a few hundred people there!). My mom took her card up to be checked, and they announced it. We won!!! We wished that hard and got it, we all said.

    We took it home and set it up that day. It was incredible–we really won it!

    And then it started to get damp as the sun went down. “Honey,” my mom said to me, “We’ll have to remember to carry all these cushions inside every evening so they don’t mold!”

    So that was my new job. But the absolute manifestation of that win made it all worth it!

    3. Mentally Spicy*

      The sign of a great story is when I reflexively reach for the “like” button, before remembering that there isn’t one. Anyway, have an imaginary “like”!

  65. The Katie*

    About four years back, the guy who organised the lab Christmas picnic arranged to dress up as Santa and give out gifts to the children in attendance (purchased beforehand by the parents). However, the park we ended up using was also hosting another large group, and they’d organised a visit from Santa too. Both Santa’s ended up making their entrance at the same time, and one kid from the other party ended up in with us, waiting for our Santa. I had to grab one of the adults to let her know that they were missing a kid.

    1. Wolf*

      That’s cute. But I’m imagining so many shenanigans happening with that setup! Like gifts getting mixed up because kids share a name, or kids wondering why the company Santa gives some kids nicer gifts than others.

  66. Reverse Grinch*

    At my first full-time professional job, they did Winter Holidays in a big way. Cards for all staff, small gifts for your department co-workers, and if you supervised anyone, you expected to do something. Managers were given money for either department gifts or to take us out for a meal, and there was an office wide pot luck. It was Christmas/ Winter/ New Years celebrate everyone.

    When changed jobs about 5 years later, it was right after Christmas. Come December, I pull out the staff roster and write cards to everyone, even people I’ve never worked directly with, and gift everyone holiday candy. I bought small gifts for the people in my department, and gifted the 6 people I supervised gift cards.

    And no one else did anything. There was no pot luck, there was no cards from anyone except a few of the work friends I had made. And to make it even more awkward, someone from administration came to me and let me know they didn’t do stuff like that here.

    I’d like to think most people appreciated getting a small chocolate reindeer from the newbie, but man what a culture shock.

  67. Brain the Brian*

    Two years in a row, I won an award at our holiday party. Both times, my company misgendered me on the plaque. I’m cis; they just got it wrong. Cheers!

    1. Wolf*

      That’s awkward if it happens once. The 2nd year, I’d be torn between being completely baffled, and just laughing out loud. “We appreciate you, we just can’t be arsed to find out the most basic info about you” award.

      1. linger*

        It’s not even as if a plaque label *has* to be gendered at all.
        Why could they not just use the employee’s name?
        (I suppose it still wouldn’t stop a clueless MC from introducing the winner using the wrong pronoun.)

  68. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    I am HR and the only Jew in our office. I have worked for this company for six years, so you would think people would remember that office has someone who does not celebrate the Christian Holiday. Nope. Every year I have to remind people that we need to keep the end of the year Holidays inclusive and secular. I also have to remind people at the other offices they cannot force the Seventh Day Adventists to participate in the Holiday Party. EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.
    Come on people. At least 14 of the world’s major religions have Holidays between American Thanksgiving and the end of January. I can put up with secular, commercialized Christmas, but how’s about cutting people who don’t think it is appropriate to have a Nativity Scene in the office some slack? Religious Christmas Carols don’t belong in most workplaces either

    1. Anonymous Druid*

      If there is going to be a Nativity Scene, it seems only fair that more pagan inclined employees be allowed to set it on fire for the Solstice.

      1. Zenfrodo*

        Or follow the Temple of Satan’s example and set up a statue of Baphomet surrounded by a loving, adoring family. All the religious displays will go down so fast that you’ll have free AC from the wind of their passing all year.

        No sane business wants to deal with the massive migraines from the firestorm of protests/threats of ACLU lawsuits over religious discrimination.

    2. Lady Kelvin*

      I convinced our party planning group to move our holiday party to mid-January this year. While I am culturally Christian and celebrate Christmas, the overtly Christmas themed party complete with religious prayer over the food (!!) made me uncomfortable and I could only imagine how my not-culturally Christian coworkers felt. They said it would be a one-time experiment so hopefully it is a success and they adopt it permanently in the future.

      1. JustaTech*

        We did this one year because we didn’t get a budget for a holiday party until mid-December and that just wasn’t happening. So we had our holiday party in January and boy howdy everything is so much cheaper, and people are less busy so might actually show up. It’s brilliant!

        Several years ago we were told to have our holiday party on-site (ugh) but it meant that we ended up buying a bunch of “winter” decor (rather than Christmas, because I lobbied hard for a “winter wonderland” theme), so between that and an unfortunate flood of the party supplies closet, almost all the decorations are winter/snow themed rather than being Christmas (except the Christmas tree, but at least it’s all blue and not red and green and angels).

        I think everyone can get behind the plain white lights here – it’s just so dreary and dark this time of year that any extra light is welcome.

  69. Shades*

    Not my normal user name haha

    I kind of have my own Buddy story. Bit of background, last year we were working toward a big launch so we didn’t have a holiday party. I’m an engineer and for the final push for a project, we work on-site, somewhere warm with lots of bars. Also, everyone in this story is at least 40.

    We had Saturday off, then the final sign off on the project bright and early Sunday morning. I was at the beach when I get an email from one of our lead engineers “Bob” inviting us all to a party…at a beer garden 30 minutes away…at 1pm (ie, in 2 hours). I think, okay, everyone hangs out for a while, then goes home, we should still be good for our 7am sign off tomorrow.

    I show up with a coworker “Beth” at 2: everyone is already more than one 40 oz beer in, somehow like 40 people showed up at the last minute, the speakers are blown out, and we’re all getting sunburned. Clearly this will not go on long. I get one drink; they start playing beer pong, a crazy DJ performer dude shows up and invents lots of weird beer-related games, the music somehow gets worse. At 6, I finally convince Beth that we need to leave and get dinner because this place has…pretzels and the speakers are scrambling my brain.

    Beth hasn’t been drinking, so drives us part way back before realizing she’s left her sunglasses. We come back to 40 engineers after lots of beer trying to pay and organize rides because our group was kicked out of this noble establishment for stealing tables and taking over the whole patio where there’s supposed to be a baby shower (??). We never do find Beth’s sunglasses.

    I go back to the hotel and change since I’ve been baking in the sun for 4 hours, then meet Beth at the least divey place near the hotels we’re all staying at. By this point it’s close to 9, I’m exhausted, I have no idea where everyone else is. I eat half my burger and am chatting with Beth, when in stumbles Bob, who calmly sits down at our table, asks why I changed my clothes, grabs my fries and the rest of my burger, and orders a beer. I’m pretty sure I’m staring at him open mouthed as is Beth…how did he get here? Where has he been for the last two hours? Why did he steal my dinner? Did he know we were here? Where the hell is everyone else? How has he consumed that much beer in one day, just volumetrically speaking?

    Several others show up and get the party (re)started, I head back to the hotel with dread in my heart. When I walk in for the sign off at 7am, who is already there, fresh as a daisy? Bob

  70. Anonytime*

    One holiday party in an old office was at a fine restaurant. Everybody was nicely dressed, except one manager’s husband, who looked like he came in from the milking parlor on his dairy. His boots stunk of manure. At the end of the evening, the company owner stood up and gave his speech and just as he finished, the stinky boot guy blew his nose very loudly into his CLOTH napkin! There was an audible “oh” in the room.

  71. The Dude Abides*

    One year, my then-company (medium-sized credit union) and my now-wife’s then-company (a pharmaceutical distributor) scheduled their holiday parties for the same night.

    We went to mine the year before, and it was ok. This time, I demurred and offered to DD while she and her work besties cut loose.

    I also knew that her company’s party would be a million times better. The options were
    – private room seating 50-60 people at a “upscale” Italian restaurant (mine)
    – an entire ballroom at an upscale hotel with multiple food/dessert stations (prime rib, lamb chops, creme brulee, etc.), free drinks for the first two hours (cash bar afterwards), dueling pianos, and more that I can’t remember almost a decade later

    So we left the party around 10, and the group wanted to get food from a bar/grille on the north side of town (the party was on the southeast side). Bar pizza was procured, and then they wanted to get more drinks at a bar downtown. I walk into the bar, and lo and behold I run into 2-3 of my co-workers and their partners.

    Pleasantries were exchanged, and their bad-mouthing of the party confirmed I made the right call – the men all got Fossil watches (I never started wearing a watch regularly until I got a FitBit), and for the White Elephant exchange, I ended up with a Chicago Cubs neck pillow and throw blanket (I am a White Sox fan, my wife’s entire family is Cardinal fans).

    I ended up leaving the job three months later, but kept the watch socked away with a bunch of other junk that ended up getting tossed when we moved two years ago.

  72. JustaTech*

    Here’s my story (that I’ve told before) of Why There Are Very Specific Instructions For White Elephant.

    My work site has done some kind of in-office holiday lunch or snacks and White Elephant for many, many years. Usually a good time is had by all. Occasionally we needed to send out a reminder that gifts are to be Safe For Work (after the underwear incident), but for the most part everyone understood the assignment.
    Then we got a new CMO (Chief Medical Officer) who started not long before the party. The CMO was a perfectly fine guy, but he had a very dry sense of humor and it was hard to get a read on him.
    The White Elephant starts and everyone is having a good time with the ~$25 gifts, or gag gifts with a gift card attached. And then we get almost to the end and there’s one giant present left. So a well liked guy in one of the more social and tight-knit departments opens it.
    And it’s a hard used, beat-to-heck backpack from one of our competitors. So the opener digs through the bag looking for the gift card that must be there (right?). All he finds is a charging cable. CMO reaches over and grabs it, saying “I’ve been looking for that!”.

    Well-liked guy is pissed and hurt (no one is left to steal his gift so he’s stuck with it), his department is annoyed on his behalf and the CMO is completely oblivious to the fact that he’s now made a *terrible* impression with a vital department.

    Thankfully I had brought an extra gift (in case someone forgot theirs) and the other organizer was able to invent a reason for Well-Liked-Guy to get another go at the gifts, but it completely killed the mood.

    And now our instructions for White Elephant say that gifts must be new or like new, work appropriate and nothing obviously used/worn/dirty.

    (The CMO did later apologize to Well-Liked-Guy and explained that where he was from White Elephant meant “random crap” not “inexpensive but nice”. Which is another reason for the very clear explanation of what we mean by White Elephant.)

    1. Wolf*

      Oh, that reminds me of the White Elephant at my previous job.

      You place the gifts in an empty room during the day, so nobody sees who brought what. Andsomeone, we never figured out who, went inside, ripped a decorative bauble off one nice gift, and repackaged it as their gift! When a coworker unpacked the gift and found a single bauble, still with glue and bits of wrapping paper stuck on it, everyone joined in being appalled, and shared items from their gifts with them.

    2. Mentally Spicy*

      1. He’s not wrong, traditionally white elephants are more about entertainment than receiving a nice gift.
      And 2. That joke is hilarious!

  73. JustaTech*

    And here’s a story from my husband’s holiday party about the right way to deal with someone who’s had too much.
    My husband was working at a Big Tech that threw Big parties. This particular year’s event was at a really interesting venue and the theme was disco so I was wearing a gold lamé dress.
    Everyone was having a good time, but the lines for the buffet were very, very long so many people were under-fed for the amount of delicious cocktails being served.
    My husband and I were chatting with his intern (over 21) who was pretty tipsy, when said intern gestured enthusiastically and completely overbalanced and collapsed onto both of us – drenching me in all our drinks.
    In less than the time it took the intern’s (mortified) date to get him back on his feet there was a server helping the rest of us up, a second server giving the intern a glass of water, and a third server getting ready to discreetly escort the intern out to the waiting Lyfts (paid for by the company).
    Several work friends and at least one more server expressed concern about my dress, but being gold lamé and therefore basically plastic, everything had just rolled right off, but many people took it as a sign to head out for the night.
    (The intern apologized profusely at the time and at work, where my husband was like, hey, now you’ve learned not to drink too much at work events!)

  74. Kate, short for Bob*

    Just to say we have to hear the happy-tipsy girl and her date playing piano and doing close up magic at her story again. It is The Lore.

  75. Steve for Work Purposes*

    I have a PhD in animal science and where I went to grad school, we always had our work parties in the teaching barn, which featured an articulated horse skeleton (used for teaching). Every year someone would string Christmas lights through it and put a sheet over part of it and put ornaments or lights in the eye sockets to make a Mari Lwyd. We’d all take photos with it, the way some depts would take photos with Santa.

    We also had a holiday raffle and being a broke grad student, I usually only got a few tickets, but one year I won three times! I wound up getting a nice set of baking supplies (mixing bowls/spatulas/cookie sheets), some bbq supplies (including an apron I still have, 3 moves and 1 continent later), and a whole tri tip. That was the only year I won anything and my coworkers thought it was pretty funny that I wound up leaving with so much stuff, but since I am a pretty talented amateur chef it was all stuff I’d use and it was very appreciated.

    1. ICodeForFood*

      Thank you for introducing me to Mari Lwyd! I’m in the US, and am familiar with wassailing and hunting the wren, but I had never heard of the Mari Lwyd tradition!

      1. St Goerge and the Mari Lwyd*

        We’re doing a mummers play for a couple of places this year in the UK, I’m making the Mari Lwyd, the main thing is its jaws need to clack together, It’s proving a real engineering issue, trying to attach a horse skull to a pole and add a clacking mechanism of some kind… its been a head hurty past couple of days

  76. Elan Morin Tedronai*

    {Quietly reads comments while drinking morning coffee and remembering Stella70’s office party}

  77. Wolf*

    German company, so we had Glühwein (spiced wine, served warm). The only available food was waffles, which take a minute to make, so the wine was handed out at a much quicker rate than the food. You can guess where this is going?

    No egregious stories, but there were a few really bad hangovers the next day. This year, I took a vacation day for the day after the party.

    1. Wolf*

      Btw: yes, there was a non-alcoholic version for anyone who had to drive home, but many of us had planned in advance to use public transport so we could have wine.

  78. WoodswomanWrites*

    The recirculating item at our department’s annual white elephant event was a small photo of the CEO in a stand-up plexiglass frame and disguised in a much larger package. It had already been going around for years before I started. In my first year there, we got a new CEO. Whoever had the frame at the time snuck in a photo of the new CEO on top of the old one and when it showed up this time, we were beside ourselves laughing.

    Part of the fun of that gift was that throughout the year, it would end up on different people’s desks around our wing of the building. Every once in a while the CEO would stop by our area and there was a scramble to hide it so he wouldn’t discover it. I’ve long since left that job but I still smile about working with that fantastic team.

    1. Pam Adams*

      my office’s recirculating gift was a teen magazine about The Backstreet Boys. That Donors were honor-bound to attach $20.

  79. Anne On*

    At this job site, all my coworkers were complete snobs. It was rare for my supervisor to even pay much attention to me.
    That December, they decided to hold a Secret Santa party. Since I was rarely a part of any conversation, I had no idea of what they would consider an appropriate gift and there was no one I felt comfortable asking. I was given the name of a guy and the only thing I knew about him was the multiple affairs he was conducting. This guy talked about them openly and all the time, so even I heard about them. I chose something lighthearted and inexpensive – a novelty toothbrush with the handle in the shape of a woman.
    For the gift opening, they arranged the chairs in a big circle so everyone could watch the serial unwrapping of each gift. When the coworker opened my present, he was livid! He stood up, waving the toothbrush above his head, and shouted “Who did this? Who did this?” I did my best to look around in horror for whoever would do this horrendous thing. No one ever accused me, but I left that job and the entire industry soon after.
    I hope one of them writes in one day with their perspective of that year’s Secret Santa!

    1. StarTrek Nutcase*

      This situation is exactly why we practice from our teens that we don’t know who just stinky farted. It’s so valuable to have a believable “don’t have a clue” face.

  80. SassyV*

    My company’s (higher ed) “how to be fair in hiring processes” training you have to do every couple of years to be on a search committee is framed around the Avengers. So there are examples about how Dr. Banner’s degree is a fit for hypothetical job X, while Dr. Strange’s is not, and although Mr. Stark may have relevant experience, he is lacking a required degree, etc. I’ve done the training a couple of times before and after this framing, and it’s definitely better now.

  81. Marz*

    this was an industry-celebration/party but might qualify? happened in fall, very fall fest themed. we had lots of interns, and also lots of old timers. I was an intern (a tech, *technically* – still temporary but less temporary, still poorly paid but less poorly paid) we had a relatively new executive director, who was, apparently, conducting an affair with our recently-engaged marketing manager. those two and a few other higher ups drank so much wine the night before (again, a group of like, 6 to ten max) that the next day they had to go out and purchase new wine for the event, because they had, seemingly, drank it all. scuttlebutt also held that a staff member had to take the keys away from the ED who was extremely resistant, in the way of super drunk folk. the event then had absolute buckets of sparkling wine. we were made to pour enough glasses for everyone for a toast/hayride portion of the event but of course not everyone wanted champagne so we had so many flutes left over and did our best as staff afterwards to clean up sans waste. we also had full cases of sparkling wine leftover and several people were encouraged to and did make off with a case. I felt guilty about that one but plead the free consumables madness that especially afflicts the new to drinking and low pay and the weird culture there.

    we did get offered free food sometimes and they once had so many leftover (organic, all beef) hot dogs from an event that a handful of us regularly had a 3 pm hot dog break for weeks after.

  82. HSE Compliance*

    At a big company party at the last company I worked at, which was primarily to celebrate long-term and retired employees, they had an open bar. I was part of the management team and of course had to go to represent. Spouses/families of everyone were also invited.

    In no particular order:

    1. This was unfortunately scheduled right after a separate non-company-sponsored employee get together. Everyone that went to that party showed up to this company party already sloshed.
    2. One man who showed up pre-sloshed came up to me (woman) to tell me that he appreciated me VERY much, and that I’m just so cute.
    3. Another person who showed up sloshed, who was a week away from retirement, kept trying to steal the microphone from the plant manager to tell everyone how excited she was to just be gone from the company. (“I GOT SEVEN DAYS TIL I’M JUST DONE”)
    4. Same person later came up to the entire management team to insist that two of them were clearly related. They are not, and about the only similarity between the two of them was that they were both tall and had shaved heads. This discussion went on for at least 10 minutes. It felt like 45.
    5. Same person then looked at everyone on the management team and slurred that “I don’t trust ANY of you f*ckers. EXCEPT FOR YOU, I LIKE YOU” as she pointed at me. Why? No idea.
    6. When reading off the names of the long term employees being honored, somehow an entire page was lost, and everyone scrambled about 15 minutes later when it was discovered to re-read it and re-take pictures. Most of the people who got missed (like 10? or so?) found it kind of funny, there were a lot of apologies from the management team, but one person in particular thought it was a personal attack against him and loudly told us so.
    7. Same person as in 3-5 later tried to corner me to talk to me about how horrible the company was. I ended up hiding near the check-in table pretending to help sort the gifts. At one point I actually hid behind someone else when she walked by again loudly trying to figure out where I was.

  83. Lou's Girl*

    My first “big girl job” out of college was at a large bank. I had been there about 3 months when Christmas rolled around. The higher ups went all out reserving a fancy restaurant, 5 star dining, open bar and a live musician. It was very formal, but fun.
    Turns out I vaguely knew the musician from university. I spoke with him briefly while he set up, and asked about some mutual friends. I think we spoke about 5 minutes tops. Just for background, I was 25 years old and single, and he was about the same age and male.
    Well, that was all it took. My colleagues decided that musician and I were destined to be together and they were going to make it happen. My coworkers moved my seat so I could be closer to the musician (while I was in the bathroom), they talked to him about me (while he was playing), asked him for his phone number (to give to me), and had me bring him dessert while he was on break.
    I handed him a piece of cake, apologized and left. I was so embarrassed! For the next month or so, I had several colleagues continually ask me when I was going to call musician? Wasn’t he cute? What won’t you call him? Can I come to your wedding?
    Please don’t make me the source of your entertainment. Never saw musician again btw.

  84. Oddmeister...makin' copies*

    Many years ago, I was working support for a small software company. Bottom of the pay scale. One December day, it became apparent that the owners had bought Christmas gifts for everyone on the engineering side. These were the highest paid people at the company, bringing in even more than the sales guys. Even worse, the gift was a basic Palm Pilot, and most of the software guys already owned a better model, so they didn’t really want them. Our marketing person caught wind, marched over to the big boss and took his credit card out to buy the rest of us a Palm Pilot. I found mine very useful and fun!

  85. Firebrat*

    My dad was a firefighter. They throw wild parties. Not officially Fire Department parties, they just happen to have a raging house party that could rival any fraternity, and invite everyone from work. The story I was told is that at one of these parties, Fireman Bob- who was in a prank war with Fireman Steve, snuck off to Steve’s bedroom and took “boudoir” photos on his bed. He yanked his tighty-whities up between his cheeks and took about a dozen Polaroid photos, leaving them fanned out on Steve’s dresser. Steve said nothing the next shift. Steve never did say anything. He didn’t have to. The next year, Steve gave everyone in the department a photo calendar, featuring Bob’s fancy pictures.
    I was invited to attend these parties when I started high school, so my first experiences with alcohol were all enabled by my father’s colleagues. They taught me well, and my ability to pound a shot of tequila without flinching served me well in college.

  86. Former Admin Turned PM*

    I’ve been with my org for a long time, so I’ve seen everything from the days when we had the party onsite at the office (one year with a buffet on each floor and we were expected to say put in our own areas; that was the same year that someone saw mold on the brownies that the caterer brought) where you could only win the door prize if you were in the auditorium at the time your name was call (meaning that the poor schlubs whose deadlines didn’t allow them to take the whole afternoon off might miss out by being at their desks) to dinner cruises and the venue were we had the acrobats flipping around in those giant silk scarves.

    Last year’s party was at the same venue we’ve done a couple times, a nice place with fun entertainment and generally good food and a hotel nearby that many folks used to keep the party going, but instead of drink tickets, we got a paper bracelet at check in and our two drinks were marked on the bracelet.

    This year we have a 3 hour celebration in the middle of the workday (11-2) with Ugly Sweater contest, pie-eating contest, barbecue buffet, gingerbread house building, and Bingo. I’m guessing that even with the heightened attention to the drinks, the level of shenanigans was just too much last year.

  87. anonymouse*

    Years ago I had a manager who was great but… not known for making the best personal decisions. One year, far fewer people showed to the holiday party than anticipated and *someone* took the large amount of alcohol remaining as a challenge. Cue me and my coworker babysitting him to make sure he didn’t do anything fireable in front of the big bosses until he sobered up or we could convince him to leave. He:
    A) got away from us multiple times to try and dance with/confront senior staff, meaning covert chasing, ambushing, pincer movements, and when we failed, politely “needing to talk to him for a second” ensued.
    B) informed me (female) apropos of nothing that he’d marry me for my dual citizenship except he hated my last name. Why he wouldn’t keep his own in this fictional scenario is beyond me.
    C) managed to drop his phone over the other side of the giant buffet table and try to climb through the food to get it.
    D) loudly proclaimed the CEO’s name at random intervals while my coworker and I (nowhere near as drunk but bordering hysterical at this point) shoved cheese in his mouth to try and shut him up.
    E) when we finally got him into a taxi, forgot where we were and claimed he could just walk the cool 40 minute drive home.

    He didn’t drink at all the next year.

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