Ask a Manager

All this week I’m sharing holiday stories from years past. Here are 10 more.

1. The perfume

“My father’s story from a good 25 years ago. One time he’s telling us about what gifts they bought for all the staff. It was perfume (don’t get me started on the gendered nature of it, that’s a whole other thing) but one he didn’t recognize, and the salesperson from somewhere like Macy’s had ‘recommended’ to him. He’s telling us this, and says it’s called something like ‘plah-sen-tay’ like it’s French, he thinks (shades of A Christmas Story here). My mother and I start snickering. Really dad? She recommended it? And you said sure, sounds good? And he’s saying what, what? as we started laughing so hard we were crying and falling out of our seats at Boston Market … because he apparently had no idea he’d bought every woman on his staff PLACENTA perfume. Like something that had that in it, and it was maybe supposed to be a beauty aid? It was unclear, but we surmised that the salesperson had a truckload of this stuff to unload and could tell he had no idea what he was doing. He sits there horrified, and reflects, ‘Huh… i was wondering why people seemed a little weird about it. There was a lot of talking in hushed groups afterward.'”

2. The questionnaire

“When my office decided on a Secret Santa gift exchange, we all filled out short questionnaires (clearly labeled as being for the Secret Santa) that gave us an opportunity to describe things we like and don’t like. I drew my coworker’s name and was curious to know what she’d put about her likes/dislikes. This coworker, despite being very good at her job in many respect, was known around the office as someone who occasionally needed to be reminded to slow down and listen to or read the entirety of what someone was saying before speaking/acting. So I should not have been surprised to see that she’d listed her likes as ‘walks on the beach’ and ‘sunsets,’ or (my personal favorite) ‘making love.'”

3. Phillippe

“One place I worked had a fruitcake of undetermined origin which had been passed around for at least 10 years (longest tenured employee remembered it at her first holiday party, but it had been there prior to her). It had a name (Phillippe). Whoever won it built a shrine to Phillippe in their cube and proudly displayed it until the next year … Might have been a cheap gag gift, but dang the competition for Phillippe was intense.

The end of Phillippe’s story: An intern won it one year after I left and hadn’t realized that this wasn’t supposed to be eaten. Apparently Claxon Fruit Cake is still edible after at least 13 years. She brought Phillippe II for the next gift swap … All interns are now warned not to eat Phillippe II.”

4. The destruction

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

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

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

5. Holiday card misstep

“I very briefly worked at a law firm a few years ago, and my short time there included the holidays. A couple of weeks before Christmas, we all (about 15 employees) received a card with a prepaid Visa inside (about $25). The front of the card was a professional photograph of the managing partner with his wife and three children, standing in front of their enormous house out of state. One of the employees was his son from his prior marriage, who I am sure appreciated the beautiful photo of dad’s new family that did not include him.”

6. The hammer

“In one particular office my partner worked in they did Secret Santas each year. One year they drew the name of the Office Manchild (who was sweet but remarkably taxing to be around) and we didn’t have a clue what to get for him, until I was wandering around a local toyshop and found a child’s plastic hammer that made a brief noise and lit up when you hit something with it. For some reason (cough), it said ‘Office Manchild’ to me, so I bought it. And it was, literally and metaphorically, the hit of the the party. Office Manchild adored it to pieces, everyone else was queuing up to play with it too, so lots of love for Office Manchild, and my partner smiled quietly and said nothing.”

7. The remark

“I work for a small family-owned company. Each Christmas, the owners, would host a fantastic Christmas party at their home with A LOT of wine. Years ago, a coworker’s wife got really drunk. As she and coworker were leaving, my boss said in a joking tone, ‘Are you sure you don’t want one more glass of wine?’ To which she replied, ‘Why don’t you eat my ass?’

We haven’t had alcohol at a holiday party since.”

8. The lap dance

“My significant other’s holiday party is NIIICE. Lots of good food, like excessive amounts and lavish displays of every appetizer, main dish, etc. you can think of. The same with the alcohol and open bar, there literally isn’t a bottom shelf option. No Bud Light. No cheap vodka. No Two Buck Chuck wine to be had. The dress code is relaxed and ranges from tailored suits to guys in Carhart hoodies. It’s a work party that we actually look forward to because it’s so laid back and we really do have a good time. The last one was in 2019, and it may be the last one period. Or at least the last one where drinking isn’t monitored.

At the last party, an employee’s guest decided to give his girlfriend a lap dance. In full view of, well, everyone. People around the couple were half-heartedly trying to get him to stop, but they increased to frantic levels of “OMG STOP!” once he took his shirt off and could tell he was fully committed. Eventually someone got him to stop by tackling him to the ground with his pants around his ankles and his belt still in his hand, waving it around like a lasso.”

9. The cookies

“Years ago, as part of our St. Nicholas Day (that’s December 6th) program, we set up a display of typical 1750-style holiday treats, including a plate of cookies. Those cookies were stuck to the plates with “museum putty,” had been sprayed with shellac and were AT LEAST 10 years old – quite possibly much older. The visitors were all told that, unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to serve them any food and that these cookies were for display only.

After the many visitors that day had come and gone, we were putting away the display cookies only to find that…yes, you guessed it, one of them was missing; some guest had sneaked it off the plate and, presumably, eaten it. The thought of actually eating that decade (at least!) old, shellacked cookie was, to put it mildly, unappetizing … but hey, they couldn’t say they weren’t warned!”

10. Most likely to kiss under mistletoe

“We had a people scavenger hunt based on self-volunteered random facts. The facts were pretty innocuous, but one girl used it as an opportunity to flirt with a coworker. Her facts about herself were ‘Won Most Flirtatious in High School,’ ‘Voted as Homecoming Queen,’ and ‘Most likely to kiss under mistletoe.’”

Here are 12 more of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month. (Part one was yesterday.)

1. The cook-off

“We had a chili cook-off and the winner admitted she didn’t make the chili. She got it from Wendy’s.”

2. The sushi

“Before he retired, my spouse worked in a unit that LOOOOVED their potlucks. They’d happily leverage any excuse – or no excuse at all – to have a full-on potluck for the entire division to enjoy, and the bragging rights for whose dish got consumed fastest were hotly contested.

For one potluck, Trudy announced to everyone that she would be bringing in home-made sushi as her contribution. Sushi is a very popular item in our part of the country, and Trudy was happily and confidently expecting to take top honors as having brought the most popular potluck item.

The day of the potluck arrived, and everyone crowded around Trudy as she proudly revealed her carefully prepared delicacy. Because sushi!!

Well. There is sushi, and then there is ‘sushi.’

Trudy’s potluck contribution was string cheese and raw hotdogs wrapped in sushi rice and Nori (the dried seaweed used for sushi), and sliced into pretty little rolls.

Trudy was both baffled and deeply offended that her contribution went largely untouched throughout the potluck. She just could not understand why everyone preferred pulled pork sandwiches to her wonderful homemade ‘sushi.’ And she never forgave my spouse for taking top honors for his pulled pork, the most popular item at that potluck.”

3. The overthrow

“I worked at a company where the office manager took potlucks VERY SERIOUSLY. She had a system of releasing the items required for the potluck by email at 10 am a week before. You would reply as fast as possible ‘claiming’ one item. Available items would be, like, 2 bottles of white wine, 2 bottles of red wine, buns, 2 salads, 3 meat items, 3 desserts, etc. The idea was that we would have a ‘balanced’ potluck with just the right amounts of each kind of food. And she was pretty adamant that we not bring store-bought items.

Well, there were a good many young people, and many busy people, who had no interest in cooking/baking and wanted to bring buns or alcohol. And often we’d be the last to reply to the email and end up with a meat dish, which is more difficult.

Eventually complaints about the strictness of the system led to her having a temper tantrum and refusing to coordinate any longer. So the next potluck was a ‘free for all’ (or true) potluck. That potluck, she pouted and would not come out of her office and we FEASTED on cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, a rotisserie chicken, SO MANY BUNS and SO MUCH ALCOHOL. It was great. Everyone but the office manager found it highly entertaining (and literally intoxicating).

After that, someone else took over organizing, and had a similar but far more lenient system – if someone was passionate about bringing buns, but already 2 people had signed up, then they said, yeah, let’s have lots of buns. And there were plenty of people who were willing to cook entrees or bake desserts and still someone would bring a bag of cheeseburgers and we all enjoyed it. I have fond memories of those potlucks. It was a terribly dysfunctional company filled with wonderful people.”

4. The thief and the hero

“At a temp secretarial job back in the day, the owner had a buffet set up for the employees as an appreciation lunch for completing a particular project (which was why I was there to temp since it was an all-hands/emergency situation). One of the very well-paid senior employees took an entire tray of meatballs and an entire tray of pasta off of the buffet line, after the managers/seniors went, but before any of the other employees, who had to take a slightly later lunch that day. When called on it, he said that he needed it to feed his kids for the week – and the owner said if the only way he could feed his children was by stealing from his job and taking food from lower-paid employees, he was welcome to it. But the owner would be accompanying him to the food stamp office to apply or reporting him to CPS if he refused, because feeding his children should be his first priority and if his children could only be fed by stealing, that wasn’t something that could be ignored. It turned into a public argument about how the owner was shaming him for liking expensive things and needing a little help sometimes. Ended up as the employee’s last day.”

5. The potato salads

“I worked for a congregation for a while that refused to plan their potlucks, everybody just showed up with what they wanted to bring and ‘it all worked out in the end!’

Until the potluck that shall live in infamy, because that was the potluck with, I counted, 14 kinds of potato salad! About three main entrees, and a couple of jello salads for dessert, and other than that it was just all potato salad as far as the eye could see. After that one, they started planning their potlucks and having sign up sheets for bringing entrees versus side dishes versus dessert.”

6. The shrimp and grits

“I used to work in an elementary school, and one of the teachers was proud of his shrimp-and-grits. Like, really REALLY proud. When I started working there (months before the potluck) he started telling me how it’s a tradition and everyone loves his grits. Then leading up to it, he was talking about making his grits. Then during it he was making sure everyone tried his grits. He appeared to be convinced that his grits were the entire raison d’etre for the potluck. And there’s no polite way to say, ‘Actually the grits are good but nobody cares that much,’ so of course I ended up playing into it with, ‘Mm-hmm, yes, very delicious!'”

7. Crockpot discrimination

“Years ago the floor manager banned crockpots from the work floor where teams would use an empty cubicle for team birthdays and celebrations due to ongoing issues. Fast forward a few months; a team brings in a crockpot for an event. An outraged employee approached me yelling that it wasn’t fair the other team could have crockpots and hers couldn’t. She looked me in the eye and completely seriously told me, ‘This is crockpot discrimination!'”

8. The cakes

“My office used to host a huge Octoberfest party for all of our clients and while they catered the actual food, dessert was a chance for the employees to bring a dish if they wanted. One of my coworkers took off two full days to bake cakes … multiple three-layer cakes … making our small department under-staffed. She would always make a big deal about the cakes and how delicious everyone thought they were. They were not. Inevitably, there were one or twice slices taken from each cake but 90% of the cakes were left uneaten, and I was (and clearly still am!) salty that I was left to cover her desk while she baked these *so delicious* cakes.”

9. The salsa

My coworker used to bring her ‘famous salsa’ to every potluck. It was just three different brands of store-bought salsa mixed together. She even made a (completely serious) production of preparing it in the kitchen, like she was Julia Child. Pro tip: The trick was to ‘fold’ the salsa to get the best flavor.”

10. The deviled eggs

“A few years back, my employer held a Thanksgiving potluck. It was my first year there, and my first potluck with this company. A coworker (an older lady nearing retirement) mentioned several times to several people that she’s be bringing her ‘famous’ deviled eggs, claiming they’re always in high demand. Seemed legit, right? Potluck day arrived and she made a point to tell me to grab a deviled egg before they ran out. I didn’t notice them at first because they did not look like traditional deviled eggs — they were … bright yellow? And flat on top?? I was very confused, but her enthusiasm sold me. I added one to my plate, and thankfully she left the room before I took a bite because as it turns out, her ‘famous deviled eggs’ were just hard-boiled eggs cut in half with mustard on top.”

11. Another hero

“There is a very famous deli/bakery in my town. Their goods are highly prized and it’s always special when an employer orders from them for staff.

Pre-pandemic, my larger division moved to new office space and the building management ordered trays of brownies from there to welcome us. My physical office was near the kitchen and I witnessed someone from another group walk by with the entire tray that had been put out for the whole floor and carry it back to his desk. There were probably at least 75 brownies on it. Soon I heard everyone being very confused that we were promised brownies and there were none to be had. This lead to people from our floor going to other floors to find brownies, which caused its own drama.

Finally, when I saw the same guy walk past my office again on his way to a meeting, I ran to his cube, grabbed the tray, and placed it back in the kitchen for everyone to enjoy as intended.”

12. The pie drama

“During our first annual Pi Day Pie Contest, people were asked to bring in a pie to share and the best would win a prize (an elaborately decorated pie tin that is still lurking in our office and gets passed around each year).

That was it. That was all the info and all the rules provided. Being an office full of apparently chaos loving maniacs, we had multiple normal pies, some homemade and some store-bought masquerading as homemade, at least one pizza, and a tray of meat pies (pasties).

The event organizers were not amused as store-bought pies, pizza, and non-dessert pies were OBVIOUSLY disqualified as not being in the spirit of the contest. Except at no point had the ‘rules’ said anything about pies being dessert and homemade only. And so started a showdown of truly epic proportions.

Eventually it was agreed for this, the first year, all pies would be considered. But detailed rules as to what constituted a pie were negotiated for all subsequent years culminating in them having to be dessert and in a pie tin. Store bought were still allowed – for reasons – but had to be labelled as such.

In year two we had at least one cheesecake as some people insisted on pushing the boundaries of what constitutes pie.”

All this week to get us in the holiday spirit, I’m going to be featuring holiday stories readers have shared here in the past … and then updates season will start next week!

To kick us off, here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month. (There were so many great stories from that post that I’m splitting this into two parts, with the second part coming tomorrow.)

1. The tyrant

“Currently employed at a very dysfunctional medical office (and seeking other employment), and this is just the cherry on top. The following is from an email about Thanksgiving potluck at the main office (our satellite office is an afterthought).

Greetings Staff,

Can you believe Thanksgiving is literally around the corner? In the past 3 years [COMPANY] has weathered all kinds of storms and with two years and ongoing with COVID we are extremely thankful and grateful. Please join [COMPANY] in our Thanksgiving Celebration family style luncheon this year at the office on November 18 from 12pm-2pm.

To be prepare for the luncheon, I need everyone to do the following:

1. RSVP no later than Wednesday, 11/9 at 12 noon.

2. Along with your RSVP, start thinking of a dish that you can prepare and share.

3. If you are not a good cook OR have cats or dogs that shed, please opt out of food preparation. I recommend you bring drinks, napkins or a purchased dessert.

4. Note on drinks- NO off brand sodas allowed. That is Food Lion, Walmart, store brand sodas, etc. We want the type you see in Soda Vending Machines.

5. Note on desserts. If you are not baking yourself, then do us the favor of NOT purchasing store brand cookies or cakes. Please go to a bakery. This is meant to be a special event.

6. Finally, I will have final say on if a dish is approved or not. Please don’t take offense, I just have a vision of the types of dishes I would prefer. Isn’t Thanksgiving all about good food and communion?

7. Just to remind you, [COMPANY] will provide all the meats – Honey baked Ham, and Turkey. We will need the following categories of food contributed by you:

We will have a limit on the number of dish categories so sign up fast with your favorite dish or contribution.”

2. The jazz casserole

“I worked with a very sweet older lady who always hyped up her special casserole for potlucks in this same way. She called it ‘Jazz!!’ casserole and always made jazz-hands when she said the name, which she pronounced with a drawn out A sound, like she was in the cast of Chicago doing a musical number. It was basically pasta and cream of mushroom soup, super boring and not jazzy at all. She was so sweet that everyone took a little bit to be mannerly and told her it was good, which meant that she kept on bringing it to every potluck until she retired.”

3. Magic

“I once worked at a small nonprofit with a lot of team spirit — people truly seemed to love staff gatherings, staff outings, etc. We voluntarily did all-staff potlucks 2 or 3 times per year, people often brought in treats for each other’s birthdays, etc. Except for a coworker who I will refer to ask Magic Mike. Magic Mike was an enthusiastic participant in all of these gatherings but insisted he didn’t know how to cook or bake at all. Instead of doing the logical thing and just bringing store-bought treats or beverages, on multiple occasions he brought … magic. To the potluck. As in, after everyone had their plates and was enjoying the food and socializing, he would call for everyone’s attention and perform magic tricks as his contribution. So all of us who had taken the time to buy groceries, cook something special, and shlep it into the office had to stop enjoying the party to watch Magic Mike perform.”

4. Pizza games

“We had Pizza Fridays over the summer. It started out fine, but after the first two weeks it became ‘The Hunger Games.’ The pies were put in a common area and you were to get a slice or two. Folks started pushing and shoving and grabbing whole pies. It even got to the point where folks would wait at the service elevator and grab pies off of the delivery guy’s cart.”

5. The shrimp

“At a former job, the division I worked in had an annual holiday potluck. One year a woman brought in shrimp dip for the potluck. Every single person who ate her dip wound up getting ill to some extent; one person got so sick he had to be hospitalized. We later learned she had taken the shrimp out the day before, left them in her sink all day and overnight to thaw, and mixed up the dip in the morning before she came to work. I still get nauseated even thinking about it.”

6. The ganache

“For my last job’s Holiday Potluck, I planned on bringing my favourite brownies to work, but wanted to make them extra special. I decided to add chocolate ganache to the top for some razzle dazzle, but was a procrastinator and did it 45 minutes before I needed to leave for work. I’d never made ganache before and did not make it correctly. It was still hot as I loaded it into my car, then spilled about 90% of the hot chocolate ganache directly onto my car seat. It looked like someone had the worst diarrhea of their life in my back seat for weeks until I got it professionally detailed.

Brownies were still delicious though.”

7. The inequity

“Early on in my career, I was on a team with three assistants and 6-7 middle managers. My team would do potluck holiday parties where they would decide on a theme that would dictate the menu. Unfortunately, they would create the menu and sign-up sheet during the managers’ meeting. So the managers who made 50-90% more than the assistants would sign up for plates, napkins, sparkling cider, etc.

The three assistants would be left to fill in the rest of the sheet which would include charcuterie boards, a gourmet hot chocolate bar, local pastries (from a specific store), and other more expensive options. Some of them really thought we all loved doing the more complicated stuff since one assistant liked cooking and I occasionally used Pinterest on my lunch breaks. It took some of those in middle management YEARS to realize how bad the optics were forcing the assistants to use their own money and personal time to make them charcuterie.”

8. The cook-off

“Our office had a chili cook-off once. The morning of the potluck, it was announced that due to inclement winter weather and some people not being able to make it into the office, the potluck was canceled. Most people took this news with a normal level of disappointment. A colleague of mine, Barb, had a crockpot of chili cooking at the office. Chaos erupted when Barb read the cancellation email. Yelling, punching things at her desk, crying, screaming, etc. She called HR (who had decided to cancel the potluck, the perpetrator in Barb’s mind) and chewed them out abusively over the phone, and then called her husband to blow off steam, and a handful of others. She yelled and cried at the office for 3 or 4 hours. (It was awful and I complained to her boss.) She ended up demanding that HR reimburse her for the chili ingredients, and they did.

At future potlucks, Barb proudly announced to anyone nearby on potluck day that she didn’t bring anything to the potluck. According to her, she had special permission from HR to attend potlucks without contributing to food (as was the office etiquette) as retribution for how they ‘screwed her over.’ We never had a chili cook-off again.”

9. The sliders

“A coworker went to the trouble of getting ~40 McDonald’s dollar-menu hamburgers, unwrapping them all, and trying to pass them off as freshly homemade sliders.”

10. The salad

“Our universally hated lab tech was mulling out loud what he should bring to a company-wide winter holiday potluck. He did not know how to cook, so we offered up many ‘safe’ suggestions (sodas, crackers and cheese, chips, etc.), all of which he nixed. He figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make a tossed salad.

He proceeds to ask everyone in the lab what ingredients everyone would like in this salad he would make for us. Suggestions are made for things like romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, mushrooms, croutons, avocados … wait. Avocados? Well, all right, he’ll get an avocado for the salad. Just for us.

Next day is the potluck. Lab tech comes in with a huge metal bowl, filled to the brim. He removes many of the refrigerated potluck items from the lunchroom refrigerator to accommodate this bowl. Someone discovers this and manages to return everything to the refrigerator, wedging dishes in around this bowl.

Then lab tech starts the day by complaining about this salad.

First, it’s, ‘Okay everyone, I brought a bunch of salad and I expect everyone to eat it. All right? I got most everything you wanted.’

Then he starts grousing about the cost of the ingredients. The mushrooms were omitted because of cost. He almost used CANNED tomatoes instead of fresh because canned was cheaper. Who even thinks of using canned tomatoes in a tossed salad?

Finally, he says he’s very tired, having stayed up ‘all night’ to cut up the salad components. ‘Especially that avocado,’ he griped. ‘That skin was murder to cut up. Almost lost a finger!’

A voice from the next bench asks, ‘You do know that the skin is inedible, right?’

‘Oh, of course, everyone knows that!’

Later that morning someone rushes into the lab to alert everyone to come to the lunchroom.

‘You gotta see this!’

Our lab tech has dumped the entire contents of his salad bowl all over the lunchroom table. Yes, the table from one end to the other is covered in greens. He’s fingering every piece, searching for the avocado, which had been cut into odd-shaped bits smaller than an orange seed. Then trimming off any hint of skin from each itty-bitty piece and returning it to the bowl. He’s so intent on this he doesn’t see the half-dozen faces watching this from the doorway.

We pass the word: Do NOT eat the tossed salad.

So potluck time comes, and no one is touching the salad. A few reach for the tongs, but are stopped and ushered along to the next food items. Later we explain why.

Next day, lab tech chews us out for the expense incurred on this salad. Says we should all reimburse him for what he spent on ‘your salad.'”

11. The bourbon balls

“Many years ago, I worked at the corporate office of a regional retailer. I worked closely with the senior VP, and while he could be a pill at times, I genuinely liked the guy.

One year, I found a recipe for bourbon balls that I decided to make up for the holidays. Knowing that the SVP had a giant sweet tooth and also that he was very fond of bourbon, I brought him a container of several dozen bourbon balls, thinking (foolishly) that he’d enjoy them over the course of several days.

He did not spread them out over several days. He chomped through the entire container in a single afternoon, ingesting a significant amount of bourbon and a whole lot of chocolate in the process.

As it happened, that day turned out to be the day the boss was going through the list of employees to decide how much each of us would get for a year-end bonus. And everyone was quite astounded that year at his unaccustomed generosity in deciding the bonus amounts.

For some reason, every year after that, multiple co-workers would pull me aside in early December to urge me to make up another batch of bourbon balls for the SVP the week before Christmas.”

12. The cake

“We have occasional student externs spend a few weeks’ rotation with us. We usually get a cake or something for everybody on their last day and everybody signs a card.

One student gushed, ‘Oh, wow, you guys! Thank you so much!’ and picked up the entire cake and walked out with it. We all just stood there with our mouths hanging open.

I mean … it’s not like we spelled out that this was a going-away party and these were refreshments to share with everybody, but really. Years later, the only thing anybody remembered about this student was that she was the one that walked out with the cake.”