Ask a Manager

It’s more holiday stories! Tradition dictates that as we head into the holiday season, we must revisit holiday stories previously shared by readers. Here are some favorites.

1. The 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 two or three 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.  (2022)

2. The skeletons

I was working from home on Halloween when an email was sent to the whole department about free Halloween goodie bags for everyone in the office. Which was then closely followed by an email explaining that the skeletons were not edible! I spent the rest of the day imagining different ways someone might accidentally eat a plastic skeleton.  (2023)

3. The audit manuals

We were doing one of those stealing swaps and someone picked and opened a large box. Which turned out to contain one of our (very extensive) audit manuals! The person who gave the gift was out sick and none of us could understand the gift at all. A third person nicely stole it and that was the end of that (or so we thought).

The next time the gift giver was in, they innocently asked the final holder of the manual if they had enjoyed the movie theater certificates. Turns out there was about $50 worth of free tickets hidden IN the audit manual which has been returned to the reference shelf with all the OTHER COPIES! There was a grand hunt which finally unearthed the certificates.  (2023)

4. 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.  (2022)

5. The bread pudding

I make an awesome bread pudding, if I do say so myself. The reason it’s so awesome is I make it using pound cake. At a long ago job, I took it to the first holiday potluck I attended there. I brought along copies of the recipe because hey, someone always asks for it. The wicked witch of the finance department (I’ve worked with many lovely finance departments — she drove off so many employees in her department, including three finance directors in the five years I worked there, but that’s another story) raised a stink about how it was NOT bread pudding – it had no bread! And there is no such thing as cake pudding, what was I trying to pull? She accused me of trying to invent something and it just shouldn’t be done, especially at a potluck where if you sign up for a dessert, you must bring a traditional potluck dessert, not something made up!

In the days ahead, she filed a complaint with HR as after reading the recipe closely, she discovered I used a boxed pound cake mix and recommended a specific generic brand that, in my opinion, made a fantastic pound cake. The HR director danced around a strong suggestion that in future I not bring a bread pudding made with pound cake – this was a city government and there were unions involved and finance witch spent a great deal of time being counseled but never crossed a line to anything fireable.

So next year, I brought a bread pudding made with chocolate croissants. There was a hissy fit of epic proportions but every crumb of my bread pudding was gone by the end of the potluck.  (2023)

(The recipe is here.)

6. The apricots

My BigLaw firm, pre-2008-recession, threw serious events/parties. At one event for “alums” (i.e., for firm lawyers to schmooze with/try and get business from former firm attorneys now in house), every conference room on our meeting floor was a different theme. I was talking to a friend in the cheese room (which had assorted platters overflowing with cheeses, crackers, nuts, dried fruits, etc.) and saw my friend’s eyes go wide as she hissed, “Be casual, but turn around slowly.” I did, just in time to see a partner who was the head of her practice group and easily making a few million dollars a year tip the ENTIRE PLATTER of dried apricots into her designer bag. It had to have been several pounds worth. She then casually turned and walked out of the room. We speculated about “Tammy” and why the heck she needed so many apricots for years.  (2023)

7. Christmas tantrum

A woman who had worked at our office for more than twenty years pouted and threw tantrums like a child if she didn’t win a door prize at the annual Christmas dinner. Every time someone else’s name was randomly drawn, she would yell, ‘FIX!”’ or ‘CHEAT!’ or something similar. And one year, she just snatched a prize she really wanted from the table and told the person who won the prize, ‘I DESERVE this,’ and walked away with it.  (2014)

8. The engineers

I love the engineering department at my old job for being The Most Engineers.

Their holiday gift exchange is: everyone who wishes to participate brings a $15 gift card. The gift cards are placed in a bowl. Everyone removes one (1) gift card. End of exchange.

Last year they had a festive holiday presentation on environmental compliance policies because ‘everyone’s already in the same room.’ The compliance people put some holly on the first page of the PowerPoint.  (2022)

9. The boat

I was stuck on a boat party once, and there was no escape, they made sure of that. Floating around Sydney Harbor, and it was supposed to end at midnight, just all the people in the world I liked the least, compulsory attendance, and a boss patrolling the ship to make sure no one found anywhere to hide.

I was in total distress (social anxiety), trying not to cry, shaking, and trying to hide in the toilet was no good as it was below the water line and just being there made me violently ill.

At one point a guy had an accident and thought he’d broken his arm, so the boat pulled to the pier to let him off, but they had security guards to make sure no one else left the boat. As the boat pulled away again, with the bosses saying they were going to party on to morning and we had no choice in the matter, I put my shoes in my handbag, put the handbag in my mouth, and dived into the harbor, wearing a long black evening dress. In my mind, everything I bumped into was a shark!

I slopped up the stairs into the Sydney Opera House and tried to get a bit dry in their bathroom, and told concerned strangers I’d “fallen” into the harbor. Taxi home. Blissful escape. I have never attended a single work Christmas party since.  (2013)

10. The purses

One year, my boss’ uncle had a job as a distributor for Coach (the purse company). He and the partner of the law firm decided to use the discount to get myself and our secretary Coach purses for Christmas. In order to find out what we wanted, he asked us what kind of purse we suggested for his girlfriend.

The secretary immediately printed out her favorite purse on the Coach website and gave it to him. I, however, was focused on helping him find the perfect purse for his girlfriend. So I quizzed him incessantly on the size, shape and color of his girlfriend’s current purse. He ‘didn’t know’ and kept asking me, ‘But what do YOU like?’ which I refused to answer because “purses are very personal and every woman has a preference.” Finally, I told him to look at her current purse and get her something similar in size and shape and color.

He took my advice and bought me the Coach version of my then-current purse. (I loved it!) When he gave it to me, he expressed his (comical) annoyance at me for not playing along, but then thanked me for educating him on how to buy a purse for his girlfriend. (She loved hers too! And she’s now his wife.)  (2022)

Over the years, readers have submitted a tremendous number of amusing stories about holidays at work. Here are some of my favorites.

1. 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.  (2022)

2. The divinity candy

Around the holidays, it’s not unusual for our office break room to contain an assortment of treats gifted to us from vendors or customers. Several years ago during this most festive time of year, I noticed a tray of what looked like divinity candy sitting out on the break room table. Divinity is not my favorite holiday candy, but it was early in the season, and the pickings were slim, so I decided to have a piece. Just as I took a bite, a coworker walked in and said, “Oh! You’re trying out my candy – let me know what you think of it!”

By this time the bite had well and truly settled on my palate, and let me tell you, I had opinions. Being a polite sort of person in real life, I was hesitant to tell her what I thought (which would have been difficult without swallowing, which was not an option at this point), but I can tell you – it tasted like a dog turd rolled in powdered sugar. Or what I assume a dog turd would taste like, having never sampled a dog turd myself. I stepped around my coworker to grab a paper towel to ostensibly wipe my mouth (and discreetly spit out the offending “candy’), then turned back around to address my coworker. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like it,” says I, in what I hope was a pleasant voice. “What’s it called?” Coworker replies, “I haven’t really thought of a name for it – it’s just something I experimented with.” Then she tells me how she made it.

Y’all. It was mashed potatoes. And not even real potatoes, but the boxed potato flakes. Prepared in the normal way with butter, milk and salt, then mixed with peanut butter, Karo syrup, and powdered sugar, then rolled in another healthy dose of powdered sugar. Dear coworker had made too many mashed potatoes for dinner the night before, and in an effort not to waste food, had decided to try her hand as a confectioner. I’m having flashbacks of the nauseating flavor and texture just typing this out. So gross. So, so gross. I mumbled something polite that probably came out as more of an “Oh! Hrrmm, interesting” or similar, then bolted from the room to warn the rest of my coworkers NOT to try the “divinity” in the break room.  (2023)

3. The baby boom

My former company had a fancy dinner at a hotel party with an open bar. It was a great event. Many people got hotel rooms but my spouse and I went home. I must have missed something because HR sent out an email saying that in the future there would be a two drink limit, beer and wine only, no shots or hard liquor.

And as a side note, almost exactly 9 months later there was a minor baby boom in the company.  (2022)

4. The bacon monitor

In one of my last jobs, our party planning committee, used to do company-wide catering for most major holidays. I swear, every single time we did a breakfast one and included bacon, we always had to have a member of the committee stand watch as the ‘bacon monitor’ and count how many pieces of bacon each person had. Apparently, a few years before I started, some people would pile a plate full of nothing but bacon, and no one else would get any.  (2017)

5. The homemade gifts

I worked in the children’s department of a public library for many years. Being quirky, creative people, we decided that our department of 7-9 (depending on year) would hand-make ornaments for one another each year, and unwrap them together at a mini party the day before the holiday when the department was always dead. We would bring homemade snacks too, so it was all good fun. Typically these ornaments consisted of a funny saying or item we encountered over our year in the department (hilarity happens surprisingly often as a public servant).

One year, my coworker painted the silhouette of our boss (who we had caught sleeping in their office chair once), which was received with cacophonous laughter. Another year, a woman had blatantly sworn up and down to one coworker that a part of one of the toy food kits her kids took home had never existed … “I remember there was no potato!” About a week later, she silently snuck into our department one afternoon, dropped the offending plastic potato on our desk without a word, and slunk out. So my other coworker (who had already deleted the plastic potato from our kit) poked a hole in it, strung it up, and wrote “There was No Potato!” on it for her gift recipient that year. Hilarious. So figure simple, silly things like that were always the basis for the ornaments.

But the one that takes the cake, for all the years before and after, was the “Snowman” cookie cutter. We loaned out cookie cutter kits to the general public. This was always met with a certain level of squick, since who knew if they were ever washed before or after, but they were one of our highest circulating items. One day, a woman came up to the counter to check out a package of Christmas themed cutters. She was ahem’ing quite loudly so me and my coworker went to check it out. Immediately we noticed the problem. Someone, possibly months or years prior, had taken the snowman out of the bag and re-bent it for a bachelorette or something similar. We knew this because upon closer inspection, the snowman was now a penis.

Both of us laughed so hard we almost peed our pants. We deleted the “Snowman” from the kit and let the woman check out the rest of the items. Why she still wanted to bake cookies with her kids using THAT set, knowing what it was previously used for, was beyond us. All was well for many months until our gift exchange … when we discovered someone on staff had not only rescued the penis cookie cutter from our trash, but had tied a glittery ribbon on it, and wrapped it up as their gift that year! Several of us burst into hysterics and one super conservative person was very much not amused.

More stringent guidelines about what constituted a handmade gift followed in years after.  (2023)

6. The revenge

A coworker at a place I used to work at got fired shortly before Christmas. On the day of the holiday party, while all the remaining employees were at the restaurant, she snuck into the office and glued all the mugs in the break room to the floor.  (2023)

7. 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.  (2022)

8. 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.  (2017)

9. The cookies

When I was fresh out of college, I worked in a government office that was cuckoo for Christmas: a secret Santa ornament exchange, a big holiday party, a ladies-only holiday party (???), and cookie day. Legend day has it that in past years, the office had several women who loved to bake and got a real kick out of making one million (metaphorically, but close enough) cookies, then spending a lunch break piling them into huge gift platters and distributing them to all the other departments. Although these women had all since retired, the tradition had continued and I received an email requesting I bring in TEN BATCHES of cookies for cookie day. This email only went out to the women in the office, and this industry at the time skewed heavily towards men so that was maybe 20% of the office.

I actually love to bake, but gritted my teeth a little over the sexism of only asking the women. Even more concerning was the cost – I’d only been working full time for 3 months and December was coming in expensive, 10 batches was going to be a stretch. But the email reminders were increasingly filled with pressure to participate, reminders to ‘clear your weekend!’ to bake cookies. It was a brand spanking new job, my first full time one ever, so I decided I could afford to make six batches and if anybody had the nerve to hassle me about it further they could take it up with payroll.

Cookie day rolled around and it turned out I wasn’t the only one resentful of being strong-armed to “bake all weekend” for strangers in other departments. My coworker walked in late while everybody (every woman, anyways) was already plating, didn’t say a word and dropped one lone box of Oreos on the table. And I mean DROPPED, from a foot or more above the table so it landed with a thud that got everybody’s attention. Then she turned on her heel and left. It’s been 15 years and I have never seen another action as perfectly, beautifully passive aggressive. It still makes me laugh 15 years later.  (2023)

10. The cursed walk

A friend’s company always does their year end party in January for less stress and more bang for their buck. The first year I went, it was roaring 20’s themed in a rented out basement night club. I did multiple shots of tequila, including while linking arms with their CEO. We rallied friend’s department to the 24-hour diner three blocks away, and during that walk: three people got lost and called multiple times because they couldn’t figure out how to pull up google maps, the team lead started accusing us of kidnapping him, then puked on my shoes, then accused me of stealing his phone while trying to call his cab, resulting in an awkward conversation with a passing cop. The next year, it was a daytime event with drink tickets and a very specific “NO SHOTS, not even if you pay out of pocket” rule, complete with signs on the bar.  (2023)

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

To kick us off, here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month.

1. The chili cook-off

I worked for a nonprofit, and every year there was a few months long period where every department would do some kind of fundraiser for the nonprofit. My department was famous for a lunchtime chili cook-off that included, of course, voting for a winner. It was my first year there, and my boss kept talking about how popular the chili cook-off was. We were advised we needed to quadruple our normal recipe to have enough for everyone.

One coworker launched in right away with BIG talk about her recipe. And the day of the cook-off, she kept going around and checking out the competition and making allusions to her to secret ingredients. When the judging was over, we learned that she won and she was ecstatic … but then it came out that she’d been buying votes all afternoon! When the accusations were revealed, she refused to give up the trophy.

Oh, and remember the quadruple recipes. Turns out that was bananas, and since everybody ate only a couple spoonfuls of each chili, there was an exorbitant amount left over. Another coworker carried her crockpot of leftovers back to her car and spilled that triple recipe of chili all over it.

2. The boat

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

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

3. The banana

At my old workplace we would have potlucks “just because.” People who wanted to participate could, but no pressure if you didn’t want to. It was generally understood that in order to participate, you needed to bring something. One coworker clearly wanted to eat, but didn’t actually want to contribute. So what did she bring to put on the potluck table?

A single banana.

4. The grill guy

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

5. The bites

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

6. The horse hair cake

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

7. The noon tradition

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

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

8. The cheesecake

I had a coworker who just hated me right off the bat. I never did anything to her but I seemed to be a special target for her.

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

9. The gasoline

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

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

10. Waffle Wednesdays

My office had waffle Wednesdays once a month for years. It had all the executive leadership manning the line cooking waffles, pancakes, with one table/griddle dedicated to gluten-free food as we had a few celiacs. They would also do all the prep, purchasing and clean-up (the actual execs not their admin staff), although many people would volunteer to help clean-up and often get a bit more chat time in with the execs. There were also fruit platters and whole fruit if you were vegetarian and wanted a bit more, as well as various kinds of muffins that were vegan. Anytime a food restriction was brought up, they would bring in food specific to that person that was always respected. People were welcome to bring in their own food as well, to accommodate their restrictions or even just come by and have a tea or coffee and not eat.
Zero pressure.

Every Wednesday the entire building smelled of eggs, waffles and bacon. It also allowed people face-time with the executives that they would never otherwise meet. the whole thing ran about 2-3 hours, and the front doors were scheduled around that so even the front-line staff could participate. It was lovely.