The Office Christmas Party...

ChrisLS

...a good or bad thing? :?: :?: Often the chance to make a complete bottom of ones self.

pneumatic

. . . is the best reason to be self-employed. You don't have to face being coerced into making an utter tit of yourself in the name of teambuilding.

iainf72

As I mentioned in other thread, I'm indifferent. I don't enjoy parties so I don't go. Being expected to go, or even worse, being expected to be grateful I can't stand.

suze

It's bad enough working with some of the people here, let alone try and be nice to them with a glass of cheap white wine.

ivancarlos

The best thing is to start off the way you mean to continue. If you don't go to anything no-one expects you.

FatBlokeFromFelixstowe

suze wrote:

It's bad enough working with some of the people here, let alone try and be nice to them with a glass of cheap white wine.

How very true

SteveR_100Milers

I guess I'm lucky, we are a smallish team (18) and mostly get on. We all know each other's egos etc so there's few surprises after a few beers. Really enjoy the Xmas parties, chance to unwind and have a great evening after we have worked so damn hard all year.

peanut

ho ho ho! I'm self employed and anti social so I don't even have to make the effort any more.
Because I can't drink I've always been teetotal and I hate ciggy smoke so have avoided all social events.
I'm now a hermit :roll:

nwallace

I'm designated driver at all work nights out since I don't bother drinking much any more. Perfect for when someone else asks why the the bouncers were carrying a toilet door out of the bogs and round the back of the pub.

shazzz

I quite like the people I work with so the office Christmas party is usually a good afternoon / evening - a chance to blow off a bit of steam. We;ve had a shockingly tough year so far so I imagine the party budget will be quite generous - bring on those cocktails!!!

One of my great regrets is that I've never seen or participated in the liebfraumilch fuelled, photocopier and fight behaviour that is the office party stereotype. Does this stuff actually happen or do I just work with a load of boring farts???

vermooten

I misbehaved so badly at our 2005 Xmas party that I didn't drink again for over a year. True.

popette

vermooten wrote:

I misbehaved so badly at our 2005 Xmas party that I didn't drink again for over a year. True.

Details please??

Ken Night

vermooten wrote:

I misbehaved so badly at our 2005 Xmas party that I didn't drink again for over a year. True.

C'mon Andy....do tell

markyboy2005

My Christmas party will be quiet this year.......working in the most populated Muslim country in the world will tend to curtail a drinking session in the name of Baby Jesus! :?

Instead I'll bugger off somewhere warm with the wife and kids.

We had a big holiday season here at the start of October - it is called Lebaron and celebrates the end of fasting season and the Idil Fitri holiday.

Very similar to our Christmas - lots of visiting family, party's (with no alcohol of course) and gorging on too much food, even the shops had "idil Fitri sales".

I quite enjoyed it except the actual day of Idil Fitri when the Mosques belted out at full blast for a 24 hour period - we have 4 mosques on each corner of the complex we live in - quadrophonic wailing for 24 hours, I almost snapped. :twisted:

chrisjsmith

It's like that in Hounslow as well :P

Christmas parties are bad. I found my immediate colleague having sex with the secretary out the back of the "establishment" we went to. The funny part is that they were in a skip full of food rubbish. Not only that but I was cautioned for weeing up Foxtons in Notting Hill gate approximately 2 hours later

Now I stay at home.

ColinJ

The one time I didn't listen to my better judgement and actually went to the office do, I encountered a group of drunken women trying to remove the boxer shorts of a guy I worked with while he was still wearing his trousers :shock: ! I supped up and went home...

iainf72

chrisjsmith wrote:

Not only that but I was cautioned for weeing up Foxtons in Notting Hill gate approximately 2 hours later

Weeing up Foxtons? Someone should've shook your hand!

I worked somewhere once where a guy got caught with another fella in the toilets at Xmas do. One of them was openly "out" but the other guy appeared to get boozed up and decided it was a good time to experiment.

popette

iainf72 wrote:

chrisjsmith wrote:

Not only that but I was cautioned for weeing up Foxtons in Notting Hill gate approximately 2 hours later

Weeing up Foxtons? Someone should've shook your hand!

I worked somewhere once where a guy got caught with another fella in the toilets at Xmas do. One of them was openly "out" but the other guy appeared to get boozed up and decided it was a good time to experiment.

+

It wasn't vermooten was it?

chrisjsmith

I wouldn't have shook my hand after weeing - it had wee on it.

shazzz

chrisjsmith wrote:

I wouldn't have shook my hand after weeing - it had wee on it.

Then you should have shaken it to get the wee off.

hammerite

I normally get stupidly drunk and suffer from alcohol induced amnesia, I then worry until I'm back at work that I may have offended anyone or done something stupid. Unnecessarily so I usually I haven't done anything naughty justy been a bit exhuberant!

This year I have my first Christmas office party that partners are invited to, so this could be interesting!!

popette

hammerite wrote:

I normally get stupidly drunk and suffer from alcohol induced amnesia, I then worry until I'm back at work that I may have offended anyone or done something stupid. Unnecessarily so I usually I haven't done anything naughty justy been a bit exhuberant!

This year I have my first Christmas office party that partners are invited to, so this could be interesting!!

It's awful when something suddenly comes back to you and you think "did I REALLY do that?"

vermooten

popette wrote:

Details please??

Ken Night wrote:

C'mon Andy....do tell

My lips are sealed for all eternity, but if you use your imagination you'll probably be right. Even now I wake up screaming in the night as I recall some of what went on. Suffice to say I'll be wearing a Hannibal Lecter style protection mask at this year's do.

popette

vermooten wrote:

popette wrote:

Details please??

Ken Night wrote:

C'mon Andy....do tell

My lips are sealed for all eternity, but if you use your imagination you'll probably be right. Even now I wake up screaming in the night as I recall some of what went on. Suffice to say I'll be wearing a Hannibal Lecter style protection mask at this year's do.

Can you give us a clue?

SteveR_100Milers

The hannibal mask gives a strong clue, so strong there is a mental image that I really want to get out of my head right now! Tell me you didn't do that...surely not!!?? :shock:

shazzz

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

The hannibal mask gives a strong clue, so strong there is a mental image that I really want to get out of my head right now! Tell me you didn't do that...surely not!!?? :shock:

Flay the boss and wear his face as a party mask???

hammerite

shazzz wrote:

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

The hannibal mask gives a strong clue, so strong there is a mental image that I really want to get out of my head right now! Tell me you didn't do that...surely not!!?? :shock:

Flay the boss and wear his face as a party mask???

and then gave pay rises to the people you liked and the sack to people you didn't?

SteveR_100Milers

shazzz wrote:

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

The hannibal mask gives a strong clue, so strong there is a mental image that I really want to get out of my head right now! Tell me you didn't do that...surely not!!?? :shock:

Flay the boss and wear his face as a party mask???

No!! It's much much worse than that!!!

ricadus

I remember one particularly long boozy Xmas lunch, on a Friday, after we had surpassed the sales target for the end of the year – despite getting a measly bonus and there being deadlock in the ongoing pay negotiations – so we were let off the leash to celebrate. The division MD took us all (about 60 people) out to a restaurant in Kensington, then we were treated to a long drink-fuelled afternoon.

Just before lunch that morning we had all received a company-wide email announcing the apparently momentous signing of a new, possibly best-selling author and his new book Artemis Fowl. A guaranteed winner apparently. The marketing hype made it sound awful.

During dessert, talk drifted from how badly we were all paid for our efforts towards this ghastly sounding kids book, that we had sensed from the marketing-fluff was some kind of second rate Roald Dahl effort, and how childrens stories are nowadays often derivative and backward-looking etc, etc. – or just cr@p.

It seems that at some point one of the senior copy-editors, who was a bit of a leftie and the Union rep, staggered back to the office, opened the email and then wrote out a rant basically slamming the book and the dumbing-down money culture behind it – and clicked "Reply All".

:roll:

"Reply All" in this case was the entire Penguin UK network, including all contracted sales people, contacts at important larger customers (e.g. WHSmiths and Waterstones) and foreign divisions where the book may also appear (Penguin USA, Penguin Australia, etc, etc).

On Saturday morning, nursing a hangover and a sense of impending doom, he gone in and vainly tried to revoke the email, hoping that buried somewhere in Microsoft Outlook is such a feature – no such luck.

How he didn't get sacked, I have no idea. I do know that he was brilliant at his job, so assuming the department had been already downsized to a skeletal structure perhaps he was just too important to get rid of.

popette

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

shazzz wrote:

SteveR_100Milers wrote:

The hannibal mask gives a strong clue, so strong there is a mental image that I really want to get out of my head right now! Tell me you didn't do that...surely not!!?? :shock:

Flay the boss and wear his face as a party mask???

No!! It's much much worse than that!!!

what what what??

daniel_b

Ricadus - is thet Penguin as in on the Strand?

I used to work in that very building if it was, lovely building, great location 8)

Used to enjoy my walk down the embankment by the river - oh well

Dan