This post, the Hanukkah balls, the swingers, and other tales of holiday woes , was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
All this week I’m going to be sharing holiday stories from years past … and then updates season starts next week! To kick us off…
1. Hanukkah balls
“I am a Jewish 26-year-old. I’ve been on the job about a year, and I moved from a large city to a smaller suburb of New York City for this job. My family is not super religious but we certainly never celebrated Christmas growing up.
My boss, a usually nice lady, has taken it upon herself to educate me about Christmas this season. She is super into the holidays, which I appreciated for Halloween, but has been declaring to the whole office how this is ‘Jane’s First Christmas’ and taking that opportunity to spend well over $500 on Christmas decorations which she has strategically placed mostly around her and my office. She has bought me my own Christmas stocking and ornament which says ‘Jane’s first Christmas’ with a date and her signature on it. She has placed red velvet bows around anything they will stick to and she has replaced our office coffee K-cups with eggnog. She has put up lights in the hallways and decked my door with some kind of tinsel that keeps sticking to my clothes and following me home.
She keeps reminding me what ornaments are and is amazed when I told her that I know the words to some Christmas songs.
She also has invited me to her home for Christmas because ‘no one should celebrate their first Christmas by themselves.’ When I mentioned something about celebrating Hanukkah instead of Christmas, she went out and bought this Hanukkah inspired contraption, which was really just eight round traditional ornaments with a light in each of them. She said they were Hanukkah balls.”
2. The swingers
“In my mid-20s, I worked in a fairly conservative accounting department (think government contractor engineering firm) but we had a couple of strange characters. I’d been warned about one mid-50s accounts payable lady, that she was ‘Very Social.’ She wasn’t popular in the department, but was nice enough at work, so I didn’t think anything of it.
Being the youngest and lowest rank in the department, my husband and I were seated at the ‘accounting outcasts’ table, which included Very Social and her husband. The whole party was super-swanky. Very Social and her husband were good company, complimentary, and didn’t ping ANY of my warning systems…
…right up until she learned that my husband was a welder. Then she let out a delighted squeal and asked him to build her custom steel people-sized cages, with brackets for harness hooks. She also let us know they were VERY interested in having us over try out their other “equipment” for additional Christmas Merriment.
That Christmas I learned ‘Very Social’ = Unabashedly Enthusiastic Swingers into BDSM.”
This follow-up added further details:
“We turned her down, and she was still very nice. She even hand-quilted a baby blanket for my second child.
Data entry, people cages, nipple clamps, hand-embroidered baby quilts. She was very well-rounded for an accountant.”
3. The doobies
“A few years ago my husband was working for large domain company… to remain nameless. They host large fancy blacktie indoor christmas parties each year with special, secret performers. Big name acts like Ludicris, Pitbull, Fall Out Boy, etc. There’s food and fun and then they invite out the surprise performer who sings an hour set.
A few years ago the surprise performer was Snoop Dog! FUN! We all went to the stage and were having a great time singing along to old hits in our blacktie suits and gowns. Then, well, you know how snoop dog is rather famous for a certain recreation? One that’s illegal in many states still? He obviously lit up on stage which we chuckled at but then he started to pass them out to the crowd. With the CEO right there. What to do?! A few people actually said, ‘Thanks Snoop but my boss is right there!’
Anyway, they now explicitly state in the contract no illegal substances on stage.”
4. The surprise
“I work in academia, and at the last place I worked, we used to plan a small holiday party for some of the students who majored in our field and were graduating in December. One colleague was usually in charge of the food (because she was a control freak who didn’t trust anyone else to prepare it hygenically, but that’s another story). One particular year, she refused to tell anyone what she was bringing and insisted it would be ‘a surprise,’ but also insisted that no one else bring a single scrap of food.
The ‘surprise’ turned out to be her fat, overfed dog dressed up in a Santa Claus hat and a harness that was covered with hanging cookies—that had been banging against her fur and were also licked and sometimes half-chewed by the dog where she could reach them. My colleague was expecting everybody to worship her dog and happily eat the cookies. Instead, everyone else went, ‘Um…okay,’ and drifted off to the holiday party upstairs that had actual, clean, non-dog-tainted food.
My colleague was bewildered.”
5. The come-hither pirate
“This wasn’t a White Elephant gift, but one a coworker who didn’t last so long gave to all the unpartnered women under 40: A studio portrait of himself, semi-80s background, with lasers, soft focus,, standing, with his hand on his chin, a ‘come hither’ look, and his parrot on his shoulder.”
6. The mom
“My coworker’s mother decided it was a good idea to join us for drinks at our holidays party. She the proceeded to tell me how long it took her son to find a job, how it was not what he wanted to do or was good at, and how his lack of self confidence was due to the way his father treated him for most of his life. I wished I would have heard what she later on told our CEO.”
7. The instructions for wives
“One year the school I taught at gave all female staff members a copy of Created to Be His Helpmeet as our Christmas gift. It is an extreme Christian fundamentalist book about how to be a good wife and includes directions on how to belly dance for your husband and what to do if your husband wants to do illegal things. All female staff – married and single – received this book. My roommate, a fellow teacher, mailed hers to her mother. I shoved my copy under my roommate’s bed, and months later she found it, forgot she had already mailed hers, and sent this copy to her mother as well.”
8. The hostage videos
“My old boss that told my old coworkers had to each record her an individualized holiday greeting video for her saying how much they appreciate her and then played it on a loop on her computer until the next Christmas. Thankfully I no longer worked there because I would not have been able to do it without swearing or getting snarky.”
9. The fist fight
“We had an office fist fight over some particularly smelly cheese.
Not so much a holiday story so much as the aftermath. During my first year as a PhD student, we had a little office party just before we all left for Christmas and someone brought in some very nice cheese and crackers. Unfortunately, it was a pretty ripe cheese to start with and it got left in the office fridge over the break. Come the new year and the day we’re all due back, Bob is the first to arrive in the morning. He opens the fridge to find the festering (and presumably by now sentient) remains of the cheese and takes it out intending to dispose of it. Before he can remove it to a safe location, the phone rings. Bob answers the phone, leaving the cheese on Jim’s desk which is next to the phone. Jim is the next to arrive and is greeted by a horrific smell, and the sight of the cheese from the black lagoon sitting on his desk. Chaos erupts and the accusations start to fly.
By the time I arrived, I could both smell the cheese and hear the shouting from the end of the corridor. I entered just in time to see Jim punch Bob on the arm and then storm out of the office. Bob stormed out not long after and after I finally disposed of the cheese in the park (it was the nearest accessible outdoor bin), I spent the rest of the morning working alone in the office with all of the windows open. I don’t miss academia.”
10. The wrapped ears of corn
“White elephant gifts from holidays 2017:
1) A crumpled Starbucks bag with a mug purchased 5 minutes after the exchange stated.
2) A mug and a notebook featuring the photo of an employee. The employee pictured was not the employee that brought this gift.
3) A vacuum-sealed bag containing two fully cooked, intact ears of corn.”
Also, a photo of the corn was submitted.
11. The disaster(s)
“I work in a blue collar industry for a company that boasts many couples as well as parent/offspring connections and our Christmas parties are wild.
The first one I attended was on a boat in a town about an hour or two away from the work site and a bus was organised to pick everyone up and bring us home. The party started on the bus with a large group of people passing bottles around and getting that light predrinks buzz. We get onto the boat and as the cruise goes on, everyone is getting super wasted due to the open bar and very, very limited amounts of finger food. It’s also mid December so very very hot and while I mostly stuck to soft drinks, most people were drinking. Because we’re all trapped on this boat in the middle of river, we all get to see a couple of people threaten to fight the bar staff who cut them off and a coworker who was convinced that he could swim to the river bank and wanted to jump off the boat. The most awkward one, though, was between a newly appointed manager and the guy who thought he was a shoo-in for the job. She was emotionally apologising for getting it over him, saying over and over that she’d only interviewed for the experience and hadn’t thought she’d get it. His wife had a firm grip on his arm and was trying to reassure her there were no hard feelings. He is drunk af, bright red and seething but not about to try anything in front of his wife. (Dude did finally get a manager’s role, but was passed over about six more times and only got because they had no other applications, I currently work under him and he totally sucks.)
As if that all wasn’t bad enough, the cruise ends and we all pile back onto the bus home. One former coworker who was very much like a small yippy dog starts stirring up new manager’s husband (who also works at the company) and would have probably got his head punched in if another manager (who’s actually his stepmother) hadn’t sat on his lap(!) to physically restrain him. He and new manager get off the bus at the town before ours, stumbled almost home, and end up falling in a ditch (she had like a week off with a sprained ankle).
Meanwhile on the bus, everyone else is still drinking. The coworker who organised the party is showing everyone ‘two girls, one cup’ on his phone. (Note: If you don’t know it, your life will be better if you don’t google it. Very NSFW.) There’s a fight between another couple and the guy who wanted the managers role is passed out so some one draws a phallic object on his face.
As far as I’m aware no one was punished over the event, but the grand boss who’d attended made it clear that the next one needed to have a proper meal attached to it. We were also asked to not come back by the boat company.”
12. The 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.”