Survived the dreaded "Holiday" party . . .

mcmel

. . . well, I survived the dreaded "Holiday" party for our company over the weekend, if all goes well this will be the last one I attend, ever! (I'm a short-timer).

We had some offensive karaoke at the party, some complainers, uninvited guests and drinking minors. I don't think it could have gone much worse.

I don't mean to scare the rest of you, who have this adventure in front of you yet, but let's share some funny things that happen at Holiday parties.

Here's my tip:

Don't ever have a DJ who performs karaoke. Somebody nominated the management crew to sing a song and the selection wasn't revealed until we were on stage. The song was "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". Yay!

Don D

Uninvited guests? Drinking minors? Sounds to me like one thing was missing from the planning of your party: Adult supervision. Speaking of twinkling stars, thank your lucky stars you're not standing before a judge this morning.

blw

Sorry yours had unexpected results. We had our last Friday and it was great. We had a potluck spread that was out of this world. We played games, had a white elephant gift exchange and just had a blast.

ray a

Mel, I'm glad you're back - haven't seen you in a while. Someone has to keep me on the straight and narrow when I use terms like "Little Woman" and you are good at doing that.

We had our Director/VP party in Ocean City, MD this weekend. Most behaved themselves, but there were some interesting moments. Just when I was leaving our VP "grabbed" the controller's wife and dragged her to the dance floor, after pushing the controller back into his seat. The VP had had a few drinks and the controllers wife was dressed the most provocatively of all the women. At that point, I thought it was a good time for me to leave.

cebudragonlady

Ray ~

I would think that the controller would soon be told by his wife to look for another job ASAP! If that VP had grabbed me and tried to drag me to a dance floor - I would have belted the joker of a VP good . That VP will be lucky if he doesn't face assault charges. Sexist types like him are a walking time-bomb to any organization.

Chari

Whatever

Ray I wish you could hear my sigh (you know the one mothers make to put you on a guilt trip). The "controllers wife was dressed the most provocatively of all the women." Is that an excuse for a drunk exec to "maul" a woman. Are there any men at your company who aren't male chauvinist pigs?

Dutch2

I thought our Holiday dinner was going to be the best yet. We had approximately six inches of snow last Saturday mornign and by mid morning our Chairman and President decided to cancel the dinner. Had a heck of a time calling "everyone" as so many had moved, changed phone numbers, dropped their land lines and using cell phones only, etc. and of course they failed to notify HR or their supervisors of their new numbers.
Next thing I know Monday morning they announce the Holiday meeting has been reschedueld for January 10th. Here we go again......
See ya,
Dutch2

Don D

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-16-03 AT 12:14PM (CST)[/font][br][br]Yeah Ray! It was of course the woman's fault for dressing provocatively. She probably even sat with her legs crossed and wore perfume and stuff, and glitzy earrings. I'll bet she even smoked and went to powder her nose and put on more red lipstick. She was asking for it alright. I'm glad you left. The nerve of that woman! Hope you can spend the day digging yourself out of this one now that dragonlady (edit: sorry, it was Whatever) has caught onto you. x:-)

ray a

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-16-03 AT 03:30PM (CST)[/font][br][br]Stirring the pot... just stirring the pot.

Whatever and Dragonlady, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the provocative dress part, but it did add color to the story. I think the VP did it because of the way she was dressed, that is why he chose her. But, she didn't seem to mind the attention. Actually, I was kind of hoping the controller would stand up and protect his wife and disappointed he didn't. And are you implying I'm a male chauvinist pig?

Don, as usual, the hole is probably way too deep for me to get out. Oh well.

Parabeagle

See? Ray doesn't need my help to get into trouble here. He's perfectly capable of doing so all by himself. I've even left things alone for a few days just to let things simmer down and off he goes... x;-)

mcmel

Oh drats, and I'm checking in late, so I completely missed my chance to harass ray.

Actually ray, I read your whole post and never thought twice about your comment. I must have known you were just adding color to the story, not IMPLYING that she deserved to be dragged to the dance floor.

ray a

Thanks, Mel. I'm glad somebody is being reasonable. Beagle was just busting on me.

marc

Our party was the most fun I have had at a Company sponsored Holiday Party.

One of our programs involves outreach to local teens who are experiencing various issues. Three of them joined 5 of our staff to put on a murder mystery dinner theatre. Various staff brought pot-luck contributions and the dinner theatre "actors" decorated our large conference room like an italian diner. Staff sat around an outer square and the actors sat at an inner table and acted out the mystery.

We discovered that some of our staff and a couple of the teens are real hams. They overacted, over-emoted (is that a word?) and generally had a great time. The staff had a great time and in the end we had prizes for people who tried to guess who the murderer was. None of us got it, so we drew names for the prizes.

This was way better than our usual Karaoke and gift exchange. No one would win any oscars, but staff are still talking about it.

Our fund development department is talking about turning this into a fundraiser and going around to local companies and putting on the production - raising money to expand this great teen outreach program.

rad

Wow! Our holiday parties are nothing like that! We have one at work, everyone tries not to say "Christmas" and we do a gift swap. I'm looking to change jobs so I see this as an opportunity to do some serious schmoozing. Friday is usually dress down day but I'll go a little less casual AND wear red lipstick.

ray a

Rad, red lipstick? Sounds kind of provocative to me.

rad

I try.

atrimble

A few years ago, our agency staff (we serve low-income people) decided to reproduce a then-popular version of Night Before Christmas (the one where the second narrator explained the traditional text in ebonics) as part of our Christmas party (we don't even try to P.C. disguise it here). One of the participants, halfway through the rehearsal schedule, threw a hissy fit and refused to participate and called everyone else that continued with the skit "racist" even though fully half of us were African American. No formal music or skit has occurred since.

I didn't realize it until I was reading over the Christmas tree traditions string, but apparently that trouble with the skit so affected me that I no longer enjoy the holiday season. I thought last year that I was just "blue," but it seems to really have ruined the whole meaning of the season for me.

-Abby, HR newbie

rad

Abby, I hope that feeling goes away, how terrible that one person ruined the whole season for you. I know how it feels when some jerk comes along and makes you lose faith in the human race but I hope you can see past it and enjoy the holiday once again.

Human Resources Manager

I love our holiday party.

It is for administrative staff only and held a country club. We have a very nice dinner followed up with casino gaming, and then an auction using our winnings. Our owner/president is a "gadget guy" so he usually buys out Circuit City and the prizes are usually worth $300-$400. We walked away with a Sony 400 disc DVD/CD player (My husband is in technophile heaven). There is also a grand prize that is awarded by drawing and no company officers or previous grand prizewinners are eligible. This year it was a $3000 travel voucher. Wish I'd won it.

Oh well. We had a great time, no one behaved inappropriately and it was all over before midnight.

Leslie

We had two holiday parties...one Monday morning from 6 to 10 am for graveyard shift, and the other yesterday from 4 pm to 1 am. Watching people having beers at 7 am was kind of trippy, but I guess it’s their “bar” time. Last night we had to cut off and tell to leave a male employee who among other minor things, harassed two women and picked a fight with another employee’s husband. He leaves, comes back and starts all over again. We send him off again with his DD, and he flips everyone off on his way out. Not sure how much holiday cheer he will get out of this, but we will be processing his termination today. We also sent off two guests who didn’t appear to be intoxicated, but were cursing up a storm how they wished they hadn’t been invited to this “shi**y” party. We were at an outside location, I was sitting at a picnic table. The DJ/karaoke person was announcing something that wasn’t true. I come flying up to go stop her and trip over the bar that holds up the seat. Down I go on gravel. So I have a scraped up left knee, and somehow broke my tennis bracelet in the process. Otherwise a great time was had by all!

Fell asleep sometime around 2:15 am, back to work at 7:30 am. God, I love my job.

marc

Good thing you got all rested up in Mexico or you may have gotten all stressed out.x:D

psrcello

We had our holiday party for salaried employees two weeks ago, on a Thursday night. Had the lower level private dining room at a popular downtown restaurant, along with an open bar - bad move. Our A/P clerk went completely overboard in the drink department. When she opened her gift exchange gift (golf balls), she exclaimed over the beautiful "candles" and how great they smelled! When asked by one of the managers whether she wanted to take a cab home, the clerk's response was "F*** off!" Hence, the permanent end of open bar at the party.

The other humorous thing that happened was with our IT guy (quiet, nerdy) - he had just finished a Dale Carnegie class hand was starting to come out of his shell, and had also recently separated from his wife. Well, he showed up with THREE women - one classmate from Dale Carnegie, and two of her friends. I won't describe how they were dressed, lest I get flogged like ray, but suffice it to say that they attracted a lot of attention from the male contingent at the party.

Anyway, everybody (except the A/P clerk) made it to work okay the next day, and the food was fantastic!

mcmel

Oh boy, after reading about a couple other holiday parties, mine sounds pretty tame. It's so nice to compare stories! x;)

sonny

After reading these posts I am happier than ever that we don't have a company sponsored party. Each Dept. does their own thing, but the best is our Utilities and public Works. I just got back. They cooked: pulled PORK, fried turkey, steamed oysters, this italian pasta with beans to die for, every possible side dish and dessert imaginable. My stomache is killing me and I don't think 5 will ever get here. No alcohol, no trouble. It is sunny and about 60. .beautiful day all around!

HRQ

I'm sorry to hear about all the parties that didn't go as well as you'd like. We never include booze at our parties - because of shennanigans in the past.

Our party is the same every year, and nobody commplains! Corp staff and School Directors meet at a mall. The President and the CEO hand out $50 bills to everyone. Our mission is to spend the entire $50 on ourselves - no buying gifts for others, and gift certificates don't count. We have 90 minutes to do this.

We then meet at a nearby restaurant. One at a time, we show the group what we bought. $20 bills are given to the following;
- whoever spends closest to $50 without going over
- whoever spends the most (one spent $90 of her own money in addition to the $50 she was given)
- whoever gets the most items without going over $50

After lunch, we exchange gifts. (Everyone also brings a gift worth $20) We use the "drawing numbers" game. When it's your turn, based on the number you drew, you can either pick a wrapped gift, OR steal a gift from someone who went before you. Then the person whose gift was "stolen" gets to pick a new gift from the pile. This is a pretty close-knit group, and the gift giving/stealing gets competetive. There are never hard feeligns that I'm aware of, because this group has been together for so long.

The best part about the whole process is, in the end, everyone gets a gift they truly want. (Because we shopped for ourselves.) People appreciate when a company sends them fruit baskets, evergreen wreathes, etc, but getting to buy whatever you want never fails!

OK, I'm rambling again. Just had to share the success of our party!