That Time of Year

I’ve been reminiscing about firms Christmas parties in a few comments today and it got me thinking.
When I married my first husband, he was on the committee of his firm’s Sports and Social club. OMG. The first ‘do’ we attended we were both dressed up to the nines (long frock for me, suit for him) and everyone else turned up n casual wear. The next one we played safe, and I wore trousers and a smart top. To my dismay, everyone else was in posh gear, diamonds, furs, bling, the works. I didn’t go to a third, neither did I go to their Christmas party. I hope the ex’s second wife fared better than I did.

When I moved away, there wasn’t a party but on one occasion my supervisor took the office staff out for a meal. That was nice……………. and expensive, for five of us it was over £200, and if you wanted veg with your main course, that was extra. Ouch.

Working for the bank though, the Christmas Party was a real bash. All free, including drinks and a taxi home. I learned about food fights and that banking staff were animals when they’d had a few.  But it was always a good night. The seating plan was such that  members of each department mixed with management and directors,  so everyone was encouraged to mingle rather than form clicks. The food was good, the raffle excellent with 50 prizes, the main one being a £500 holiday voucher.
Once I approached a vehicle for a lift home and said fifty quid for a good time before getting in. I became the talk of the office because no-one had met Hubby then. Another time I grabbed a fireman’s helmet and wore it back to front. I couldn’t see a thing and it turned out that he wasn’t a real fireman anyway, but someone in fancy dress for a dare.
Another time a messenger approached me on the Monday morning asking if he had to apologise. Turned out he couldn’t remember very much after having a skin full, so I asked him if that was before or after he started doing a striptease on the table. I was only joking and said he hadn’t done anything untoward that I was aware of.

Our department had a Christmas dinner and one year we all walked out without paying. We were crammed in and could hardly move, and had ordered our meals in advance. I was having chicken in a cream sauce. I had a turd in wallpaper paste which stank to high heaven and I sent it back. I wasn’t the only one, and my main course was a bread roll. Our legal department understood fully, but said for our director to pay the bill anyway, less the drinks another table had had put on our tab. We never went back, and after that the director arranged our department dinner, and no-one had to pay as he took it out of the department’s budget.

My last job had a Christmas party, and that was pretty good, but it was only a meal, no disco or anything.

What about you? Any tales to tell of what the office staff got up to?

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