Have to walk on egg-shells a bit with this article as I don't need to stir up bad feelings among co-workers or the office, but hopefully I'll get the point across and perhaps give some others a chance to vent too...
As they say, 'tis the season -- the one with office holiday parties, decorations hung around the cubicles and offices, and an expectation that everyone is gonna be a good sport and participate in the festivities that might be planned as part of the office tradition.
Those festivities include the obligatory office party. A few hours, or perhaps a whole afternoon worth of party with the usual caseroles, ham, turkey, chips and sodas, cookies and cakes. All that nice fattening stuff that is around to be shared as "community food" with everyone picking with fingers or hands dug into bowls or grabbing off of plates. (Never mind the knowledge that some of those co-workers aren't the most hygenic individuals when they use the restroom facilities, and never mind that the party always comes during the cold and flu season).
There might also be secret santas with the unstated obligation to participate lest one be made to look like the office scrooge.
Which is where I start to come into play a bit.
I'm not a scrooge, though I did play the role back in the my K-12 school days. I actually like the Christmas season, and I'm not one that feels that heavy creedence needs to be given to the politically correct crap about having to have a "seasonal" party rather than a Christmas party so that non-Christians don't get offended. I don't want to slap those of the other faiths across the face, but I don't believe they should use their beliefs as a shield or worse as a club to beat my beliefs back with.
On the other hand, this is the time of the year (as articles from Dharma, Texas Wahine and others have noted) when the costs of buying presents for families and friends start mounting. Much of the first 3 months of any new year is spent paying for the giving that takes place in the last 3 months of the years before. Which means digging up funds to pay for an office party starts to add to an already overwhelmed feeling of not having enough money to pay for everything.
Sooooo when the members of the holiday party commitee, many of which are members of other similar "party" commitees, who should know by now that I almost never have the time or opportunity to even break away from work for a few minutes, not to mention a few hours, stops by the desk and asks what items (not single item, but multiples, unless of course I'm signing up to bring a big ticket item) will I bring to the party I start fuming a bit. The opportunity to just give a donation to the party is there, so I opted to do that, but that just served to escalate the situation a bit....
You see, it seems the holiday party commitee decided amongst themselves just how much everyone is obligated to give this year. Meaning I, or any other co-worker, couldn't just kick in say $5 and be done. Instead the amount was pre-set, and everyone was expected to kick in the same amount, regardless of ability to pay.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to plead poor here. I could afford the payment, but I wasn't pleased at having my contribution decided for me if I wasn't going to go out and bring in at least an equal amount of food stuffs or other valuable party items.
This year I am finding funds a bit tight. Not overly tight, but tight enough. So when I'm told that I have to kick in more money than I otherwise would consider adequate, well, it makes me a bit scrooge-y feeling.
I guess some of what brings this on is that myself and members of the team that I work with just recently sprung for a lunch spread for our co-workers and ourselves not long back. We underestimated on the amount of food we should have gotten, partly because when I saw the costs for the food I had to hold back on costs a bit and because I didn't want to obligate others to spend too much themselves, I didn't push to get more food (which the bottomless pits of food consumption I call co-workers would easily consume).
Soon after giving the free lunch to our co-workers we were talking about the fact that our employer regularly pays for a weekly lunch for us. They do it because they want the employees to spend the lunch time socializing with others in the organization and in turn have better communication among all of the employees. I'm very grateful for that free meal, and I firmly believe it does what is intended. We do sit and converse and talk about work, about issues that have come up, solutions to problems, or just talk about anything and everything to keep us all friendly with each other. It has helped to keep lines of communication open, and that is always a good thing.
I was told how much the company spends on that weekly lunch, and the costs are not minimal. There is definitely economy of scale, and given the number of employees that are fed with that money, I think we get a bargain. If the money was just given to the employees, it would be a very small amount added to a weekly paycheck. Once taxes come into play, it would be basically nothing to any one individual, but pooled together, it buys us all a nice weekly lunch.
Circling back to the holiday party issue, I know from fairly simple math that the amount of money the employees that are giving cash will have contributed is going to be somewhere around 3 or more times the amount of money our company spends to feed us each week. That is part of what makes me feel like being a bit of a scrooge. It seems that our holiday party commitee came up with an arbitrary number for how much to hit up each employee for, and once done they didn't back off that number. They didn't want to let the cheapskates (there are some) among the employees set a low number for how much to contribute, but they also didn't seem to consider that they have a responsibility to take only as much is needed and no more.
Whats done is done, and it may not change things much for next year, but I will talk about this issue with some of the people involved. Having to pay more than one feels is fair is well, duh!, just not fair. It shouldn't feel like an obligation, it should feel like something we don't mind doing. I hope that there's a pile of money left over after the party this year, and I hope it's put into the bank so that perhaps we'll have a good start for the next party that will be held. If so, then everyone can be happy, and no one will feel they were forced to contribute yet again.
Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. If you have comments on similar situations, please feel free to add them below.
