Are your office holiday parties crazy & debaucherous or just boring & sad?

[eeyore]

I'm always hearing about how holiday parties are the time when everyone in the office cuts loose and ends up embarassing themselves.

Sex in closets, drugs in the bathroom, leacherous drunk bosses. You know, standard Studio 54 shit.

Does this really ever happen, or do you all just sit there nursing one drink and watching the clock?

Give me all of the sordid details.

[WCGreen]

1. It depends......

One I went to when I was still drinking ended up to be a whole soap opera....

People confessing... sport fucking... revenge fucking... people crying in their beer, or wine or martini....

And that was the good one....

[eeyore]

3. Sport fucking? Revenge fucking?

Wow....I'm not even sure what to say.

Dramariffic!

[WCGreen]

13. It was wild......

That was back in the early 80's...

After that, not so much....

[In_The_Wind]

16. I hate it when that happens!

[WCGreen]

19. Well.... It was a fun party....

Kind of like republicans go wild....

[In_The_Wind]

25. I'll bet it was!

[kick-ass-bob]

2. My wife's last holiday party was in a high rise office building

with her Japanese bosses. I was in her office changing my clothes when a whole lot of commotion started. I had to hightail it to another floor, and after that - well, damn, all hell just broke loose. I just wish I had gotten my shoes back on.


:P

[eeyore]

5. Commotion?

Care to elaborate?

And why were you missing your shoes? :P

[kick-ass-bob]

6. some german guys came in

with guns and shit.

They ended up blowing up the roof.


:D

[eeyore]

7. WTF?

Is this some movie plot that I'm not aware of?

Where the fuck does your wife work?

Are you Joe Wilson, and is your wife Valerie Plame?

That's some crazy assed James Bond shit you've got going on.

[Rosie1223]

8. Die Hard n/t

[eeyore]

Thanks for stepping in to clue me in

n/t

[kick-ass-bob]

10. .

:shrug:

[eeyore]

15. See, I'm just not up on the action flick plots

I gave up after I saw Terminator One and witnessed the vociferous Roman Coliseum bloodlust of the other moviegoers.

Oh, then I saw the amazingly racist True Lies, and that really did me in.



:puke:

[terrya]

4. A mix of both

Last year, our office party consisted of a "white elephant gift exchange" (I think that's what it's called), a movie trivia contest (the group I was in won it...the prizes were paperweights for our desks), door prizes. Good food, and they served alcohol (which I was sort of surprised about)

So, a mix of both.

[ernstbass]

9. We don't have a party

but it would be boring if we did.

[Heidi]

11. My gatherings with clients

are sort of warm, relaxed and nice. But it may be due to the nice red wine we buy. :shrug:

Truly, though, I stopped working with and for people I don't like and respect many years ago, so our casual gatherings are really nice. :thumbsup:

[eeyore]

12. Same here...

I decided long ago that I would do everything in my power to not work with/for people that I don't connect with on some level.

Helps to be my own boss, but I had to work hard to make that happen. Lot's of unpleasant dues paid along the way.

[Heidi]

14. Good for you, eeyore, and good for _them_.

I work hard to make this happen every day that I put paintbrush to canvas, and every time I take a consulting gig, but the end result is the important thing. If I can't approach my colleagues with a heart "open like a shrine," then I do both of us a disservice if I perpetuate the business relationship. :thumbsup:

[eeyore]

17. I did a whole lot of really crappy graphic design gigs

I can't believe some of the people I've worked for along the way, and how badly they treat both their employees and clients.

I did enjoy working at Nike for about 3 years, then I realized that it was just very soulless work to me. I woke up one day and thought about how I was really just a shoe salesman in artist's clothes. Not that there's anything wrong with selling shoes, it's just not what I ever envisioned myself doing. Plus, I really don't care if Nike makes more money. :shrug:

Luckily I was able to take my earnings there and strike out on my own working for much smaller companies and non-profits.

Good for you too. :)

[Heidi]

18. Right on, honey.

:thumbsup:

One of my favorite colleagues is a Swiss-Italian graphic artist who works in a beautiful home office with a 3-month-old parrot perched atop his shoulder. He's young a young, brash, brilliant surger guy who speaks five languages fluently, and I'd rather drink beer with him than almost anyone in the world. At some point in our careers, if we work hard enough and do it well enough and create enough choices for ourselves, we get to _choose_.

I'm glad to know you've positioned yourself to _choose_. :hug:

[eeyore]

24. Back atcha!

:hug:

By the way, I have very fond memories of hanging out in Geneva with friends. We used to walk around drinking Kronenburg out of a bottle, all the while smoking hash/tobacco cigarettes.

Ah, that was a good vacation!

[warrens]

20. Neither. We go to a nice restaurant for a sit-down meal

This year it's a French place, very plush, and there will be a short open bar, then wine with dinner, the distribution of bonuses, and everyone home by 10. Well, me anyway.

[flvegan]

21. They can be. One Christmas party several years ago

was at a country club. I worked for a big law firm. All the attorneys were very young, fresh out of school.

Over the course of the night:

1. 1 person got really drunk, and told off one of the lawyers;
2. 2 folks puked in the bushes...out front...in the parking lot;
3. 1 of the female attorneys tried to kiss me, in front of her husband;
4. 3 people stole a golf cart and took off with it (and came back without it);
5. I wound up lured (honest) around to the back of a workshed and got it on with the girl that sat in the cube next to me. Yeah, she went home with me. We were best friends at the time, too. She totally seduced me.

Ah, memories.

[eeyore]

22. Dude!

I always knew that Ally McBeal show was full of shit. Most lawyers I know are complete binge partiers, and they have the money or at least the credit cards to back it up.

Nothing like a bunch of stressed out lawyers letting off some steam. Yikes! :toast:

[liontamer]

23. neither

are holiday parties are nice, friendly, family affairs, where we get to play with people's kids and socialize.

I like them

[sbj405]

26. Held onsite = no booze

:-( Boring as all hell. I might like the people more if they were drunk.

[ucmike]

27. at my last job i heard crazy stories about previous years

so i went and found it be a giant ass-kissing fest because it was really the only time of the year that most of the employees got to socialize with the big bosses.

i was told how the girls from the office get wild and the guy from accounting gets loaded and embarrasses himself and blah blah blah.

i get there and its a very dignifed event, everyone dressed almost formally and lots of quiet mingling going on. i quickly realized that i was about the only person there who was solo and that all the wild people i had heard about were introducing their spouses to me while sipping wine. the event was held in the company's equipment garage which had been expensively decorated and well lit, with no place to sneak off for shenanigans even if you wanted to.

i stayed about 4 very uncomfortable minutes and left.

[jmowreader]

28. Read all about the wild debauchery at a home center Xmas party

The first two years the store was open, they rented hotel ballrooms for the Xmas party.

Advantage: you don't need to have sex in closets; if the guy from Paint who has the hots for the girl from Window Blinds succeeds in talking her out of her panties, they can just rent a room upstairs.

Disadvantage: when your town only has five hotels with ballrooms large enough to host a party for 300 people, word gets around about your group's behavior...specifically, the part about us conducting a Home Improvement Clinic entitled "how to find the studs behind your drywall when you're too fucking cheap to buy a stud sensor." (They tell me the discussion with the district manager on the subject of "why we sent a whole truckload of free drywall to a hotel" was not pleasant.)

So now we conduct our store Holiday Party in the drywall laydown area at the front of the store. According to SOP, alcohol cannot be brought anywhere onto the property for any reason, so there is no beer at the party. You cannot smoke inside our store, so there is no smoking except under the front loading area. There is no sex on company property, so there is no screwing at the party. (And it's not like we're just overrun with places to get it on anyway.) We have a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drugs, so there is no weed. If it weren't for the fact that there are also no Bibles, you'd think it was the Thomas Road Baptist Church Christmas Hoedown or something.

[Scout1071]

29. Yes. There is usually quite a bit of craziness.

People are dressed up. The tab is wide open. We usually pick one of the finer restaurants in town, then head out for a night of drunken debauchery.

This year we may start at Dave & Buster's, then go on a pub crawl/scavenger hunt.

[jmm]

30. I was at my last job for two years

The first year I was there we had a Christmas party with an open bar that started at 5 pm and ended at 2 am. 9 hours of free alcohol led to some pretty wild behavior including couple having sex in the parking lot (not all of the in cars) and one couple that even got caught on tape after sneaking off to a building owned by the job.

The next year we all got watches for Christmas.

[Missy Vixen]

31. We've been to both

My office parties: Usually sedate. I went to one several years ago that was the aftermath of 1/3 of our workforce getting laid off across the United States in one day. It was like a funeral.

DH's office parties: We're going to another one tomorrow night. He's worked in the software industry for 20 years, so they're typically the drunken brawl type, only people are in formalwear. Bar bills that approach fiscal insanity, bla bla bla. I have stories nobody here would believe, and they're all true.

I now own my own business. My company's office party will consist of DH and I going to our favorite Italian restaurant for dinner in a couple of weeks. ;-)

Julie

[abbeyco]

32. The past few companies I worked for, hell yes

and I did a nice little drunken bump'n'grind with my SO one year.

However, I now work vitually, the company HQ is miles away, and I don't have to attend the annual dog & pony show, worrying about how to get myself into a gown/formal, getting my hair done just right, or having the right kind of date for the party.

Damn glad that pressure is off me now!! :toast:

[NNadir]

33. I was at one Christmas dinner (fancy restaurant) where a husband of a low

level employee got extremely drunk and threw up on the table.

That was about the wildest.

[eeyore]

34. Brilliant!

That's the way to impress the wife's boss!

Honey, I think I'm gonna :puke:

[NNadir]

35. We were all very impressed.

Frankly I prefer giving and getting bonuses to Christmas parties.