‘Tis the season for companies to decide the best way to boost morale and trick us into thinking they care about their employees is to have a company Christmas/Holiday/End of Year party. Often, participation is mandatory or “strongly encouraged”, i.e. if you want that promotion, you’d better be seen as a team player. So let’s tell stories about funny or terrible company holiday parties.

Here’s one:

I worked for a small company years back, around 50 people. The CEO was BIG on mandatory fun. Our Christmas party (he insisted it was a Christmas party and not a holiday party despite the fact that he himself was Jewish) was a big sit-down dinner and White Elephant gift exchange. The gift exchange is proceeding with the normal amount of cheesy gifts (singing Christmas trees, ugly sweaters) and desirable gifts (alcohol, scratch off lotto tickets). My friend’s turn arrives and she opens a gift to discover… a vibrator. The company in general was very conservative and so most of us were very surprised and burst out laughing. She turned beet red and sat down again quickly. The guy who’d brought it claimed to have no idea and that he thought it was a neck massager (it didn’t look like genitalia, but it was still definitely a vibrator). It made what was otherwise a pretty bland party memorable. Even better, about 6 months later, a guy in our office rage-quit and in storming out, stopped at my friend’s desk where she kept the “gift” because we all thought it was funny, grabbed the “neck massager” and said “AND I’M TAKING THIS TOO!” before completing his storm-out of the office.