office Christmas parties - why? nice or nasty?

i agree with bbbbb, so i'm going to stay at my desk an work instead of getting drunk.

I think Jack is questioning the implicit assumption that these parties are 'shit' in your original question.

Well that makes more sense.

I work in an office, there's about six of us in there, but there's a couple of hundred people in my department, scattered around different buildings and sites and not all in offices (there's thousands of employees in the whole place).

We had a Christmas party on Friday (departmental), and I went to the first couple of hours. Ended up sitting at a table at one end of the room, drinking beer with a couple from my office and 3-4 others who I don't know. The other 60 or so were mainly standing up drinking wine and looking sociable. We decided we were quite happy sitting down with our tins, two notable topics of conversation were "weird things previous staff have done that ended up with them getting sacked, or almost getting sacked", and how we spend much of the day bored. These are two topics of conversation that would be unlikely to come up during the normal workday, so overall I'd say it was worthwhile.

At one of my old jobs, I was paid hourly (quite a good rate). At the end of each term, our Head of Department would take us out for dinner in the afternoon and pay for everything instead of keeping us at work. Initially we thought this was alright, but then we realised that our combined hourly wages for an afternoon were probably £200+, dinner would cost about £60-70 - and she had us as a captive audience to discuss all the work she was going to make us do the next year (and never stopped talking ever). - so essentially an unpaid team meeting, with food. That was shit, not an office job though.

bbbbb have you ever worked in an office or did you just get the ricky gervais box set last year along with a copy of the revolution of everyday life which you found harder to get through?

At my office party on Saturday. We all talked about how shit the job was. It's really weird the my managers were all talking about how shit the job is. Seemingly there was a 10,000 euro bonus if you stayed at the job for 3 years. My manager told me he wouldn't have stayed at the job if that wasn't there. There was a lot of use of the term 'stuck in a rut'. To be honest it was good fun though. We all got drunk and a co-worker told me how much he loved his girlfriend - a lot it would seem - it was nice, people let their hair down.

Our office party is going to be held at lunch time and our manager gives us the rest of the afternoon off - what's not to like?

Yeah saturday.

It was weird, I work for a big bank, and it was in a big hotel in Dublin and there were about 1000 people at it.

I did in my arse. Wait, wrong choice of words. No. No I didn't.

One time at an after work drinks session paid for by the company my boss left early leaving us with his credit card to charge drinks to, thinking we couldnt run up a large bill in the last hour of the pub being open with so few of us left (6-8 people). Next day his bill was something like 3,000 euros and the company would only cover 1,500 for the night.

The firm I currently work for has a paid for xmas party, but it's 200 miles away on a work night where we have to be back in the next morning. Only 1 out of about 45 said they'd go
Interestingly the consultant works council, that we are allegedly represented on, went along with this. But as none of them have ever been seen in our area, we're not exactly surprised.

One of my colleagues organised a meal at a local restaurant which about 20 of us (and a couple of ex employees) went to. The boss paid for the drink. I considered it my class duty to drink a lot.*

And I was in work the next day

The mix was interesting, I spent most of the time talking crap and taking the piss with other working class misfits.

Regards,

Martin

* though of course I also consider this to be true if i'm paying

There is a work do organised this year but no booze will be laid on and it's just for losers.
Last year me and my mates organised a cool night out but this year we didn't manage it.

Yeah we've another party for our group in the company. We're going out to The Barge, which has to be the worst pub in Dublin.

On shitty things, my bank was taken over by another bank over the summer and before they were taken over they had a 10,000euro bonus if you stayed 3 years. Now they don't. Granted I don't plan on being here another 6 months nevermind 3 years. Its still shit.

The parking attendant thing is pretty cool though. Strike for Christmas.

Either that or an attempt by the complany to increase their profit margin. I'd say the private equity company don't care about profits but just really like muslims.