Birthdays, Baby Showers, Wedding Showers, Going Away parties. I think it's great that the people you work with, the ones you spend 8+ hours a day, 40+ hours a week, 2000+ hours a year interacting with, wish to acknowledge these events in your life. Really, it's great. But when you work with a *lot* of people (okay, in my case about 160) that's almost once a week you are being asked to "contribute" for some "surprise" party. Even if you just contribute a measly five dollars for each of these, your likely to shell out about $250 a year! ($5 * 49 weeks [52 - 2 for vacation and 1 for the holidays])
I can hear the peanut gallery getting all excited... yes, you sometimes get cake out of the deal, but I'm not a cake person.
I've had coworkers tell me how disappointed they've been to contribute $20 to someone's party that they really liked, only to not get a chance to sign the "group card" (that included non-donaters names) that came with the gifts! Then there is the baby shower I went to two weeks ago, where I told the organizer I had put money in an envelope in their mailbox to contribute to the gifts. This week, the organizer dropped by with my money - she had forgotten to get it out of her mailbox! I guess I should just be grateful that she returned the money instead of pocketing it for "future contributions"...
And don't even get me started on the people who never contribute but sign the card and eat the cake anyway...
I don't want to sound ungrateful for the 30th birthday lunch or the belated wedding shower. They were fun, but I got the feeling at both that they were more for the people at the parties... as if they needed an excuse to step away from their desks and eat cake during their workday. I don't suppose any of this stems from the disappointment that nobody threw a surprise office party for my 31st birthday... or for my return from foot surgery... or that time when I repotted the plant on my desk because (contrary to all other plants I've ever owned) it's thriving!
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2 comments:
It seems like its always the same person (or, maybe in an office of 160+, the same people) organizing these events. Clearly the only thing to do is figure out a way of having those people fired.
Or, I suppose, you could have them killed, but ...
My personal favorite, however, is the work wedding shower "group gift" that ended up costing me $75 (put towards a $500 serving dish).
Imagine my ... surprise ... when I found out that theserving dish was not the last thing on the registry.
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