Over the years, readers have submitted a tremendous number of amusing stories about holidays at work. Here are some of my favorites.
1. The thief and the hero
At a temp secretarial job back in the day, the owner had a buffet set up for the employees as an appreciation lunch for completing a particular project (which was why I was there to temp since it was an all-hands/emergency situation).
One of the very well-paid senior employees took an entire tray of meatballs and an entire tray of pasta off of the buffet line, after the managers/seniors went, but before any of the other employees, who had to take a slightly later lunch that day. When called on it, he said that he needed it to feed his kids for the week – and the owner said if the only way he could feed his children was by stealing from his job and taking food from lower-paid employees, he was welcome to it. But the owner would be accompanying him to the food stamp office to apply or reporting him to CPS if he refused, because feeding his children should be his first priority and if his children could only be fed by stealing, that wasn’t something that could be ignored. It turned into a public argument about how the owner was shaming him for liking expensive things and needing a little help sometimes. Ended up as the employee’s last day. (2022)
2. The divinity candy
Around the holidays, it’s not unusual for our office break room to contain an assortment of treats gifted to us from vendors or customers. Several years ago during this most festive time of year, I noticed a tray of what looked like divinity candy sitting out on the break room table. Divinity is not my favorite holiday candy, but it was early in the season, and the pickings were slim, so I decided to have a piece. Just as I took a bite, a coworker walked in and said, “Oh! You’re trying out my candy – let me know what you think of it!”
By this time the bite had well and truly settled on my palate, and let me tell you, I had opinions. Being a polite sort of person in real life, I was hesitant to tell her what I thought (which would have been difficult without swallowing, which was not an option at this point), but I can tell you – it tasted like a dog turd rolled in powdered sugar. Or what I assume a dog turd would taste like, having never sampled a dog turd myself. I stepped around my coworker to grab a paper towel to ostensibly wipe my mouth (and discreetly spit out the offending “candy’), then turned back around to address my coworker. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anything like it,” says I, in what I hope was a pleasant voice. “What’s it called?” Coworker replies, “I haven’t really thought of a name for it – it’s just something I experimented with.” Then she tells me how she made it.
Y’all. It was mashed potatoes. And not even real potatoes, but the boxed potato flakes. Prepared in the normal way with butter, milk and salt, then mixed with peanut butter, Karo syrup, and powdered sugar, then rolled in another healthy dose of powdered sugar. Dear coworker had made too many mashed potatoes for dinner the night before, and in an effort not to waste food, had decided to try her hand as a confectioner. I’m having flashbacks of the nauseating flavor and texture just typing this out. So gross. So, so gross. I mumbled something polite that probably came out as more of an “Oh! Hrrmm, interesting” or similar, then bolted from the room to warn the rest of my coworkers NOT to try the “divinity” in the break room. (2023)
3. The baby boom
My former company had a fancy dinner at a hotel party with an open bar. It was a great event. Many people got hotel rooms but my spouse and I went home. I must have missed something because HR sent out an email saying that in the future there would be a two drink limit, beer and wine only, no shots or hard liquor.
And as a side note, almost exactly 9 months later there was a minor baby boom in the company. (2022)
4. The bacon monitor
In one of my last jobs, our party planning committee, used to do company-wide catering for most major holidays. I swear, every single time we did a breakfast one and included bacon, we always had to have a member of the committee stand watch as the ‘bacon monitor’ and count how many pieces of bacon each person had. Apparently, a few years before I started, some people would pile a plate full of nothing but bacon, and no one else would get any. (2017)
5. The homemade gifts
I worked in the children’s department of a public library for many years. Being quirky, creative people, we decided that our department of 7-9 (depending on year) would hand-make ornaments for one another each year, and unwrap them together at a mini party the day before the holiday when the department was always dead. We would bring homemade snacks too, so it was all good fun. Typically these ornaments consisted of a funny saying or item we encountered over our year in the department (hilarity happens surprisingly often as a public servant).
One year, my coworker painted the silhouette of our boss (who we had caught sleeping in their office chair once), which was received with cacophonous laughter. Another year, a woman had blatantly sworn up and down to one coworker that a part of one of the toy food kits her kids took home had never existed … “I remember there was no potato!” About a week later, she silently snuck into our department one afternoon, dropped the offending plastic potato on our desk without a word, and slunk out. So my other coworker (who had already deleted the plastic potato from our kit) poked a hole in it, strung it up, and wrote “There was No Potato!” on it for her gift recipient that year. Hilarious. So figure simple, silly things like that were always the basis for the ornaments.
But the one that takes the cake, for all the years before and after, was the “Snowman” cookie cutter. We loaned out cookie cutter kits to the general public. This was always met with a certain level of squick, since who knew if they were ever washed before or after, but they were one of our highest circulating items. One day, a woman came up to the counter to check out a package of Christmas themed cutters. She was ahem’ing quite loudly so me and my coworker went to check it out. Immediately we noticed the problem. Someone, possibly months or years prior, had taken the snowman out of the bag and re-bent it for a bachelorette or something similar. We knew this because upon closer inspection, the snowman was now a penis.
Both of us laughed so hard we almost peed our pants. We deleted the “Snowman” from the kit and let the woman check out the rest of the items. Why she still wanted to bake cookies with her kids using THAT set, knowing what it was previously used for, was beyond us. All was well for many months until our gift exchange … when we discovered someone on staff had not only rescued the penis cookie cutter from our trash, but had tied a glittery ribbon on it, and wrapped it up as their gift that year! Several of us burst into hysterics and one super conservative person was very much not amused.
More stringent guidelines about what constituted a handmade gift followed in years after. (2023)
6. The revenge
A coworker at a place I used to work at got fired shortly before Christmas. On the day of the holiday party, while all the remaining employees were at the restaurant, she snuck into the office and glued all the mugs in the break room to the floor. (2023)
7. The salsa
My coworker used to bring her ‘famous salsa’ to every potluck. It was just three different brands of store-bought salsa mixed together. She even made a (completely serious) production of preparing it in the kitchen, like she was Julia Child. Pro tip: The trick was to ‘fold’ the salsa to get the best flavor. (2022)
8. The remark
I work for a small family-owned company. Each Christmas, the owners, would host a fantastic Christmas party at their home with A LOT of wine. Years ago, a coworker’s wife got really drunk. As she and coworker were leaving, my boss said in a joking tone, “Are you sure you don’t want one more glass of wine?” To which she replied, “Why don’t you eat my ass?”
We haven’t had alcohol at a holiday party since. (2017)
9. The cookies
When I was fresh out of college, I worked in a government office that was cuckoo for Christmas: a secret Santa ornament exchange, a big holiday party, a ladies-only holiday party (???), and cookie day. Legend day has it that in past years, the office had several women who loved to bake and got a real kick out of making one million (metaphorically, but close enough) cookies, then spending a lunch break piling them into huge gift platters and distributing them to all the other departments. Although these women had all since retired, the tradition had continued and I received an email requesting I bring in TEN BATCHES of cookies for cookie day. This email only went out to the women in the office, and this industry at the time skewed heavily towards men so that was maybe 20% of the office.
I actually love to bake, but gritted my teeth a little over the sexism of only asking the women. Even more concerning was the cost – I’d only been working full time for 3 months and December was coming in expensive, 10 batches was going to be a stretch. But the email reminders were increasingly filled with pressure to participate, reminders to ‘clear your weekend!’ to bake cookies. It was a brand spanking new job, my first full time one ever, so I decided I could afford to make six batches and if anybody had the nerve to hassle me about it further they could take it up with payroll.
Cookie day rolled around and it turned out I wasn’t the only one resentful of being strong-armed to “bake all weekend” for strangers in other departments. My coworker walked in late while everybody (every woman, anyways) was already plating, didn’t say a word and dropped one lone box of Oreos on the table. And I mean DROPPED, from a foot or more above the table so it landed with a thud that got everybody’s attention. Then she turned on her heel and left. It’s been 15 years and I have never seen another action as perfectly, beautifully passive aggressive. It still makes me laugh 15 years later. (2023)
10. The cursed walk
A friend’s company always does their year end party in January for less stress and more bang for their buck. The first year I went, it was roaring 20’s themed in a rented out basement night club. I did multiple shots of tequila, including while linking arms with their CEO. We rallied friend’s department to the 24-hour diner three blocks away, and during that walk: three people got lost and called multiple times because they couldn’t figure out how to pull up google maps, the team lead started accusing us of kidnapping him, then puked on my shoes, then accused me of stealing his phone while trying to call his cab, resulting in an awkward conversation with a passing cop. The next year, it was a daytime event with drink tickets and a very specific “NO SHOTS, not even if you pay out of pocket” rule, complete with signs on the bar. (2023)
