Office Parties Feel the Chill | Hacker News Reader

Office Parties Feel the Chill

nytimes.com

63 pointsjseliger55 comments

Maybe it's just my inner-millenial but I really dislike office Christmas parties. This year my company rented out a large theatre with a buffet of goose and free beer/cocktails/wine all evening. It started at 6pm and most of the attendees were gone by 10pm, and we are a young company with many in their 20s.

I feel like it was really a party for a few outgoing people and those in HR. A Christmas bonus would have been a much nicer way to say 'thank you' for the previous years work.

It is not your inner-millenial, there are many people that feel this way. Christmas parties in general give me the creeps. I would also prefer a Christmas bonus instead of needing to talk to colleagues that slowly (sometimes not so slowly) get inebriated and make some form of fools of themselves.

Christmas parties feel forced to me. A legacy of time gone by that people cling to for some reason.

Legacy? They were always contrived lol

Absolutely this. At a place I worked previously, due to a tight budget, instead of doing the sensible thing and not having a party (or letting teams organise their own smaller bashes), the company cheaped out and rented a basement somewhere into which we barely all fitted. It was cramped, noisy and expensive. One employee got drunk and had a fist fight with the restaurant management after knocking down the sliding wall between us and the next room of 'revellers'. It was totally grim, but all in the name of being the kind of company that has Christmas parties. I handed in my notice the next day iirc.

It seems odd that you would forget whether or not this event precipitated you quitting a job.

He was the one that knocked down the partition.

a cheesy venue prompted your resignation?

It was the cherry on the cake of terrible culture.

I used to think so but my office party (100 employees) this year was really good and a great icebreaker. We're all friendlier at the office now.

I think it just brings your office culture to the forefront. If there's tension and negative vibes already present, your party will be unpleasant.

I can't imagine one party for a huge corporation (like 1000 people). That's just awkward. It should be broken down to divisions if so.

My company does the holiday party during the work day so we all get the day off. I'm pretty sure I would be upset if it started at 6:00 PM and attendance was mandatory.

Why does that have anything to do with being a millennial? I'm a millennial, and I absolutely love company parties, because we all get a long so well, and it's a nice way to have a more casual conversation with people that you don't usually work with, during week days.

I think cylinder hit the nail on the head, with his remark, about it bringing office culture to the front - if you don't enjoy working with the people at your job, it sure isn't looking bright for the Christmas party either.

Also, a Christmas bonus is waaaaaay more expensive than a (nice) Christmas/office party has to be (unless you rent a fancy venue or something like that). It would feel a bit weird to get a $30 dollar "bonus", at least I would rather pool that together and make some enjoyable memories with people.

FWIW, they probably spent more than 30/person on just food and drink, but regardless I agree anything under a couple hundred dollars wouldn't feel genuine.

Thanks, I'm trying to institutionalize this and was wondering what would be a good Christmas bonus. 250$ was my ballpark.

Probably depends on your industry and implementation. I'm new to the workforce so I don't have a lot of experience with it, but I've seen some comments on reddit over the years with people getting piddly little bonuses (tens of dollars) and having management tell them they should be happy they got anything. The workers would have preferred getting nothing and it was a morale killer.

I don't know what good levels are. Maybe think of it in terms of % of salary for the median employee? $30 wouldn't feel genuine to anybody, especially if it looks like people at the top aren't cutting back. $250 for a developer making $175,000/year makes a much smaller difference than for support staff earning $40,000/year.

Another thing to consider - if things are tight and you don't already have a holiday bonus, a certificate to get a ham, turkey, or meat and cheese tray at a nearby grocery store would seem more genuine than a piddly $30 cash bonus. Of course switching from ~250/year bonus to a ham will be a morale killer.

The major telco I work for (starts with a B in Canada), people in my group complained when they got a $300 raise and said they would rather not have got it.. so they cut the raises for the 3 years straight due to this "comment". Funny thing, that person would be ahead by ~1k a year at the base salary. Fortunately I am part of a different compensation package. I would always take any money, that 300 is ~180ish after tax, enough for 2 months of parking..

Sounds like "the company to escape from if at all possible". Not only disrespecting the workers but also silencing complaints by force.

I agree 100%

Maybe we can all be so lucky and get a jelly of the month club.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QNVe9Hbhwc

Don't forget that a bonus (or a gift above a certain monetary value) is a taxable benefit to workers while an office party is not.

I worked at a bank and that place was full of people that really enjoyed that kind of parties. Those parties were really kind of legendary in all kinds of regards, there were always a few people that had to be fired because of their behavior at the New Year's Party. But I did get swept up in the atmosphere even if I didn't like the music or even generically spoken bank people.

The IT companies I worked for were always notorious for the same 20 people going to every event and the usual 100 no shows. If they know there's a lot of the kind of people that don't like social events where you stand around with a drink in your hand and loud music just go to the local bowling alley and mix the teams up a bit. If you didn't talk to people at least you had some fun.

As party to one of the organizers, the dollars per head runs slightly above a wedding. Thus expect $120/plate/head.

Not a great bonus.

Add ons that were cut as the budget was cut; Open Bar: (paid at end, but think cocktail rates $11-$20 per drink), "white glove hors d'oeuvre" $13/person.

We have terrific parties at Relativity. Venues like Union Station, Museum of Natural History, Museum of Science and Industry. The whole place is rented, and food is provided, drinks as well, usually dance music. Loud dance music.

And bonuses are after the first of the year and based on company and individual performance.

Usually, there is also an after-party, and on some occasions, an after-after party.

This article seems to be sponsored by Escape the Room, whatever that is, with its own ad-style paragraph.

"A less philanthropic but still debauchery-free experience can be had at Escape the Room, an interactive game site where as many as 10 people are shut in a room and have one hour to solve a puzzle..."

Could be an example of the pay-per-mention market (there was an article about this last week on HN)

Escape rooms have become quite common and they're provided by many different actors. Given how many there are on Manhattan alone it's difficult to pinpoint exactly which one they mean. If this is advertisement, it's not money well spent.

What is the business structure, though? Are all "escape rooms" independent operations, or are they more of a franchise?

I was curious about the "Escape Room" phrase itself - it sounds like a brand, but I did an USPTO search for a trademark, and surprisingly, there's like a metric ton of ones matching ".* ESCAPE ROOM .*".

Completely independent rooms AFAIK. Have seen them in Brazil and here in Sweden, it's just a type of game, not a franchise... Much like a "haunted house" is a type of attraction and not a trademarked franchise-based business.

"Escape Room" is a type of business, like "Bowling Alley". There are franchises and there are independent operations, but the name itself is completely generic.

You should really come up with something credible before accusing the New York Times of corruption.

In addition to the flaws pointed out in sibling comments, I'd add that there is a difference between a NYT staff journalist, and a free contributor writing something for the likes of Mashable.

And even if NYT coverage could be bought, I doubt that "Escape the Room" could afford it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I think in general going out just isn't as much fun anymore as it used to be. You're constantly monitored from all sides by people with mobile tracking devices and any misstep will be broadcasted to billions through YouTube because people think it's fun to show your drunk ass claiming you're the Queen of England to everybody. Preferably with your name and LinkedIn profile in it.

Of course that scares the shit and fun out of people.

I don't think any records exist of my (innocent) missteps thank god, but I do feel the pressure if I'm at an event like that since smartphones became more common. I see people filming other people dancing while commenting negatively about it. Really intimidating. Better make sure we don't stand out in the crowd, unless you're the minority of people that really craves other people's attention in any way.

>>Executives surmised (perhaps wisely) the party’s meager attendance wasn’t enough to justify the $300,000 price tag. So, two years ago, HBO offered its employees an afternoon off with their co-workers to volunteer at a charity instead.

That's some reward.

Deloitte (or at least part of Deloitte) have a charity day. I don't think it replaces their Christmas party though.

Anyway, according to one of my colleagues who used to work there, everyone really liked it, it was a way to get help out the community, with the added bonus that you're still getting paid.

The cynic in me assumes that they just do it because it's bloody good PR.

Most Investment Banks give a couple of days a year, some give a day a quarter (in the UK at least).

This is also unrelated to Xmas Parties though.

I feel like the odd one out in these comments... I like the christmas party, but then again I love free beers :)

I actually like Christmas party (it helps I was working for great companies and with colleagues I actually like and I don’t go out as much as I’d like).

I didn’t stay very long this year because I had other things to do, but one thing that surprised me was to hear one of my male colleague objectifying his direct reports (female and married).

I have had until then the odd chance of only noticing offensive comments from female colleagues (rarely and I’ll admit, not the most representative). After the month we’ve had dropping our heroes, that felt… uniquely heedless? and just plain wrong.

Anyway: this is an advertorial but it felt timely.

Did you call him up on it? You don't have to be aggressive/self-righteous about it to let someone know what they are saying is not ok.

He/she mentioned offensive behavior from both male and female colleagues. Why not call out both?

You're right I should have.

The reason I mentioned the Male one, was the recency in the story, and probably a little bias on the topic.

My bad :(.

I didn’t because the party was loud, ambiguity wasn’t on my side and internal politics are still really hard for me to navigate. The company has bigger issues.

I did call it when more inappropriate things from happening but that was 15 years ago. Not super keen on how things unfolded but I did get bad people fired more than once.

I guess after a year of slaving and treating coworkers like garbage they don’t want to bond especially over non alcoholic drinks.

This reminds me that 10 years ago, Marc Jacobs came to his $1m arabian-nights-themed christmas party dressed up as a giant camel toe. Different times indeed.

My company has 13 employees, and was just 8 for a long time. So they adopted the policy of inviting partners/significant others as well.

It really changes the tone of the Christmas party, in a good way. And it's a nice gesture for the partners/significant others, making it easier for them to tolerate the occasional late nights.

A really great idea IMO, though it's probably hard to scale up.

Office parties are a great form of getting to know each other for employees in multi site companies. It is a way of keeping in touch.

Also, knowing the faces behind the names in Slack gives you some common grounds for verbal communication.

For me office parties are almost an vital part of cooperation.

We may need segregation based on gender at the work place

Totally. Probably by race too, to avoid those potential uncomfortable conversatioms and inadvertently racist remarks. Parties should be safe spaces.

Paywalled

It appears to be an advertorial, so you are not missing much.

Now we get downvoted for stating the obvious in HN. I wonder how much more down the drain this site will go before you consider removing the downvote feature. It's down to vindictive teenager schoolyard now and its getting lower still. @admins

Oh no.

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