Do Christmas festivities still exist in the workplace?

Pumpkinx

We have party's. (Day staff/Night staff have different ones) day staff are very cliquey so don't really bother ( I used to work days) I was arranging a night staff Christmas night out until I was advised by a non medical staff member that they have arranged it whilst I was off on holiday and it was for when I was in on shift (lovely!) so from now on I don't bother, I do secret Santa because everyone's names gets put on the board for it but from now on, I won't send Christmas cards.. Just to be awkward!

xsupercarlx

We get a certain amount of money to spend on ourselves for Christmas lunch/dinner.

Besides that, we have been too busy to do much else.

Caroline_a

Many years ago I worked somewhere (small firm) who used to give as a Christmas 'bonus' a £10 M & S voucher. We used to call it the 'Knicker Voucher' because it would just about buy a couple of pairs! We also got a Christmas card, and one year my boss suggested that the company might be better not giving the card (no mention of the voucher!!) to charity. They decided that they would give both card and voucher to charity... so we got nothing that year. The owners were known to be money-grabbing so there was much muttering, and then the down-trodden secretary put the letter on the noticeboard from the chosen charity (trees in africa or something). The skinflints had given an amount that equated to probably about a quarter what the vouchers and cards would have cost - so there all in black and white for us all to see.

Strangely enough the ability to do unpaid overtime became less and less....

However, I have worked at places where they spend thousands, with live bands, fabulous venues and meals. Also strangely enough, those places were the ones where everybody was prepared to do extra whenever they were asked.

StephenM_2

We have an on-site Christmas lunch, split over several days because there's too many staff to do it in one sitting. Anything else is privately organised and paid for by groups of workers. In my area it tends to be the traditional Christmas Curry.

Money_Bunny

Public sector so, rightly, no paid-for Christmas do.

In the past it was accepted (though never written down) that you got a half day for the office Christmas lunch and another for Christmas shopping. Fat chance these days! Management are so terrified of stories in the press about the public sector living it up in these times of austerity that our unofficial half days have vanished in the breeze.

A couple of years ago an office organised a Christmas shopping coach trip paid for by the staff who took official annual leave. It still made it into the tabloids as an example of the public sector taking the piddle!!

(PS - it would be really good to have some specific Christmas icons to add to messages)

scooby088

My old workplace used to put £50 in a xmas card as a present of sorts, but then stopped that and put on a free bar and buffet at the local steak house, think I preferred that, and it was fun to the one of the owners getting drunk and trying it on with the office staff.

Mrs_Bones

SarEl wrote: »

Very rarely these days. But the really great news is that Brett will be arriving any day now. No doubt it will be an extra days public holiday in NI....

He's still about but he's not Brett any more.


Back to OP's topic;

I worked in retail and we use to get a good bonus at Christmas time, which normally amounted to half a weeks wages for full timers. We didn't get a works do as such but we all use to take some food bits in to enjoy while we worked and just enliven the the Christmas week.

The bonus stopped around 15 years ago, in theory we were told at the time it would be based on something else and we'd still get some bonus through out the year but they never seemed to materialise.

Then we started to get £10 per head for a Christmas do, but somehow it never seemed the same it just started arguments off over where we'd go, who could and couldn't go and if partners could go etc. Work politics just took the fun out of it.

We also use to get an extra day off for shopping but that just died out as well.

Sambucus_Nigra

We work for a charity so we had one last week a a local pub [dept] and a bring and share is happening this week [at work] but I couldn't do both unfortunately.

Wyndham

We went out on Thursday to a nice restaurant and everyone paid their own - we don't get anything towards it as we work for a University so it's not the 'done thing'.

But, as one of the managers, I put in a heftyish amount for drinks as I feel strongly that's part of the deal. This has not always happened for me in the past, and it does cause resentment!

dibuzz

My son works for a large catalogue company and they had an extended lunch on Wednesday (2 hours rather than 40 mins) for a meal but paid themselves. They also finished at 12 on Friday and went out for drinks and a meal. They paid for the meal themselves but managers paid for drinks until 4pm.
There is also a huge posh dinner in a hotel somewhere but he declined that one as it's not really his thing and none of his team are going.