Constance Watson

The office party should not be hard work

Keep it short, keep it simple and don’t make it too Christmassy

issue 28 November 2015

Is anything worse than the office Christmas party? It is almost always a horror show. Colleagues who are cheerful all year round turn into angry drunks. Usually benign bosses become second-rate pimps. The interesting become boring and the boring become interminable.

The average office Christmas do tends to leave you wishing you didn’t have to come back to the grind next year. Why should it be so? Most of us like the people we work with— give or take — so a few hours of celebration should be fun. The problem, I think, is that office party organisers, who tend to be drawn from the management caste, can’t get themselves out of work mode. As a result they don’t think enough about what really makes a party. Instead of trying to ensure the food is good, the drinks are right, and that people can enjoy themselves, they adopt the safest possible course.

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