Written By Patricia Rouzer
Behold the advent of the holiday office party season. Oh, the fun, the frivolity. Oh, the limitless opportunity for career-crushing faux pas.
Many holiday parties, particularly large corporate gatherings, bring together two potentially explosive ingredients: the unrestricted flow of free alcohol and people who share little more in common than their office address.
The volatile mix can produce a cavalcade of aberrations from the merely silly to the sexually indiscreet, to full on, career-damaging social debacles. The bright lights (or dim corners) of the office holiday party, can provide people with the perfect environment in which to lay bare peccadilloes, longings and attitudes best kept private.
Who among us has not heard unsubstantiated tales of the amorous employee whose flirtation with her very married, very uptight boss escalated on the office party dance floor? And what of those stories of workplace parties where folks made complete fools of themselves by adjourning to the photocopy room to, oh, say, make multiple Xeroxes of their bare derrieres-followed by a little intramural slap and tickle.
Although these universally told tales are vaguely amusing, it is a hard, cold fact that when reason goes out the window at the office holiday party, there can be long-range career consequences.
Here are two real life, but necessarily anonymous, cases in point:
Case I:
In which playing snarky office politics over a cup of Christmas cheer with the boss backfiresÉso to speak.
Once upon a time a certain high profile financial services company held its corporate holiday party aboard a cruise ship in Baltimore’s inner harbor. The company’s senior executives were all in attendance. Our source’s boss, someone he described as “not exactly a walking, talking Hallmark card,” was one of these executives.
At the beginning of the evening, the boss told our source, “You know, you can never do yourself any good at these office party affairs. The best you can do is come out even.” Real wisdom from the mouth of management.
Later our source found himself back-to-back with the executive, whom we shall call “X,” listening quietly as an office rival launched a harangue against him to the executive’s face:
“This guy,” he said, “was addressing (Executive X) in a tone that seemed to be about twice normal volume and half normal quality of diction. The loud voice was telling X, what an incompetent and generally creepy guy I was.”
But sometimes, in our cosmos, what goes around really does seem to come around. After his diatribe, the offending rival, awash in beer and hubris, adjourned to the boat’s upper deck to revel further. There he “became the talk of the party by bursting through a group of revelers, and urinating over the railing at the stern of the boat.
“I wondered if, in the course of the evening, I had managed to come out even,” the source mused. Clearly the office rival did not. He never got a promotion and eventually left the company.
Case II:
A tale of gender inequality in which office holiday hijinks stymie another career.
Another source who worked in a suburban bank branch recalled that holidays were always happy times among her fellow employees. Her branch manager held no formal office party, but after hours invited his employees out to a local saloon where he maintained an open tab. Liaisons were formed; the outcome not pretty.
“It’s a sad comment, but if you were a guy with the right background and education the drinking didn’t hurt your chances for advancement. Women, on the other hand, who drank a lot and slept around were often on the fast track to nowhere,” she said.
She recalled that a woman “got very drunk and frisky at one holiday party and ended up going back to one of her coworker’s houses with some of the crew. Some interesting pictures were taken of her in her underwear which needless to say floated around for years after.
“I know she still works in her same position in the same branch. She was eventually given some additional responsibilities, but they never took her seriously.”
In our query of friends, acquaintances and local people who stage or work at holiday events locally and in the region, such outrageous cautionary tales seem relatively rare. Most could offer no eyewitness reports of spectacular indiscretions, although some relayed unconfirmed reports and hearsay.
Several noted that they had attended occasions on which colleagues had sipped a few too many glasses of the free Bordeaux and begun to slur their words – or, as the evening ended, had to be helped to a cab or had abandoned their cars and were driven home by friends. Not particularly attractive, perhaps, but not an all-out disaster.
One person with whom we spoke – a former banker who has attended many a holiday office fete-said, “I think those kinds of out-of-control office parties were more prevalent in the 1950s and Ô60s. Today, most people are too conscious of what office party bad behavior can do to their careers.”
Another lamented wistfully, “I’ve got no stories. I’ve clearly led a very dull life.”
Yet another attributed the lack of first-hand tales of modern party sturm und drang to the fact that today many businesses open their holiday parties to spouses as well as employees.
“When spouses attend the office party, it really cuts down on the hanky-panky,” our source said. “Make a fool of yourself at the office party and you may pay some substantial consequences later at home.”
Clearly, office holiday parties provide employees of organizations large and small with that one sure, annual, equal opportunity for supervisor and worker alike to:
(a) Have a pleasant time mixing and mingling with their fellow laborers in the corporate vineyard,
(b) Use a social occasion to demonstrate the people skills and social graces that advance one’s career or
(c) Allow one’s inner social idiot out unchaperoned, thereby committing career suicide.
In an effort to assure that our readers’ holiday office party experiences fall under (a) or (b) in the above multiple choice, we offer the following unsolicited, but hopefully helpful, reminders.
¥ DO NOT drink to excess. This is most important. Just because the liquor is free doesn’t mean you will not pay a price later if, in blissful inebriation, you do something stupid, outrageous or indiscreet. Even if you don’t misbehave, inebriation is never pretty. And remember, there is no rule that says you must drink to have a good time.
¥ Dress appropriately. The office holiday party is not the place for a spectacular display of dcolletage or a skirt that barely covers the bare essentials a la Britney Spears. If it is an after office hours party it is great to dress up. But keep in mind that this is still a work-related function, not a club crawl.
¥ Mingle. Don’t just hang with the buds. Particularly if you work in a large office, a holiday party is a wonderful opportunity to meet and chat with people you do not know, including those at the top of the corporate ladder. Take the initiative, introduce yourself, talk intelligently and listen eagerly. You never know who is watching or what making a good impression can do.
¥ Eat first, drink later. Nothing makes alcohol shut down brain cells and eliminate healthy inhibitions faster than drinking on an empty stomach. If you haven’t eaten since lunch and the party starts at 7 p.m., begin your evening with food and a nonalcoholic beverage. Have a drink later if you want one.
¥ Business talk? Okay. Shop talk? NO. This can be tricky. The office party is a business function in a social setting and work may be the only thing you have in common with many of the guests. Nevertheless, don’t regard the office holiday party as a staff meeting with nice food and a band. Talk about general business-related things: the economy, market conditions, new technology, etc., but do not discuss in detail your ideas on how to reorganize the mail room.
¥ GO! Some people think flying under the radar is a good thing, so they avoid the office holiday party. But in any office, large or small, someone is bound to notice your absence, and the wrong person might interpret your absence to mean you are antisocial, contemptuous of your colleagues and not a team player.
¥ Leave at an appropriate time. Do not be the one still snarfing crab dip when the last person leaves. Come on time, have a good time and leave well before the lights go dim.
¥ Say thanks. Don’t forget to thank your host and tell him or her what a nice time you have had. That is important, whether the host is the person who sits at the next desk or the CEO who flew in from distant climes to mingle with the unwashed masses. Your mother was right. Good manners are never inappropriate; bad manners are always noticed.
