Tuesday Top Ten… office christmas party blunders

by Florentine

It’s that time of year again; odd German markets that only ever exist when it’s cold, winter wonderlands and the requisite bruises that accompany them (ice skating folks, ice skating) and – relevantly for this week’s Top Ten – more inadvisable hangovers than you can shake a litre bottle of Jack Daniels at.  Why?  Because it’s Christmas party season.

As a person who’s spent much of her adult life freelancing, I’ve done quite a bit of work for quite a lot of different people.  The downside?  Missing out on office banter.  The upside?  Getting invited to a crap-load of Christmas parties.  But while it’s great to hoover up any scraps of free food and drink that ever cross your path (what?  I’m a working class girl – I wasn’t exactly surrounded by abundance whilst growing up), it cannot be forgotten that the office Christmas party is a dangerous beast, nigh on brimming with peril.  Make a careless, drunken mistake on this particular night out, and it will likely end up haunting you for the best part of the coming year – unless you quit your job of course, but we don’t recommend that unless you happen to be clutching a winning lottery ticket or sleeping with Richard Branson’s daughter.  As such, it is with great enthusiasm that I recommend staying in control of at least some of your faculties on this, most important bender of the annual social calendar; save your dignity, save your job, save yourself.  You have been warned.

What lies below are ten of the worst ways I can think of to make an impression at your office’s festive mash-up of choice.  Depressingly I’ve done about half of them, but what are mistakes for if not imparting newly-gained wisdom?  And sharing them on a very public website.  

1.  Sleeping with your manager/superior – while having a one night stand with any colleague during a night of alcohol-impairment can be a highly awkward and cringe-inducing experience come clocking on time, it’s Christmas, so I thought I’d go all-out.  How do you even look at (let alone take orders from) someone you got naked with the night before, in anything close to a professional capacity?  Naturally your colleagues will also have a field day, or worse, feed what remains of your carcas to the ‘big’ boss.

2.  Debating gay rights with a homophobic client (or fighting in general) – if there’s one golden rule with concern to big, impossibly important clients in business, it’s don’t piss them off.  Yes granted, we all have to deal with clients we’d quite happily introduce the legs of to our drive-on lawnmowers (if we had them), but when at work the old adage applies that the customer – or multi-billionaire business mogul – is always right.  What isn’t right, in the eyes of your employer at least, is throwing them your best right hook for quipping that all lesbians are dungaree-wearing man haters. 

3.  Coming out during a speech – ah yes, the old ‘coming out at work’ conundrum.  If you’re out and proud, this obviously won’t be a problem.  If on the other hand, you’ve chosen to keep your personal preferences private at work, there is always a chance that lubricating yourself with alcohol will inspire you to become the next (female) Harvey Milk the moment someone shoves a microphone in your hand.  While your work buddies shouldn’t have any problem with this, you will probably wildly regret it in the morning if it’s something you consciously avoided for a reason.

4.  Seducing your boss’ wife – do I really need to expand?  Just don’t.  Unless it’s part of a wider, elaborate plan to resign with flair (designed whilst sober I should add).

5.  Having sex in the bathroom/dark shady corner/smoking area.  With anyone – Quite aside from whether or not being caught sleeping with a ‘she’ rather than a ‘he’ would cause controversy, there are some aspects of your personality that should ideally remain separate from your professional profile.  Do you really want everyone you work with to know you’re the gay world’s answer to Callum Best?  Or that you like to attend S&M parties on a monthly basis knelt on all fours?  While it’s great to form good friendships with your colleagues, shattering the entire offices’ illusion of your capacity for professionalism is, well, less great.

6.  Wearing your beloved ‘lesbian uniform’/bondage gear/outlandish clothes of choice – this is only really relevant to people who actually have to wear smart suits or uniforms to work.  If they didn’t know you were a raving lez/fetishist/exhibitionist before, they sure will now.

7.  Trying to pull a straight colleague – I felt genuine pain just typing that out.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve committed this faux pas at work.  Sure, it never really gets any less embarrassing wherever it happens to occur… but at least if you do it in a bar, on a train, or in your local Starbucks queue, chances are you’ll never have to face them again.  Do it with a colleague and hey presto, you get to relive your nightmare on a daily basis.

8.  Leaving a drunken post-it on someone’s desk – in a similar genre to stumbling through your door at 3am on a Saturday night, only to decide it would be a great idea to log into facebook and write (what you believe to be) logical, well constructed and witty messages on the walls of people you haven’t spoken to for five years, the drunken-post-it-on-the-computer-screen trick will always guarantee an immediate sense of dread when you open your eyes the next day.  This because, unless you elect to hire a helicopter to zoom you directly to work, beat everyone else in and remove said post-it before it has an opportunity to be noticed, chances are by the time you stumble in bleary eyed after forgetting to set your alarm, a copy of your non-sensical (possibly revelatory) scrawling will have been passed around your entire department via scan e-mail.  Drunk texting is nothing in comparison.

9.  Sleeping under your desk – always inadvisable.  Aside from the obvious physical disadvantages incurred, being found underneath it at 9am the next morning by your, conversely, fresh-faced boss is an experience you will not wish to repeat.  It’s also not going to help that illusion of professionalism we covered earlier.

10.  Failing to warn anyone that your plus one is a girl – again, this links back to whether your colleagues are aware of your sexual orientation.  Suffice to say, if they’re not, strolling in hand-in-hand with your girlfriend and giving her a big snog at the dinner table might raise a few eyebrows if you haven’t mentioned it previously.  It’s another one of those fist-eating moments I enjoy so much.

So there we have it; go easy on the free booze, avoid drunken conversations with your boss and have a merry faux-Christmas without becoming the focal point of this year’s office tittle-tattle.  Oh, and please feel free to tell us your own office Christmas party blunders…