I am entirely incapable of relaxing at work holiday parties, work happy hours, etc.

That is all.

this is likely a good thing

missing my work holiday party right now. :D

hilariously they scheduled the office sexual harassment training right before the holiday party.

booze

I am the same way

I guess if I was really into either Tennis or vacations, I'd have more to talk about with people. Because that's what they seem to talk about.

this is why booze

I don't "get" the deal with drinking at work.

My entire life, no matter who my co-workers have been or how much I liked them as fellow workers, I have never had the slightest urge to party down with them. I can only remember one I would have hiked with.

more booze

my office holiday party is tonight at a decent hotel with a piano bar and a karaoke contest ($400 for first place)

obv I am looking forward to this tremendously

You're probably telling yourself you don't belong. And you may be right (depending on the true basis of belonging). But you should probably tell yourself the reverse.

a sing for your supper deal, eh?

I probably just don't want to drink with my co-workers.

Yes that's true (in re belonging). Heightened by the fact that I'm only here 4 months and am the newest person.

Course it's also my cheap firm's fault for scheduling a holiday party at lunchtime during a work day, such that I can't really have more than one beer and expect to get anything done after.

I don't mind at all drinking with my coworkers when I don't have to pay

even sometimes when I do have to pay, it's still fun, because half my coworkers are super crass and attempt to outgross each other (including the super Christian (!!!))

(said super Christian spends a good chunk of his work day silently but pointedly giving off "in a slightly different world, I would have been an Avenger" vibes, btw)

It's a fantastic chance to get to know the people you're forced to spend the bulk of your life with better. I guess it depends on the colleagues as to whether that's something you want to do, though.

My other half spent the bulk of the christmas party talking about sex toys with a girl who had joined the company three days earlier. About a dozen of us ended up in a hotel lobby drinking Talisker at 4am trying to find another colleague a new boyfriend on Blendr. It has a humanising effect.

normally i do ok with office parties and happy hours but i completely failed this year. there was like a 4 hour long party around the corner and i went out of my way to take the stairs the whole time like a coward

I am entirely incapable of relaxing at work holiday parties, work happy hours, etc.

i like free booze and have been lucky enough to work with people who were not really the types i wanted to be close friends with but who were at least fun to drink with

It's a fantastic chance to get to know the people you're forced to spend the bulk of your life with better.

OTM. My only complaint about our office happy hours is that the same dozen people show up to them every time. Which is why I'm looking forward to next week's annual Glögg party, which is held in the office during the middle of the day.

people are alike all over; work social events are a great time to observe them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIZ04AGTjHc

Had an end of class outing with classmates; was not impressed. Also, while one stepped off to the side I declared that I find him "fucking insufferable." This is a bad idea, yes?

went to a crowded bar with some of my coworkers, played dreidel for M&Ms, paid for my own overpriced bourbon, tried to make for it in consumption of office-funded spinach & artichoke dip

One of the weird things about the office environment is that there are even a couple of people who I totally think I would hang with if we had gone to college together or something, and we get along at work and talk but it's in this uncomfortable, restrained way, because there's this work-imposed invisible barrier there.

I ate some ham and walked out of my work office party without saying anything.

i think i am getting to know what kind of coworkers you guys are
loosen up!

Coworkers need to stop being so fucking boring.

you did the aspie scram?

I've had a cold, not a really bad one, for about 4 days and drank the hell out of today's party.

Talked to 3-1/2 people in 3-1/2 hours.

On the way out they were playing a remix of the Dirty Dancing song and I couldn't help thinking of Mr & Mrs Hi Dere.

the idea that my work would ever organise a xmas party or any type of social event is laughable. the extent of xmas celebration we have is that the two filipino ladies that i work most closely with will bring tons of delicious food on friday.

Guess who won $300 bucks at the company karaoke competition tonight? (hint: it was me)

why did they change it from $400

It was $600 overall; $300 for 1st, $200 for 2nd and $100 for third. The person I talked to earlier was thinking of the total prize money and couldn't add.

What songs ?

I guess if I was really into either Tennis or vacations, I'd have more to talk about with people. Because that's what they seem to talk about.

oh man they sound like my dream colleagues. i genuinely dream of knowing ANYONE irl - let alone in a job! - that i can rabbit on and on about tennis to ;_;

(i enjoyed both of the office xmas parties i've been to, though not enough to miss the institution as a freelancer)

Does anyone else commonly get that feeling when going out with people (people you like and want to hang around, mind you) of suddenly just wanting to be alone, and being sort of bored/having your social functions just shut down, so that you spend more time thinking about things you'd rather be doing.

I can already hear the "that's called 'office parties' amirite" response, but I'm talking about more voluntary, "fun" things.

Guess who won $300 bucks at the company karaoke competition tonight?

― OH NOES, Saturday, December 17, 2011 12:55 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

your boss?

xp everyone gets that occasionally but if it's happening regularly i think that's a #lookatyourlifelookatyourchoices moment

Totally normal edb. I've come to deliberately limit my time at things, and aim for quieter periods and smaller groups, because I know that after a point I find it harder and harder to converse.

I was on a course once that plausibly explained it in terms of Myers-Briggs extroversion/introversion types - the idea being that the former get a buzz from being in a group, the latter are drained by it because it's more of an effort - so even if you can do it well enough, eventually you run out of puff and need to take some time introverting to recharge.

talking to ppl is hard outside of the work context, but almost always worth the effort ime, spent last night blarneying and being blarneyed to by two retired engineers, coulda been worse

I have a difficult time hanging with co-workers right now outside of work. Mostly because, as it stands, I'm still relatively new to this department, and I have worked hard to carefully craft my 'professional' persona. I'm sort of afraid of them seeing the other side of me until I've settled in more, mostly cuz I'm much more craycray IRL than the 'oh ho that was a good one chuckle chuckle' persona I have in the office.

even when I am at a function, I don't reveal too much...not yet at least.

Most of the time only really good things have come from my work parties.

I'm the only support staff in my office of 2 partner attorneys and 1 associate, and we NEVER have meetings at work. Cocktail hours and dinners have been our meetings, and the booze opens my bosses ears and mouths to stuff I would love to discuss at meetings.

We have our holiday dinner on Tuesday and I'm getting together an agenda in my mind. I want some new software and a shift in responsibilities. At past parties this has worked. If I tried that at work, I'd get about 1 minute to state my case and then they'd forget.

And in the past I learned that the partners love me and hated my predecessor - and rightly so - amongst other problems, that dummy told off a federal court judge who was presiding in one a big case. (The judge rejected papers were bound and arranged incorrectly, in violation of court rules. My predecessor said who cares as long he could read them.)

xps: Thrid place sang "Love Shack". Second place sang "Desperado". I sang "Creep" (sorry Lex!)

Which Creep?

Radiohead, natch. I did consider an STP song ("Interstate Love Song")

What did the people who didn't win sing? (Those are always the best because they put forth the effort, but it did not yield the desired result of prize money and they're left with the bittersweet memory of having sung karaoke at a work holiday party with nothing to show for it)

I remember once being in a work karaoke contest at one of my old retail companies (the prize being an Xbox, lol 2004)...singing "New York, New York" (they didn't have a v. good selection), getting a standing O, and losing to a dude who sang "Your Body is a Wonderland" while tweeking his nipples and making Adam Sandler squeals.

I'm still angry about that. tbf tho I burned his house down in retribution.

I'm trying to remember them all...

Never Gonna Give You Up
I Want It That Way
Tearing Up My Heart
You Are The Sunshine Of My Life
Don't Stop Believing

I think there were some others but I can't remember.

I also ended up singing "Let It Snow" with the dueling piano guys.

come to think of it I did participate in the "American Idol" contest at work 5 yeras ago and finished 2nd ("Enjoy the Silence") to a chick that sang over a pre-recorded cd with vocals already on it!

i'll leave the karaoke contests to the DJPs of the world, who can actually win.

(that one was a 1 month long contest tho...I also did "When Doves Cry").

One of the weird things about the office environment is that there are even a couple of people who I totally think I would hang with if we had gone to college together or something, and we get along at work and talk but it's in this uncomfortable, restrained way, because there's this work-imposed invisible barrier there.

There's a guy at work who I thought was in this category after 4.5 years of occasionally talking about music and rolling our eyes at other coworkers, but then he became instantly super-pally with a new guy who he still keeps in touch with now he's left, while I curse my aspie-ness (or possibly the male/female divide)

do youse guys pay for food/drinks at yr christmas party? everywhere I've worked we've had to pay, which I just assumed was the norm outside big business until my other half (working for different department of same university) went to his 3 paid-for-by-dept work Christmas dinners, as opposed to my one paid-for-by-me work Christmas lunch

(and the thought of winning anything bigger than a mug at anything run by my work is just pretty funny)

to illustrate why me and my co-workers probably wouldn't have much in common to talk about, one of them my age told us all their favorite movie was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Wait until Hurting Jr. comes along and you have to spend what remains of your free time with the parents of his friends who are all nice enough but...

(I exaggerate, of course, for rhetorical effect, I kid, but still...)

There is also some quote from Tracer Hand on real-ILX about trying to be interesting at work that is apropos

the other reason I have a hard time connecting with co-workers is almost all of them are married with kids and I can't relate to either, and when you're married w/ kids, you tend to talk about both a lot (not that it's a bad thing, but I'm a bachelor so I usually get a deer in teh headlights look on either topic)

I staye away from the people I actually worked with and took the opportunity to meet people I rarely encounter (and high-level execs who are otherwise loathe to speak with underlings). Sometimes I did the karaoke bar but that was before my voice badly deteriorated. We always had our Christmas parties at a golf glub where you could rent rooms for the night at the adjoining hotel, which I always did, which dramatically increased the chances I wouldn't be leaving alone.

Christmas party last week was the first time I didn't recognise any of the tunes they played at the disco. RIP my pop life. I have an ok time at these things, really like some of my colleagues and hang out with them IRL, but when it comes to the company-wide events I find it impossible to let go and get trashed, I generally limit my drinking to a couple of pints. This is probably a good thing.

In my department, there are nine "bosses" and each boss has a staff of two attorneys and an AA. Okay.

So we never have an officially sanctioned, work-wide holiday party. But every year, the professional association of lawyers who practice before our agency throw a gross, huge party at a hotel or night club with shitty beer and a band of old lawyers called like "Promissory Estoppel" or something, doing classic rock covers and we can go for free if we want. I went once, saw my future, and never went back.

This year in my department they restarted a tradition wherein the bosses can take their staff out to lunch as a group, which is fine, except that some of the bosses decided they didn't want to pay for lunch for their staff, and there is one attorney who is a "floater" so has no boss to take her out, and a couple of bosses who are in southern IL but whose staff is in Chicago and those bosses are like "I'm not coming to Chicago for lunch" so it's basically three bosses and their staff and the other staffs and the one poor floater are just shit out of luck I guess.

My partied rocked. I did the electric slide.

Party.

I had a pretty good time at my office party this past weekend. At a favorite local Mexican joint, decent food, pretty fun party games that weren't TOO awkward, and I ended the night killing our allotted budget ( use it or lose it! ) with the managing partner, drinking $50/shot tequila. Then I went and jammed with some friends' cover band, and four of my co-workers came out, and the file clerk ( young, but pretty cool dude ) ended up arguing with my noon-work friend of the relative merits of Northern v. Southern California.

Good times!

Obviously, the high-water mark for holiday parties for me was 2001, when I picked my now-wife up at our office party. Great times!!!

wish me luck, y'all

open bar for 5 hours, for better or worse

whoa

for real tho

Lucky. Fucking. BITCH.

Since the department party two (!) weeks ago was a university function, no booze. This is what sucks about a public university.

Oh, you'll be fine. In case things do get wild, the following are things that I have learned are generally frowned upon from attending various work holidays over the years:

- drinking the free wine sitting on the table straight from the bottle
- dancing on a table top
- hooking up with a co-worker out in the open and showing up to work the next day three hours late with mad scratches all over your back and proceeding to show them off
- passing out at the table
- showing your boss you tattoos where doing so means they see an area of your body that they normally would not

(Only actually guilty of one of those - the rest were things I consider myself fortunate to have witnessed.)

One more - starting a fight and taking a swing at a co-worker - don't do that.

holy hell dude--pace yourself!

Just because there is free booze available for five hours doesn't mean you have to drink free booze for five hours.

As I'm posting that I realize how alien that would have sounded to me as little as six years ago.

Also do ppl who lose it completely at office parties never drink? I mean… have some dignity.

Me either. I had my work Christmas party a few weeks ago and I just wandered around aimlessly, stoned and kinda drunk, not talking to anyone.

run wild, run free imo. be magnificent out there

drink like the wind!

Also do ppl who lose it completely at office parties never drink? I mean… have some dignity.

Combination of:

- free booze
- nervousness/excitement at drinking free booze with people you don't usually see after 6 pm on Fridays.

even booze you have to pay for will get you fucked up if you drink it right, pro tip

open bar for 5 hours, for better or worse

liveblog it

damn I guess this free food/booze thing really happens at everyone's office parties except mine, right ;_;

i ended up leaving with bottle of patron *kanye shrug*

Somebody told me last week that Siete Leguas is the real Patrón

You walked out of a bar with a bottle of Patron? You have had a week.

well it was a secret santa thing, but still

pour it out for your 'fins