What Big Tech Company Christmas Parties Are Really Like

Yup. JL

Tom Mitchell comments in Medium:

Everybody’s wearing a Christmas sweater. Most are the same design — the cheapest opening result from a ‘Christmas sweater’ Amazon search. The stock flotation and service profitability was paramount in everyone’s mind throughout the working year. The company needs cashflow to provide a free bar. It was free for the first $5000 of alcohol sold.

‘How long did that last?’

‘Twenty-eight minutes.’

Office gossip claimed this was such an exclusive space that Kanye’s sister once booked it for her dog’s birthday and to rent it for a night, even a Tuesday night, would cost thousands. Yet the space possesses the dark grime of every other club into which you’ve ever descended. There’s nothing glamorous about Tuesday. Maybe that’s the problem. Flashes of disco lighting illuminate the space like lightening in Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory. The dance-floor is desolate apart from the HR officer, dressed as a sexy Santa. She dances alone, gyrating sensuously to Warren G. She looks happy. Her red and white Santa hat is at a jaunty angle.

‘Who fires the HR?’ asks someone.

You’ve arrive late, having okayed it with your project manager because you’re allergic to cranberry sauce and so will skip the meal part of the night, if that’s not a problem.

‘You’re not obliged to eat the cranberry sauce,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t eat the cranberry sauce. Give your cranberry sauce to Geoff.’

You’d explained that to even be in the proximity of cranberry sauce is enough to provoke a terrible rash. Your skin will put people off their Christmas pudding and you wouldn’t want to be responsible for that.

‘And don’t even get me started on the effects of Brussels sprouts,’ you’d added.

The best way of coping with social anxiety is to head for the bar and that’s what you do now. You keep your head down, making like you’ve got very important SnapChatting to complete, to avoid making eye contact with anyone and in particular Sarah from Design. Alex from Marketing is leaning across the bar, elbows in pools of lager, a platinum credit card between his thumb and index. The plastic shimmers in the light.

‘I thought it was a free bar. We were told it was a free bar,’ you say.

What’s the point of a voluntary-but-you-have-to go-into-work-tomorrow-if-you-don’t-attend party if not for free alcohol? That’s why the stock flotation and service profitability was paramount in everyone’s mind throughout the working year. The company needs cashflow to provide a free bar.

‘Welcome to the corporate world, bro,’ says Alex. ‘It was free for the first $5000 of alcohol sold.’

‘How long did that last?’

‘Twenty-eight minutes.’

His breath stinks of whisky. He’s wearing a Christmas sweater. Because everybody’s wearing a Christmas sweater. Most are the same design — the cheapest opening result from a ‘Christmas sweater’ Amazon search. You look down at yours. It’s badly fitting and accentuates the paunch you’re cultivating. You were young, cool, and sexy once, but that was many Christmas parties ago.

The drinks are Christmas themed. There’s Snowball cocktails. Draught ‘Christmas’ Coors. And mulled wine.

‘Whatever’s cheapest,’ you say to the dead-eyed barman.

He pours you cold mulled wine from a plastic jug. It tastes of tomorrow’s hangover. And plastic. You drink it from a straw because it’s the holidays and you gag.

You join a group of co-workers at the edge of the dance-floor. Silently, the group watches the movements of the HR officer to the overloud commercial RnB. Intermittently, they lift their red plastic mugs to mouths of horizontal line.

‘This is fucking shit,’ says someone.

‘Watch Geoff,’ says someone else.

I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd plays.

Geoff, whose office days consist of nothing but standing at the photocopier, is transformed by alcohol. He darts from woman to woman like a blood-frenzied mosquito. He is as quickly swatted away. There’s a quiet melancholy to watching him fail. Imagine what a Christmas gift it would be for Geoff to lose his virginity.

‘He’ll be on the naughty list tomorrow,’ says someone.

There’s a presence at your shoulder. It’s Sarah from Design. She backs you into a darkened corner and moans with equal abandon about the graphical limitations of Adobe Photoshop and the sexual limitations of her husband. You look over her shoulders for help. People avoid your glance by looking at their phones. You’re forced to make the limpest party excuse. King Limp Excuse.

‘I need the bathroom,’ you say.

Both bathroom cubicles are locked. There’s a queue of antsy, werewolf-eyed guys waiting for entry. You take a piss and listen to snorts and coughs and talk of audience impact and real estate. You could vomit into the urinal if you put your mind to it. Such is the limitless possibility of the office party. Post-piss, you go for another mulled wine. You pass your project manager on the way.

‘Good to see you’re enjoying yourself,’ she says, sounding like the headmistress of an English boarding school in the 1920s.

You squeak like a weasel.

Nicola is at the bar and your heart doubles in size. You say hi and feel your cheeks blush, thankful for the muted lighting. You wonder about offering to buy her a drink but worry she might think you’re being inappropriate. You catch your breath. You dial down your wild smile. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t buy you a drink. Aside from the sad truth that she probably doesn’t lay awake at night wondering whether that time she called you sweet for holding the elevator meant that she finds you sexually attractive.

‘You enjoy yourself, Tom,’ she says as she leaves with two pints of beer. ‘You deserve it.’

And she gives you a look. A non-sexual look. The look a mother might give you as she drops her son off for soccer practice. Your soul shrivels. You can feel it. It feels like indigestion.

You look to your phone. It’s not even ten yet. You could get shit-faced. Or feign massive injury, like a heart attack. Those would be two ways of shortening the evening. Everyone would be talking about you if you pretended to have a heart attack. They’d send flowers to your house and all sorts. People survive heart attacks. Your co-workers wouldn’t necessarily discover that you’d faked it.

You ask the barman for a mulled wine.

‘Sold out,’ he says. ‘We got Coors and bottle water.’

Halfway through the night, the 90s RnB abruptly stops and a gruff voice announces that the dance-floor is to be cleared. The HR woman staggers off to be replaced with a balding middle-aged man whom you recognise from internal newsletters. He’s wearing an approximation of Brooklyn cool but everything’s too tight, as if he’s been caught in the rain and has retained the water. He thanks you all for meeting most of the year’s performance targets.

‘As a way of wishing you a happy holiday, we’ve arranged a special guest to get the party jumping. Ladies and gentlemen …. Cameo!’

Cameo saunters onto a makeshift stage and sings gamely along to a Word Up backing track.

‘Seven k,’ someone audibly says as he finishes. ‘Seven. Fucking. K.’

Nicola is dancing with Scott. Scott is tall and immediately handsome. Like with cheekbones. He’s not wearing a Christmas sweater, the fuck, and he’s not even really even part of the office. He’s a freelance legal rep. He’s wearing a suit, the fuck. And Nicola’s smiling, like really smiling. You wonder what might happen if you were to tap Scott on the shoulder and, when he’d turned, punch him square on the chin. He wouldn’t flinch. Your fingers would shatter and fall to the floor in shards. For sure.

‘She’s an angel, isn’t she?’ asks a coder, whom you know for a fact earns your yearly salary every month. And essentially because he was born with a) parents rich enough to buy him a computer, and b) asthma. He could afford better clothing than a Phish t-shirt. The coders were excused the Christmas sweater mandate. ‘Not that I’m objectifying her.’

‘Objectify away,’ you sigh.

Staring at women with software coders signifies it’s time to go home.

You wait until you see your PM leave. And then you walk out in stealth mode. If anyone stops you, you’re going for a cigarette. It goes without saying that you go without saying goodbye to your co-workers. Why would you? As you leave, you pass the booth reserved for the CEO and other VIPs. It’s been empty all night. Until now — a young man is getting his face kissed off by Sarah from Editorial.

Outside, there’s a chill wind to the evening air. As you pull your phone from your smart/casual black jeans and your fingers spider to the Uber app, you consider whether your family Christmas will be any worse than tonight.

Yes, you decide, it definitely will.