Company Culture #9

On the day of the company Christmas party, everyone worked at their desks until noon or so. Then the sociable sorts started wandering toward the hotel, traveling in herds with their friends, to arrive early at the party and have more time for talking to each other. The semi-sociable sorts went at 12:30 or 12:40, leaving just anti-social Zeke and me in the office.

"How long can we put this off?" I said. I could've put it off until next year and been just fine, but I'd promised Juan that I'd be there. Still had my doubts, though. Hundreds of people I didn't know, all in one huge ballroom, and at any moment any of them might want to make conversation with me? Just thinking about it strangled all traces of any Christmas spirit I might have once had, decades earlier.

"It won't be as bad as you think," Zeke said as I grabbed my jacket. He turned off the office lights, and as we walked out the door he added, "but it'll be pretty bad."

Then we walked to the hotel, arriving mere minutes before the party's official start at 1:00. Juan was waiting for us outside the hotel, and he said, “Today’s going to be a great day!” I gave him a hug, and the three of us walked in together.

I'd never been inside the hotel before. It wasn't built for people like me. This was a place for fancy people. The lobby had high ceilings, geometric carpeting, glowing pillars, couches and chairs everywhere, and acres of empty space. I was beyond lost, but Zeke, having been to these annual events before, led us down a long hallway, across an atrium, and under an archway, until — there we were.

And it was ridiculous. The ballroom was a huge space, extravagantly decorated with banners and balloons and two fully decked-out Xmas trees, one on each side of the room. There were hundreds of wrapped presents under each tree (elaborate props, I assumed) — and hundreds of people in the room.

Oh, jeez. I hated it already.

It's not a fear of crowds; I've been to baseball games with 30,000 people and had fun. It's not a fear of socializing; I ain't good at chit-chat and such, but with effort I can do it. Socializing with lots and lots of people, though, and surrounded by them — that's my phobia of phobias. A thesaurus of profanity flooded my mind and I wanted to run from the place, but I'd decided to face it. I wanted to run, though.

Some human from Human Resources approached us, asked our names, looked us up on a clipboard, and gave us pre-printed name tags. We hung our jackets on a coat-rack that stretched from here to eternity, and slapped the stupid name tags onto our shirts, and (sweet Jesus) I followed Juan and Zeke into the ballroom.

"This is going to be fun, Doug," Juan said. "I promise."

"No, it won't," said Zeke, "but it'll be bearable."

I was sweaty and skeptical about the 'bearable' bit. The company had about 250 employees, but with spouses and guests, there were about 500 people in the room already, more were still arriving, and most of them seemed deliriously happy. LSD happy. They were laughing and hugging and ho-ho-ho-ing.

There were fifty tables, maybe more, each with twelve chairs and plates and sets of silverware, and twelve blank name cards. You were supposed to pick a seat, write your name on a card, and leave it where you'd be sitting. Then you could mingle with everyone else. Ugh. Shrewdly, though, by coming late we'd missed the mingling time.

In the distance, a curly-haired white man waved at Zeke and Juan, and we walked toward him. He was at a table in the corner — worst seats in the house, and as removed from the crowd as you could be without stepping into the hall, but that's a good thing.

"Welcome, fellow orphans," he said as we approached.

Juan said to me, "This is Russell Ruston, from I.T.," and to Russell he said, "This is Doug Holland, and he doesn't want to be here."

"None of us want to be here," said someone across the table, but smiling as he said it.

"That's for sure," Russell said, shaking my hand.

Zeke explained that Russell had come early to claim our space, had filled out our dozen name cards, and this table was a refugee camp for people who'd otherwise never be comfortable coming to the company Christmas party.

"We sit together every year," someone else at the table said, "and we don't talk much."

"Survival tactics," Russell said.

"Seems like a smart system," I said. "Thanks for doing this."

"I'm a systems analyst," Russell said, sighing. "I like solving problems, and this solves my problem — I don't like crowds."

A lady across the table said, "Crowds? Hell, I don't like individuals."

Juan said, "I like people, but this is too many of them."

Zeke and Russell nodded, and someone else at the table said, "You guys are all talking too much," which got a laugh.

I thought, Maybe this is the wrong place but at least it's the right table.

A few people introduced themselves, but there wasn't time to meet everyone (which was fine, to be honest) before the lights dimmed and went up again — a signal that meant, on with the show, this is it.

With much tinkling of forks on glasses, the ballroom hushed as the CEO, Roger Harper, walked to the podium, wearing an ordinary suit topped with a red and white Santa cap. He coughed into the microphone, looked around nervously, and said very dryly, "Uh, hello, everyone. Let's open, uh, with the figures from the third quarter, and our projections for the upcoming year—"

Suddenly, three people sprang from their front-row tables blowing kazoos and shouting "Not today, Roger!" and "Merry Christmas!"

The CEO shouted, "Just kidding! Merry Christmas, everybody!"

My boss Daniel had been one of the three who rushed the stage — a cute little skit. As CEO Roger left the stage, he dramatically unknotted and removed his tie, and tossed it like tinsel onto one of the trees.

Waiters in tuxedos came into the room pushing several salad bars on carts, and hot food on other carts. I'd been told the grub would be great, and I was hungry, but our table was in the most remote section, so we were very nearly the last to be served.

The delay gave my tablemates a chance to finish the introductions. There were even some awkward conversations, but we all kinda giggled about the awkwardness. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't awful.

When the food rolled our way, it was a choice of ham, turkey, beef, or 'vegetarian', plus a dozen sides from peas to potatoes to cornbread. I had the ham. Give me a choice and I'll always choose ham. It was fabo as promised, and the carts continued circulating all through the meal so when I wanted more ham, I simply raised my hand and presto, more ham.

I eat too much when I'm nervous, so I had four helpings of ham, with mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, french fries, and mashed potatoes again. Eventually, the carts became dessert carts, and I had several pieces of several pies.

Daniel stopped by our table for a few minutes of season's greetings, and a few others from among the normals said hello. The huge room echoed and amplified the sound from all the other tables, so it was a cacophony of conversation, but at our table we talked quietly and only occasionally — or didn't — and that's the way we wanted it.

None of us had come to this party to make friends. We'd come to endure it until it was over. A good time was had by none of us at our table, but also nobody shot themselves so it was a grand success.

After the feasting, forks tinkled against glasses again, and Roger came back to the podium. "OK," he said, "happy holidays, and we have a video we'd like to show you."

Were there groans from the audience, or only from inside my soul? Unless you work in Hollywood, you never want to watch a movie made by the place where you work, but surprisingly, the video was funny, and better still, it was short. Someone had gone 'round inside the headquarters building, filming people at work and asking them silly or stupid questions, like a Jimmy Kimmel bit. Some of the questions and some of the answers were amusing, and then it was over. Applause, deserved.

Next, Elizabeth spoke about the company's charitable donations for Christmas. They'd 'adopted' a dozen disadvantaged families, she said, and each family had been given Christmas dinner and presents for everyone. There was a slideshow, with pictures of Elizabeth in a Santa suit making the deliveries, and she joked, "I did not enter anyone's home via the chimney."

It was a nice gesture but a lame joke, and the pictures seemed intrusive. If I'm poor and you want to help me, help me — but don't snap pictures of yourself with me and my family, and flash 'em on the screen at the frickin' Ritz Carlton. To me, that was the off-est moment of the afternoon.

Then CEO Roger came back to the podium, and said, "Here's what you've been waiting for, and the rules are very complicated, so listen closely: One, please take only one present each, and Two, everyone have a very happy holiday!"

And with that, people stood and applauded, and started making their way toward the Christmas trees. One, it was over, thank Christ, and Two, all those hundreds of boxes under the trees were not props. They were actual presents.

We said merry Christmas and goodbye to the other people at our table, and while it would be nice to say I'd made some new friends, that would be an exaggeration. At best, I'd recognize a few faces when we rode the same elevators at the office, but Russell was the only person I met at the party that I'd ever really talk to again. And even then, I don't think he remembered that we'd met.

We all waited in line to reach the nearest tree, and Zeke explained how this part of the party worked. All the presents were different, all were unmarked, and you simply took a present and took your chances. Most would be little things, Juan explained — a desk fan, or a garden sprinkler — but a few of the gifts would be more substantial items. Last year, he said, someone had gotten a snowblower.

From under the tree, I took a red box just because I like red, and because it was small and light enough to easily carry. Juan and Zeke and I took our boxes to a nearby, already abandoned table and started ripping.

Juan got a handheld video game that looked somewhat nice. Zeke got an ugly Christmas sweater. I got an oversized flashlight that was also an AM/FM radio (batteries included). Nice presents, and another nice touch for the big event. Juan said he didn't like video games, so he and Zeke traded presents. Juan pulled his new sweater on over his head, and it mussed his hair real funny, and Zeke took a picture that ended up in the company newsletter.

The crowd was thankfully thinning, and in the lobby a dozen other people were trading their company presents. Olivia, boss of the slicers, was among them, and her present had been a lava lamp, but she'd traded it for a very nice picnic basket. She's outgoing but also nice, so the four of us got to talking, and she'd been working for the company for decades, so she told us about the spirit of Christmas parties past.

In her first few years, she said, there'd been drinking at the Christmas parties — booze with an open bar. Bottomless martinis and Manhattans. "That ended in the 1980s," she said, "after the incident."

"The incident?" I asked, and without nearly enough details she told us that a vice president and an office worker had gotten "really quite handsy" at their table during dinner.

I wondered exactly how handsy, but Olivia said, "Oh, my husband's here to pick me up — you guys have a great Christmas, OK?" and she was gone.

It was only about 2:45 and we were free to go, and still we'd be paid like we'd worked until our normal quitting times. Yet another nice touch. The party, I decided, had been mostly a series of nice touches, and damn, the ham was good, too.

Juan and Zeke and I said goodbye and merry Christmas, and Juan said, "Will you come to the party again next Christmas?"

I smiled and said "Absolutely," but knew I wouldn't. Like an anthropological expedition, I'd come, I'd seen, I'd experienced it, and now I've written about it, but once was enough. Happy holidays and all that crap, but even with Juan and Zeke and the other orphans protecting me, I'd rather be at home with my wife and the cat.

Company Culture