Nope. My office has no Christmas party. Hell, we only get three days off in the whole year that don't come out of our personal vacation time. But we do get health insurance, so I guess we're ahead of the game.

Remind me again why we think this is such a great country?

We have a department christmas party (catered, free for every worker in the dept and their family, sometimes OK sometimes boring) and a company-wide christmas dance (uhhh, no fundraising, tickets are 10 bucks, I've never been). Pretty normal, I should say.

contessa - do you watch The Office (TV show)? The american version features almost-weekly office parties, complete with party planning committee and resident party tirant. Very funny.

i never knew what a key club was or was for.
i only have a slightly related rant about "office equipment" as i finally got brief inspiration but have already been thwarted twice by a lack of stuff and malfunctioning stuff.
This will not stop the forward thrust of progress as i have already moved mountains (of crap).
It is time to improvise. And/or take a food break.

In your case, i say you secretly plant notices for a competing party, let a few compatriots know your scheme to add to the fun, and just keep leaving a trail of secret party plans and print outs that seem much more interesting that the League of Bags is obviously not party to.

I saw some of the UK version of The Office. I have been meaning to check out the US version.

Office parties are teh suck. Maybe I hate them even more than necessary b/c we don't have any free parties (government employees == nothing free for us, not even coffee). To be honest -- I have not ever even been to the great granddaddy of them all Xmas Party of Lore. I refuse to go to it, because it excludes, possibly quite deliberately, the hardest working of us all and not coincidentally, the lowest paid to boot. Oh, and also because I can't stand the biddies who organize it. And also because if I was expected to be trapped in a room for 4 to 5 hours with my co-workers while country music was playing, and the booze was only available at a cash bar, you would have to pay me.

And I kinda feel bad, because I know that all things being equal, other people have workplace horror stories that would make the skin peel off my face in horror. But c'mon. It's MARCH. Can we give the Xmas stuff a rest until August, at least?

hmm. my rant comes nowhere close contessa, but i know the sorts of middle aged nutbag office females of which you speak. despite being middle aged myself, i a) can't ABIDE this sort of office-related douchebaggery and b) religiously steer cautiously clear of any and all involvement in said douchebaggery, Namecalling Be Damned. they can fuck off right into the heart of a blazing supernova for all i care. thank buddha the sorts of places i have worked the past few turns have had management which backs me up on this.

sounds like you have a bunch of these on your hands. sucks, i'm sorry about that.

anyhow, my rant:

what the fuck dude?

we bought YOUR used centrifuge for what YOU asked, and didn't even haggle over price (to be fair, it was a good deal). we are paying freight, and using our own freight service. we're handling the details of getting it packed IN FUCKING PENNSYLVANIA so that you don't have to deal with it...

i fedexed the payment via CERTIFIED COUNTER cheque to you TWO WEEKS ago after you first demanded paypal (sorry dude, we don't have a paypal account and for those amounts it's too much of a hassle to setup a paypal business account for a onetime transaction...) then got all namby pamby about taking an AMEX payment to YOUR paypal account.

fuckwit.

and now...

after calling / emailing 3x daily to find out when payment would be sent you disappear down a rabbithole. i find out said cheque was posted 8th March and repeated emails/calls to you have gone largely unanswered.

o and by the way that passive-aggressive tactic you're using of dealing / emailing only to me, and not the scientist in charge of this project? that doesn't work, you idiot, i'm cc:ing her on the Whole. Goddamn. Transaction. there is a document trail now that stretches to fucking arkansas and back... weretable, you'd best pull your sox up, dude cos the bullshit's getting deep out there.

i mean yea i'm 'only a secretary' but for the love of little green apples me lad, did you think i was seriously born yesterday

? ??

!!

and ***NO*** three weeks is NOT 'good enough' particularly not when the RA comes to me today and asks 'um, when does that new centrifuge come in...? not to be impatient or anything but i had a really hard time getting [the old one] up to speed when i ran that last batch...'

asshat.

(i meant the asshat who wont ship our centrifuge, not our RA, he's kinda cool and actually does work, and reliable work too, which is kinda rare for most interns)

Heee! League of Bags. I'm gonna have to put that one into practice, ethylene.

You can call them LoB, and murmur amongst the likewise disenfranchised about avoiding the LoBby or not wanting to be a S(uctastic/choose a word)LoB.

they can fuck off right into the heart of a blazing supernova

Lonefrontranger, this made me laugh!

OMG. How could I have forgotten? The same group of women is so obsessed, they also throw a Christmas in July party. "Just one for the gals, no boys allowed!"

It is out. of fucking. control.

Some of the Calgary Corporate Challenge whips are like this. They must spend 10 hours a week on average year round organizing. During the challenge and in the six weeks leading up I doubt they get any actual work done at all. Glad none of them are on my team, I'd hate to be picking up the slack.

Wow. The xmas party in July just really put it over the top; it sounds like these people really have nothing more stimulating in their lives than that One Big Thing, hence the planning beginning in March, and the "gal's' party in July - they are really trying to stretch that one event of a few hours duration thin enough to make life bearable for the whole year.

I wouldn't feel too badly for the people they are excluding; I very much doubt they would ever want to attend, and they probably have fun at least several times a month (or, even, week!) as opposed to six hours one night in December.