An old joke seems to emphasize why I hate the office Christmas party:

A robber held up a bank and told all the employees to lie flat on the floor. One of the tellers looked over at the boss' pneumatic blonde secretary, and yelled, "No, no, Ms. Smith. Lie face down. This isn't the office Christmas party!"

The problem is that we go through the entire year, all well-behaved, considerate and polite with each other. Relationships are friendly, and we get the job done. I was manager of a 40-person creative division of a large company, and it wasn't always easy running the everyday business and meeting all our deadlines. Then, with the approach of the so-called holiday season, I could always feel a change in members of my staff.

Like the TV ads that start hawking Christmas products before Thanksgiving Day, working people begin to jump the gun long before the actual day of the annual office party. Committees are formed to select the location, decide on the food and buy the booze, This is certainly OK if they did it on their own time, and they always made solemn promises to me that they would. However, I know we lost at least two weeks of normal productivity before every office Christmas party. By day five before the party, our effectiveness dropped by about 20% a day, to absolute zero on the morning of the party.

Now, I'm no Scrooge, and I've always been a fun-loving guy, even in the later decades of my career when I was responsible for the quality and quantity of work put out by my 40 employees. In my own time, I travelled the world, served a couple of wartime hitches in the Navy and did my own share of carousing, However, I always tried to live up to the simple theory that you give an hour's work for an hour's pay. Christmas parties, all the planning that goes before them and all the shenanigans that happen during them, are the direct opposite of that theory.

In addition to the lost productivity of the extended annual Christmas party schedule, I was always offended by the change in people that daytime boozing can bring. There's the couple, who are married to other people, who huff and puff in the dark corner of the stockroom. There's the woozy low-level guy who feels it is the opportunity to tell the boss off. There's the out-of-tune singing of Christmas carols. And there's the exchange of gifts that have absolutely no practical value to anyone.

This year, my spouse and I have been invited to a holiday party at the senior citizen center. We expect to join a bunch of confused oldsters, and we'll share some terrible food and watery punch. For those of us who are still awake, we'll sing some Christmas carols and then go home. When I was working, I hated those raucous and raunchy office Christmas parties, and now that I've been retired for more than ten years, I really miss them.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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