I’m old enough to remember when office Christmas parties were actually fun. Most people would get themselves all liquored up and do incredibly stupid things. Like make out with coworkers, vomit in front of the VPs and blurt out inappropriate comments about all kinds of stuff they'd later reget. Unfortunately, those days are over.
“Gone are the nights of photocopying one's bare buttocks, groping interns and hauling home a gift bag full of goodies.”
And that’s a goddamned shame.
“Instead, sensitized by sexual harassment cases, sobered by the dangers of drunk driving, solemn since September 11, 2001, saddened by Hurricane Katrina and set back by economic worries, companies are staging sedate affairs these days.”
Talk about depressing.
Christmas parties were the ultimate place to score. Lot’s of people get depressed around the holidays. They get lonely. All they really needed was the right setting to get completely hammered start groping each other. These type of affairs just don’t fly anymore for a multitude of reasons, but try to imagine what it was like in the good old days of the 90s.
The list of atrocities was endless. Some girl would inevitably get drunk and start grinding a VP when the music came on. Some guy would end up taking his shirt off on the dance floor and spin it over his head. Drunks would start asking the executive officers personal questions. People would go outside and come back stinking of weed and then get approached by someone important.
The beauty of it wasn’t necessarily what you did at the party. It was what the others did. Because eventually, everybody had to show up back at work, and that was when the real shit started.
“Did you see Shirley from accounting? I heard she lifted up her skirt in front of Carl Thompson and then she fell down the stairs by the restrooms.”
“A bunch’a people saw Linda Jones taking a pee out in the parking lot!”
It was priceless. People came back to work fucking mortified. The Monday after one of these affairs was the best workday of the whole year.
Goddammit, you old fucks did all the fun stuff, and ruined it for the rest of us! 'Course, that kind of shit still goes on at private parties.
I remember making some chick scream to Jesus on the drier in the laundry room. When I opened the door to sneak us out I was faced with a kitchen full of angry party-goers. Seems all the booze was in there, but we were too drunk to notice. We'd hogged the place for like a half hour.
Instead, sensitized by sexual harassment cases, sobered by the dangers of drunk driving, solemn since September 11, 2001, saddened by Hurricane Katrina and set back by economic worries, companies are staging sedate affairs these days.
I can't believe none of you called bullshit on this.
Keep in mind: (1) Small businesses don't exist to the New York Times and (2) hello? WHAT THE FUCK does Katrina have to do with this?
This is just the NYT bein' all sad and gloomy like it is, oh, every single blessed day of the week.
Santa Claus could land that sleigh on the White House lawn tomorrow, leave 8 billion bags of gifts for all the people in the world (he'd trust us to send a good many of 'em FedEx), and the New York Times would lament Santa's ethnocentrism.
"And yet, it is somewhat baffling why old Saint Nick would choose the United States, a country held in low esteem by the United Nations, in which to deposit gifts of dubious value destined for suffering third-world countries . . . ."
Come on, who can't write this article already? IN THEIR SLEEP?
Ah yeah, the good ole days. Back around 1990 my boss use to get a suite at one of the finer hotels. He would stock the bar, hire a bartender, have great food catered, all with good party music. Oh, and no spouse were invited, employees only, hmmmm. Anyways, I remember one too many times a VP on all fours giving the person on his back a ride around the room, people dancing on tables, the typical wild office party. One year as I was leaving the party, at the end of the hall was a sofa bed for some reason and after snatching some blankets a couple of people were under the covers. I just kept walking, didn't really want to know.