Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In this week’s Direct Report, she answers readers’ questions about holidays at work.
Dear Direct Report,
I work for a small company of only eight people. Every December, we receive all kinds of gifts from vendors and clients—gift baskets, cookies, candy, wine, and so forth. These are usually accompanied by cards making it clear that the gifts are intended for the whole office to thank us for our work that year. Sometimes people even drop off gifts in person, and they will say things like, “This is for the whole office to enjoy.”
Every time, my boss will take the gifts into his own office so no one else can have any of them, or he takes them home for his family. The only time we ever get to enjoy the gifts ourselves is if it’s something he doesn’t like. (The highlight of last year was that the rest of us got to eat some really fancy pears a client had sent because the boss doesn’t like fruit.)
These gifts are clearly intended as a thank you to all of us. Is there anything we can say to him to get him to share?
—Gift Grift
Dear Gift Grift,
Your boss is an ass.
But it’s relevant what kind of ass he is. Is he a tyrant who punishes people who stand up to him or who will make your life miserable if you say something? If so, it’s likely not worth the battle.
But if he’s just a socially clueless boor, you and your colleagues should speak up this year! Nominate whoever has the best rapport with him—or has been around the longest, or has the most sway—to say, “People are getting demoralized when gifts are addressed to the whole team, but we don’t get to enjoy them. Can we put them in the kitchen this year so we can all share them?” Ideally they should say this when other people are around so that (a) others can chime in to confirm that, yes, they’d appreciate being able to partake, and (b) there’s additional pressure on him to appear like a decent person.
Dear Direct Report,
Every December, my office does what I consider an excessive amount of holiday events. We have an office party, plus separate team parties. Two of those parties happen during the workday—we’re expected to attend, and we’re required to earn comp time (by working overtime in November and December) to cover that time away from our desks. We also have competitive decorating and cooking events, and we do Secret Santa and a group gift exchange.
I don’t mind attending one or two parties, but my time is valuable to me and Christmas comes with a lot of family obligations filling up my calendar as well. I try to bow out of what I feel I can, but I’m annoyed that I’m still expected to work at capacity at my actual job while doing all this extracurricular stuff, and having to work overtime as well. However, I’m also one of the oldest people on my team, so I tend to get drowned out by less-experienced colleagues and painted as a grinch. I really love Christmas, but I hate being forced to treat my co-workers as if they’re my dysfunctional family that I’m somehow financially responsible for. I’ve had friends joke that I work for a cult. Do you have any advice for getting out of the excessive holiday festivities without it harming my career?
—Have My Own Family Holidays
Dear Have My Own,
You have to earn comp time to attend your company holiday parties?! That is extremely weird. Work parties aren’t normally so enticing that people want to work overtime for the privilege of attending them. If your employer is convinced all these events benefit the business in some way, attending them should be considered work time—and otherwise they should be optional.
If nothing else, you should tackle that part of this twisted Christmas wonderland. What would happen if you simply said your schedule this month doesn’t allow you to work extra hours to earn comp time for the party and so you’ll be sitting it out? Or, better yet, pointed out that if it’s a required work activity, it needs to be considered work time? The federal Fair Labor Standards Act agrees with that, by the way; assuming you’re nonexempt (which I’m guessing you are from your reference to overtime), and if it’s truly a requirement of your job to be there, you need to be paid for it.
Beyond the comp time issue, it sounds like the biggest problem is that you feel obligated to participate in all the activities, and it would be easier to survive December if you could just sit some of it out without being labeled as a grinch. So I’m curious whether all your co-workers are as enamored of the holiday overload as you think they are. Any chance you can find a few who’d prefer a break from some of this and push back as a group? The goal wouldn’t be to stop activities others are enjoying, but rather to normalize not participating in all of it. (And consider pointing out that all this Christmas activity is likely pretty alienating to employees who don’t celebrate Christmas.)
But if you’re really the lone objector, the other option is to find ways to expend as little energy as possible on each activity. Cooking competition? Bring in store-bought baked goods. Decorating contest? Slap up some snowflakes on your wall and call it good.
Dear Direct Report,
My boss is very generous and usually gives his five direct reports gift cards worth $200–$300 every holiday season. I’ve never expected gifts from my bosses, and I don’t usually gift “up,” but I have always given them a card or holiday baking or honey from my husband’s beehives.
However, years ago our boss’s executive assistant—who was quite overbearing—started a tradition of giving the boss a gift each year and soliciting money from his employees for the gift. She would not take no for an answer and would not consider changing her practices. When she retired, I somehow ended up becoming the gift person (not sure how this happened), so for the last couple years, I’ve initiated the gift giving for our boss. We are all paid well and can easily afford this, but it’s … weird. I feel like it’s probably uncomfortable for him too, and he always insists he doesn’t need or expect anything from us.
But I’ve just fallen into this doom cycle and don’t know how (or even if) I should end it. Do I continue collecting money or a gift card for our boss every year? Or do I somehow end this gracefully? I just wish gifting at work was not a thing and don’t understand why it ever was!
–Stuck in Gift Limbo
Dear Stuck,
Give your co-workers the best possible gift they can get this year: Stop the tradition.
It’s really inappropriate for employees to be asked to contribute money toward a gift for the boss! In fact, there’s a clear etiquette rule on this: any gifts in the workplace should flow downward (from managers to employees), not upward (from employees to their bosses). That’s because employees shouldn’t feel any pressure to give gifts to the people responsible for their paychecks, and managers shouldn’t benefit from power dynamics in that way.
I can guarantee that at least some, if not all, of your co-workers resent being expected to spend their cash on a gift for someone who makes more money than them, and they will be delighted if you put a stop to it. You don’t necessarily need to make a big announcement that you’re killing the tradition; just don’t mention it this year and instead circulate a card for people to sign. If anyone asks if there’s going to be a gift, you can say, “Bob has said every year that he doesn’t want anything from us, and cash is tight for a lot of people around the holidays, especially this year, so I’m just going to circulate a card for anyone who wants to sign it.”
Dear Direct Report,
I used to organize our team Christmas lunch, but now my colleague—who is much better at it and more social—does it, which is great. This year, I suggested a food hall type place where everyone can order their own thing but eat together, but that was turned down as too echoey a location. So it’s booked for an all-you-can-eat Chinese place. It is overpriced, and the reviews are bad. You also can’t just get your own food as it’s not a buffet; you order from a waiter so you have to wait for the food and agree with others on how many of what dishes you want. This sounds really irritating to me, the reviews put me off, and I’m the only vegetarian, so waiting for them all to discuss what dishes they want will annoy me.
But it’s the team Christmas lunch! I like them a lot! Should I just deal with an annoying meal to show team spirit? Could I just bring in cake that day and show my appreciation for them that way?
—No Appetite
Dear No Appetite,
If this is during the workday and everyone on the team goes, you should suck it up and go. If there were nothing vegetarian that you could eat there, that would be different. In that case, it would be reasonable to point that out to the organizer and skip it if they didn’t care to accommodate you. (And to be clear, they should find a way to accommodate you in that situation—the point of these events is to build morale, and having a celebratory team lunch that one member of the team can’t eat at is more likely to harm that person’s morale.) But in this case, you just think the food won’t be great and you’re annoyed that it’s not a buffet. Those aren’t sufficient reasons to take a stand and refuse to attend.
The point of these events isn’t to sup on the best possible food—it’s to bond with your colleagues.
Dear Direct Report,
I have a staff member in my office who is digging in on the “culture war” over holidays. We are a diverse team, and several team members don’t celebrate Christmas, which she knows. But every year she makes a big production about telling everyone “Merry Christmas” at the end of every meeting, starting right after Thanksgiving. Should this be addressed? If so, how?
—Concerned
Dear Concerned,
Eh, it’s obnoxious (every meeting?), but as a Jew I can tell you we’ve dealt with much worse, and this doesn’t sound like it’s risen to the level where an intervention is required. But you should feel free to start adding, “And happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate,” or “Happy end of year to anyone who doesn’t have a holiday coming up.”
That said, if you’re her manager, you should pay close attention to whether she’s doing anything else to alienate colleagues and, if she is, tell her she needs to knock it off. Wishing people a merry Christmas is fine, but if she’s going further than that—like putting up a crèche in reception, leaving religious verses on people’s desks, or trying to badger noncelebrators into celebrating the holiday—you’d need to step in.
Dear Direct Report,
I’m a manager. Last year for the holidays, I got my employees each a small gift as a token of my thanks. They then decided to all chip in and give me a gift that was much bigger in value (they each individually would have paid more than I paid for their gifts). I was always taught that, like you’ve said in the past, gift giving in companies flows down, not up! And in years past, before I was a manager, I always hand-made gifts for my close colleagues and never bought them anything of substantive value. So I was very uncomfortable with this situation, but I couldn’t reject the gift. It was a gift!
My question is, what do I do this year? Do I proactively tell my reports, “Don’t get me anything” or “handmade gifts only”? That seems a little grinchy, but truly, nobody should be getting me a lavish gift! (Unless it’s my boss!)
—No Gifts Please!
Dear No Gifts Please,
Definitely don’t request handmade gifts only—that’s putting a lot of pressure on employees to create something thoughtful for you, and it’s likely to send at least one person into a panic about whether they need to speed-teach themselves to knit.
But yes, please do preemptively tell them they shouldn’t get you anything. Since they did a group gift last year, if you know who organized it, you can talk to that person and say, “The gift last year was very thoughtful, but I really don’t want anyone spending their own money on me, so if you hear any rumblings about a gift this year, please shut it down.” If you don’t know who organized it, or if you don’t trust that person to take you at your word, then say something to the group. Sample wording: “With the holidays approaching, I want to say upfront no one should have to give gifts to their boss, so please spend your money on your families or yourself. Just doing your jobs well is the best gift you could give me.”
