the banana bread controversy, the witnessed indiscretion, and other stories of holidays at work

Over the years, readers have submitted a tremendous number of amusing stories about holidays at work, and since we’re heading into the holidays we must revisit them. Here are some of my favorites.

1. The banana bread

I managed a department of about 15 people. One lady was extremely proud (and vocal) regarding her banana bread. Once, I joined the conversation and mentioned my mother also had a wonderful recipe my family loves. I will spare you the details, but within a day or so, I found myself embroiled in Bananagate as the Manager Who Cruelly Insisted Her Recipe Was Better. The only way to settle it was a bake-off, which I tried mightily to nix (my staff was an unhappy bunch, no need to poke a bear … or baker). My director saw an opportunity to bond, and said I needed to participate.

It was just the two of us, and no offense intended, even after all these years, but her bread was bad. Real bad. Black crust, liquid center (how is that even possible?). I will sheepishly admit I might have baked a half-dozen loaves, because the weight of my family’s place in banana bread history was riding on this. Of the six, I brought the best-lookin’ one to work. It was no contest, really – mine was judged superior. I was modest and humble and said next to nothing.

My fellow baker/staff member was incensed and being the most vocal member of the (union) department, called her rep to complain. The grounds? My “sway” with the staff (I had no sway, they hated me) gave me an unfair advantage, which was the only reason I won. The union, needing to do due diligence, phoned me for my “side.” I had so many real issues to deal with, Bananagate needed to be put to rest quickly, so I told them to just have their baker/member bring in a loaf and then, call me. I heard later that she did provide a loaf to them … but they never called me again. (2021)

2. The brie

The wildest thing I’ve ever seen, from an academic wine and cheese event, is a person I didn’t recognize marching up to the cheese board, flipping an entire wheel of brie into her purse, and marching back out. I almost respect it for how gutsy it is, but it just shocked me that you’d do this without at least playing the game of pretending to be excited about the forthcoming book/new minor program/new dean of whatever. (2023)

3. The cheesecake

I had a coworker who just hated me right off the bat. I never did anything to her but I seemed to be a special target for her.

We had a potluck and I brought in mini orange cheesecakes with a burnt sugar top and this absolutely enraged her for some reason. She went in during set up and moved my platter to another table out of the way away from all the other food. Then she went around and told everyone about her cheesecake that she would make and how it was always from scratch. She was very seriously about her homemade cheesecake and how “other people” didn’t make cheesecake from scratch. She never asked me, but mine were scratch made as well. The cherry on top was she hadn’t even brought in a cheesecake. (2024)

4. The mistaken gift

At my first job, we had a secret Santa and my friend drew my name. On the day of the event, he accidentally brought his boyfriend’s gift instead of the one for me. We get to the point where folks are opening gifts and he realizes his mistake. He literally tackled me like he was jumping on a grenade to stop me from opening the gift. The gift was a holiday themed butt plug. He explained, apologized, and brought my gift the next day. (2020)

5. The perfume

My father’s story from a good 25 years ago. One time he’s telling us about what gifts they bought for all the staff. It was perfume (don’t get me started on the gendered nature of it, that’s a whole other thing) but one he didn’t recognize, and the salesperson from somewhere like Macy’s had “recommended” to him. He’s telling us this, and says it’s called something like “plah-sen-tay” like it’s French, he thinks (shades of A Christmas Story here).

My mother and I start snickering. Really dad? She recommended it? And you said sure, sounds good? And he’s saying what, what? as we started laughing so hard we were crying and falling out of our seats at Boston Market … because he apparently had no idea he’d bought every woman on his staff PLACENTA perfume. Like something that had that in it, and it was maybe supposed to be a beauty aid? It was unclear, but we surmised that the salesperson had a truckload of this stuff to unload and could tell he had no idea what he was doing. He sits there horrified, and reflects, “Huh… i was wondering why people seemed a little weird about it. There was a lot of talking in hushed groups afterward.” (2021)

6. The mystery

Our Christmas party was a catered lunch affair in the biggest conference room with the whole department invited. We were sipping and mingling before the meal when a woman I hadn’t met came up to me and started talking to me about how someone had been unfaithful to her. As she went on, she got more tearful and louder and louder until all the talk in the room died down and everyone was staring at the two of us.

I had no idea what to do. It took awhile before someone else finally spoke and I gradually realized that the reason I didn’t know this coworker was because she wasn’t a coworker at all but a hired actress who was starting up one of those murder mystery games. I still shudder to remember it. (2021)

7. The beet salad

I was at my first potluck at a new job, that I had moved to the midwest for, from the east coast. I was standing in line for food next to a coworker who mentioned he always brings his wife’s beet salad. I love beets and enthusiastically told him so. He pointed out his offering, and I eagerly put a big scoop on my plate. As I was doing so, I remember thinking something was off. It was a Jello beet salad. I struggled to get two bites down, and I’ve always remembered salad can mean many different things now. (2024)

8. The affair

I wasn’t at this particular outing, but a married ex-team member who had moved to a new team just before Christmas had been invited with his new team on their Christmas outing.

The ex-team member described in detail to his friend (in our very public shared tea room) that he had got off with a member of his new team at the Christmas outing. Afterwards he realized that his new manager had witnessed his indiscretion and he decided that the best thing to do was send a meeting request to his manager and coworker to discuss “their situation.” He could not understand why both had quietly declined the meeting. He then ranted about how his manager had quietly informed him that consensual relationships between peers were none of her business, but if either employee had concerns they needed to be raised through the proper channels.

As the icing on the cake, he ended by giving a detailed account of how he had phoned his mom to ask if he should tell his wife about the affair and that they had decided together that it would only hurt her feelings.

He has since left the company, citing that his new team had had an odd atmosphere. (2023)

9. The leftovers

One of my previous jobs was as a cater-waiter, and one day I was called to an event that my company apparently did every year: an outdoor, catered buffet/barbecue lunch for a large company. At the team meeting during set up, our captain for the day informed us (with the look of a grizzled war vet riding back into the scene of a bloody defeat) that this company was notorious for staff members bringing tupperware and packing up “leftovers” for home. As catering staff, it was neither our job nor our place to keep this from happening, but it meant we would have to work extra hard to keep all the buffets stocked.

My job for the day was to work as a runner, and I spent that entire day in constant flight from my buffet to the kitchen and back again with gigantic trays of food that were emptied almost the moment they were put down — as I recall, there were meant to be two or more “shifts” of workers coming to the barbecue, and we had rationed the main courses accordingly, which caused mayhem and dissent when the first shift ran out IMMEDIATELY. There was nothing we could do about it; we’d brought all of the food the company had paid us for. (2022)

10. The oil painting

My coworker Donovan did a lot of art as a hobby, including oil painting and life drawing. As a joke one year, for our White Elephant party, he put in an oil painting he had done of his mother in the style of Napoleon. He put a note on the back stating something like “can be swapped for $25 Starbucks gift card,” but the person who ended up with it wanted the painting and wouldn’t give it back! That oil painting hung in the guy’s office for the rest of his time at my company. I can’t imagine taking it to a new company and having to explain that it’s an ex-coworker’s mother. (2024)

11. The playing cards

My husband worked at a tech company just evolving beyond startup stage, and one year as part of the holiday gifts, they printed up company-branded decks of playing cards. Seems pretty innocuous, right? EXCEPT. They had the cute idea to use headshots of senior leadership for the face cards in the deck, broken out by gender and seniority. So they had four C-Suite men as the Aces, four VPs for Kings, four more high-ranking men as the Jacks… then apparently they couldn’t even come up with four women in any leadership role at all, so two of the Queens cards were just left BLANK.

Oh, and the best part is they printed the headshots on the BACKS of the cards, so the deck isn’t even actually usable or playable. I still have it somewhere, though, for the sheer wtf of it all! (2022)

12. The hard-driving nuns and priests

I worked for a catholic school some years ago where the teaching and support staff consisted of priests, nuns and laypeople. We decided to do a white elephant exchange at the staff Christmas party. Since most of the group had taken a literal vow of poverty, the gifts had to be below $5 and re-gifting was strongly encouraged, just bring the item to the party fully wrapped. We drew numbers and picked gifts but you could “steal” a gift if you had a higher number.

There was one gift that was relatively big and the wrapping was very, very fancy so you know it was the most popular. We had nuns attempting to hide the gift with the skirts of their habits, priests making side deals on taking over the less popular mass times in exchange for the gift, it was hilarious to see how far they were willing to go to get this gift. It was all in good fun and no one devolved into tears over any of it. One of the older nuns ended up winning it and she did a victory lap around us holding it in the air. The gift ended up being a used pair of running shoes from one of the priests that was an avid runner. She did another victory lap wearing the shoes. (2019)

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