the sandwich party, the goat shrine, and other unusual office traditions

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

I asked last week about unusual office traditions you’ve seen or experienced, and here are 15 of my favorites you shared.

1. The PB&J party

We once had a coworker who was a young, single guy right out of college and living on his own for the first time. He always forgot to buy groceries, so he would bring really random things for lunch every day (one day he brought a jar of spaghetti sauce.) One of my coworkers brought him a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly for Christmas so that he could make himself sandwiches.

Thus, the PB&J party was born. That was almost 10 years ago, but now right before Christmas, we all get together, reserve a room and everyone brings something. We have had fancy peanut butters, homemade jams and breads, and various other spreads and different foods-and we all sit around and eat PB&J.

2. The goat shrine

We had a goat shrine. It was just this little alcove with a few pictures of goats and in the center was a little toy goat statue that would scream when you pushed down on it. Whenever someone accomplished something or completed a difficult task they would hit the goat and we would all cheer for them. New hires would hit the goat when they got out of training and got their first real work assignments.

3. The plant cuttings

One of our big departments has a tradition where when an employee retires, they gift her (it’s mostly women) a plant pot with cuttings from all of the office plants in that department.

4. The puffed treat

My team received 2 bags of a highly coveted puffed treat one year. We got through about 1.5 bags before either interest was lost or politeness took over and the last bit was never finished. Nobody could bear to throw it away though so one day one of the team hid it at someone’s desk. This began a multi-year tradition of passing the puffcorn. We competed to have the best, sneakiest, funniest ways to hide it or pass it.

Memorable moments included:
Someone slipping it into a team member’s coat sleeve at a team lunch
Having it mailed to my house during covid
Sneaking into the office when I was supposed to be off to tape it under my co-worker’s desk

It lived for years, survived covid and only died when my team split for other ventures.

5. The 8 Weeks of Doom

At my old job in public education, my office mate invented the concept of the 8 Weeks of Doom. This was defined as the period between New Year’s and Spring Break where it was dark and gray, there were few holidays, and everyone’s seasonal depression hit an all-time high.

To combat the 8 Weeks of Doom, she started a tradition of making me a Doom Calendar, which is an advent calendar but for fighting the Doom. She’d include small fidgets, snacks, stickers, and fun tea, which I’d open whenever the Doom felt very high on a particular day. Eventually this turned into a standing tradition of us making each other Doom Calendars, and the concept spread to our whole department. We would eventually just start our department meetings checking in about how everyone was managing the Doom, and did anyone want to open a Doom Calendar door for a quick pick me up?

Even though we’re not longer office mates, I still exchange a Doom Calendar with this friend every year anyway. It really does help with the Doom!

6. The welcome back

At my internship, on any employee’s first day back from parental leave, they’d be greeted with a full spread of pastries and other treats lovingly prepared by the staff at the on-site cafe for the entire office to share. Anyone who could get away from their desks, even for just a few minutes, would pop by to wish the new parent well.

7. The hiking coupons

When I worked for a national park as a interpreter (tour guide), if we did a particularly good job that day (helped out in a tricky situation, really rocked a program or something), our boss would give us what she called a “Take a Hike” coupon, which was good for one hour of hiking time on work time. (We’d give it back to “redeem” the coupon when we scheduled a time with our boss to go hiking.) We were the perfect audience for that and the boss usually found a reason to give each of us two or three a season.

8. Wacky Fruit Wednesdays

At the start of this year, I realized that I dreaded Wednesdays specifically (I’m in office Monday/Wednesday/Thursday), so I started bringing in fruit I had never tried before from the grocery store to share with my team. This morphed into Wacky Fruit Wednesdays, where my team and people seated near us talk about anything other than work for 30 minutes and try new food.

We’ve tried over 100 fruits at this point, and people have brought in different things like hot sauce and pickles. We pivoted to a paper airplane contest for Ramadan, and it was a blast. This week we tried the miracleberries that convert sour into sweet and ate plain limes. It’s become the highlight of our workweek.

9. The treat log

Back when we had an office, there was a treat table where folks would bring in baked goods to share. We’d write what was brought, since it was often homemade. Folks would usually just tape a sheet on the table with the description scrawled on it. Once, someone left the sheet behind so the next time treats came, the previous line on the paper was scratched out, and a new description got added to the same sheet.

When we ran out of space on that page, a second sheet was taped to the bottom of the first one. Eventually, the taped sheets hit the floor.

The next time treats showed up, someone had folded up the three pages of treat descriptions, written ‘treats.tar.gz’ on it, and taped to the table next to a new sheet. We faithfully kept rotating treats.log from then on!

10. The unicorns

My previous company took computer security very seriously and it was a big deal to lock your computer when you were away from it. If you didn’t, you would send out an email to your team that says “I love unicorns!” and everyone would know your shame. If it was happening to you repeatedly your manager might talk with you about it because you’re making a habit of leaving your computer unlocked.

Then I switched to a security team and things got much sillier. Because we take security so seriously, if you get unicorned twice within a short time your email would say that you’re bringing baked goods next week. Then we switched to our team ALWAYS owing a snack to the team if you get unicorned. We had a unicorn goblet that lived on your desk until you brought in carbs for the team.

We had to make rules about what counts — if you were still in the area of your desk (open plan), between your desk and the door, it didn’t count unless somebody could go to the area next door, get the unicorn mask, put it on, sit at your desk and send an email without you noticing. This was to prove you wouldn’t notice a stranger coming in and using your computer. This exercise was done successfully a couple times!

I was notorious for “badge unicorning” — you’re not allowed to leave your badge sitting around either, and your badge could be used to scan documents and email them ‘from’ you. So I had a unicorn picture I would scan and send to the team if you left your badge at your desk.

11. The fancy garlic

We have some sort of relationship (I’m fuzzy on the details) with some sort of co-op or charity that grows and sells garlic. There used to be an annual sale for the staff, but I guess our leadership team decided it was better to just buy it in bulk, so periodically we each get hand-delivered fancy bags of garlic by management.

12. The rubber ducks

When I was an EA, I used to discretely put one of two little rubber ducks on top of my monitor to indicate the CEO’s mood that day.

I had a low-wall cube in the middle of the open area surrounded by exec offices. The librarian duck (reading a book) meant, “Shhh … maybe not today” and the jazzercize duck (wearing an 80s track jacket) meant, “We’re up and running and getting things done! Feel free to approach.” The other members of the C-suite loved it.

13. The breakfast burritos

For years, I worked in a very strange office with a lot of very strange traditions, but one of the oddest was the inexplicable fervor over Breakfast Burrito Day.

So my office was located in the basement of the building, and the lobby area had this little shoppette. Essentially a gas station convenience store without the accompanying gas station. Every Thursday, the owner of the shoppette used to bring in homemade breakfast burritos to sell. The EXCITEMENT over these breakfast burritos cannot be overstated. People went crazy for these breakfast burritos. Chatter about their arrival would begin days in advance. By Wednesday afternoon, many harried work discussions would invariably lead to someone reassuring whomever they were talking to that “at least tomorrow is Breakfast Burrito Day!” Come Thursday morning, the desire for burritos would reach a fever pitch. People would send envoys up to the shoppette in 15-minute intervals to scope out whether the burritos had arrived yet. Once word was received that the burritos were there, people would gather around the front desk and quite literally swarm upstairs to procure burritos. One time, a group of roughly 20 people started a breakfast burrito conga line that cha-cha’d its way all the way up to the shoppette. After buying the burritos, people would return to the basement like Olympians returning with gold medals.

I partook in Breakfast Burrito Day once with one of my friends. The conga line was what sold us; we just had to try these seemingly life-changing burritos! And reader, I need to make it clear to you how absolutely terrible these breakfast burritos were. They were really, really bad! They were soggy and slimy and bland! We both actually threw most of our burritos away. Not worth any of the hype, let alone a dedicated conga line!

And YET. Breakfast Burrito Day was and remained a weekly beacon of light for many of the basement dwellers (much to my bewilderment).

14. The pranks

In Engineering they started playing pranks on people who were out for any length of time — when one of the managers took a few weeks off to refinish his basement, they built him a basement in his office (basically a loft) but the fire marshal made them take it down. They set up a beauty salon for another manager when he was out for surgery. When the director of QA was overseas getting a new acquisition integrated in, they built him a deck outside his office which had an internal window looking out at the rest of the QA department. There was a mural on the wall, and plants, and a water feature.

15. The emotional support chickens

We have emotional support rubber chickens! If one calls out for help, another responds.

This started with one in each department that mysteriously showed up one morning. My office is locked for compliance when I’m not in it, so my chicken was tucked into my inbox, but most people found their chicken tucked onto their desk amongst their belongings like it settled in on its own.

One long-time beloved coworker ended up moving out of state (but he continued to work very part time for about a month after the move, so he remained in Slack) and one time, he posted a video of someone using rubber chickens to recreate Total Eclipse of the Heart. This prompted someone to send a clip of their chicken honking. Someone took a photo of their chicken in front of their screen with the clip visible in Slack in the background. And then someone else took a photo of their chicken with that chicken in the background. This progressed with dozens of chicken photos.

By the end of that week, every single person with a desk had a chicken.

We do monthly employee appreciation catered lunches and during one, someone brought in a huge, elaborate bird cage with multiple levels and put two rubber chickens in it.

When we’re having A Day, we will honk our chicken and any chicken that can hear will honk back (emotional support chickens, remember?) and sometimes this leads to a chorus of chickens just shrieking their frustration.

Recently, I saw a tiny rubber chicken keychain that squeaks when you squeeze it, so needless to say, myself and my partner (who is endlessly amused by the office chickens) now have tiny chickens that we honk at each other.