Tag: #parties

Surprise Surprise

There are a few of my former work colleagues, as well as myself, turning a certain age in the next month or so. The first of our little gang to celebrate this milestone happens this weekend. She doesn’t work Wednesdays and Thursdays and then has some annual leave that covers the actual day, so her colleagues and friends (?) surprised her today. When she arrived at work, her desk was surrounded by balloons, presents, cakes, cards and all manner of things. She’s not one for a fuss, but she did rather well in accepting the effort that people had gone to to celebrate with her. She did better than I would have done.

I hate surprises. It might be something to do with my ISTJ personality traits. It makes me feel very uneasy, nervous and not in control of what’s going on. If it had been me, I’d have either walked straight back out, or set about popping all the balloons. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t appreciate the effort of those who had done it had gone to, but if they knew me at all, they wouldn’t have done it in the first place. For me, I think it’s also a case of embarrassment, not knowing what to say or where to look, or what to do next. This is why I never work on my birthday.

At school my birthday was always either at the weekend or during a school half-term holiday so I never had to deal with my birthday at school with people either making a fuss or making fun of me. In most of my working life hardly anyone has ever known it was birthday anyway, and therefore a fuss was never made. Then I just started to book the week off that surrounds my birthday.

This year my significant birthday falls on a Saturday, so I’ve actually booked the week before and the week after off. The original thought was to have gone away somewhere with C and R and have a lovely break and experience somewhere else. However, in the current climate that’s not going to happen, and I’ll be unlikely to even be able to see R, so it’ll be a very quite affair instead. And I’m ok with that. I understand the situation we’re in and that there’s no point in going off about what I can’t do, or depressed about not being able to do what I want to. I’m still going to take the 2 weeks leave, got to use it up anyway, and I’m going to enjoy having some time off to recharge the batteries.

When the time comes that we can meet up with R, or that we can go away somewhere, then we’ll do what we might have done in the first place. I shall have that to look forward to.

Christmas parties are a no go

Every Christmas we put on a Christmas lunch with quizzes, food, raffles and Secret Santa’s gift swaps. Last year I remember driving to the wholesalers in the morning to collect all the pre ordered party food and stressing over being able to get parked back at the office. For a team of c.70 people, thats a lot of food etc to unload.

Almost immediately after the previous years party I had already written the quizzes for last year, had already planned the food shopping and started getting bits together for the raffle.

This year, of course, that wasn’t going to happen. With my team split across two shifts now, and the need to keep sharing things to a minimum, it would have been difficult to have put on the lunch. We looked at possibilities of getting food delivered, or ordering prepacked sandwich bags. Quizzes would have been difficult too as they tend to do it as teams so sitting near each other wasn’t an option, and I’d have to do it twice which wouldn’t be practical. It seemed there was no appetite for people wanting to do Secret Santa’s either this year.

But we did decide to do a raffle. Over the year I’ve been collecting bits and pieces, buying stuff and shopping for all the things we know they’d be interested in, mainly alcohol. We managed to cover the costs and be able to put £50 in an envelope as a prize and still have some left over to give to Charity.

This year we will be sending a donation to Crisis for those who struggle expecially at Christmas time. As much as it has been nice to receive prizes and gifts, it has more meaning to give to others.

One of my team encapsulated that perfectly. He (we’ll call him S) had been talking with one of his colleagues (we’ll call him R) and they had decided which prize they would most like if their raffle ticket was drawn. S’s ticket was drawn. He picked the prize that he knew R wanted and gave it to him “in case your ticket doesn’t get picked”. R’s ticket was then picked and instead of taking something else that he wanted, he picked the prize that S had wanted and gave it to him. They were both very pleased.

There is much to be said for the giving rather than receiving. It doesn’t have to be big, bold and expensive. Giving your time, or something simple like a coffee or a chat, might just be what someone needs right now.