The VICE Guide to Your Bleak Office Christmas Party

Absolutely everything here. Ironic Santa hat? Check. Detached disinterest? Check. Bleak little wiggle of tinsel? Check. Shit party game? CHECK CHECK CHECK (Photo via Matt Brown)

Tinsel around the whiteboard. Is there ever a more dreary icon of corporate Christmas than tinsel round a whiteboard? Tinsel – dragged out from the kicked and destroyed cardboard box in that little cupboard only reception has access to – pulled from the archives and affixed using blu-tack to the top of a whiteboard. Someone has pulled the red, green and blue whiteboard markers out and written 'Happy Holidays' with a picture of a candy cane. It's here again. It's happening again. Christmas in the office.

And so it begins anew, beginning as it always does with a fun email from HR telling you about the Christmas party. 'DRINKIES / NIBBLES / FUN,' it says. 'DRESS CODE: GLAM-CASUAL. MEET AT RECEPTION AT 5PM. SECRET SANTA. DON'T STOP TIL YOU DROP!" This annual tradition. Sometimes you fool yourself into getting excited for it. Sometimes you do not. Maybe you have learned a lesson from years past, when you woke up in the office with the festive McDonald's menu all on you. Maybe you are bright eyed and young and yet to make a mistake. But it is always the same. It is always the same. You will always see a pre-menopausal woman whining to Wizzard. Someone is always sick into a mesh wastebin. Someone jokes about – but does not actually – photocopying their arse in the copy machine.

The O.C.P. or Office Christmas Party is a groundhog day from which you cannot escape. There will always be 'desk drinkies' of watercooler cups of prosecco served warm from a small fridge. There will always be a few shop-bought packs of mince pies that nobody can quite be arsed to slide out of their cardboard sheath. Someone starts going around the party with a big bag an hour before it ends, tidying up paper plates rendered grey and transparent with coleslaw stains. There is a meal at a pub which is just a toned down version of your actual Christmas dinner, and you spend the whole thing desperately trying to hear the banter happening at the other end of the table, you stuck here in the chatter vacuum, you stuck here with Dave from accounts. And then you get so drunk you don't remember and wake up with a paper hat on. Also all this shit happens:

The fun starts here! (Photo via Jirka Matousek)

SECRET SANTA

You know how Secret Santa goes by now – someone apparates by your desk with a felt Santa hat full of printed and folded little slips of A4 and emotionlessly tells you "five pound limit", and then you get the name of someone who it takes asking three people in the office before one of them knows who it is. "Chris," they say. "You know Chris. Extremely hard, humourless guy who has a load of Stanley knives on his belt and works in the stock room." And now here you are, on the hook for £5, burdened with a month's worth of fretting over a Secret Santa present for a man who does not know or like you. First fucks: there is nothing you can buy for £5 that is in any way good or fun. Second fucks: even if there were, nobody would want it. Every shopping trip you go on from now until the Secret Santa has you picking up shit at the tills wondering if a man you're pretty sure you once saw eat 'an onion' for lunch would like it. Plastic reindeer that shits chocolate raisins? Silly putty? Would Chris like an attachable Santa beard that has an invisible button on it you can click and it sings? He would not. But you buy it and wrap it anyway, and watch as he – almost instantly – festively puts it in the bin.

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EXTREMELY HORNY DIVORCEE

You know Linda got her divorce finalised this year because she did a really exaggerated "Yee–yes!" and air punch combination when the legal paperwork came through in January, and booked Valentine's Day off to take her sturdy friend Rosie to a spa for vagina facials, and keeps telling the weeping temp with the boyfriend who keeps fingering other girls in his Impreza that "all men are shits, hen". But now it's Christmas and the meeting room with the Sainsbury's own red and white wine selections has been drunk dry, and she's oscillating sensually towards you, one leg arched up against the water cooler. "I've had a sexual awakening," she's hissing. "I'm an... experienced woman." She does not care about your gender or your sexual preferences. She does not care that everyone can see into the stationary cupboard through that little grilled window. She doesn't care who sees it. She is going to feel your bottom through your slacks.

(Photo via Charlie Dave)

BOSS TRYING TO GET DOWN WITH THE KIDS

And the lights are dimmed and the for-hire disco ball pulses yellow and purple on the ceilings and on the walls and oh no you've fucked it and now you're backed into a corner making smalltalk with your boss – there were a group of you but three people all decided to hit the buffet at the exact same time and now you're trapped in a conversational vacuum with a woman in an extremely aggressive trouser suit and who wants to ask you, an empirically young person, about young people things, in an effort to recapture the time when she was young. "My daughter likes this... what's his name? 'Skepta'," she's saying. "Are you a 'Skepta' liker?" Pretend you don't like Skepta. "Explain how Skype works to me," she's saying. "What's your favourite emoji?" Oh god, she's read an article in the Telegraph about how to speak to young people! It's 25 points long! You're not getting anywhere near the beers until she's asked you how Rita Ora is allowed or when you're ever going to buy a house! Run now, run. She's going to ask you next if you 'have a bae'.

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SOMEONE GIVING YOU A REALLY INTENSE DRUNKEN CAREER TALK

Some time in that sweet spot about eight drinks in – somewhere between 'back to the office!' post-meal joviality and 'screaming along to Slade' in terms of drunkenness – there's a moment where you've looked around and the lights have dimmed and you're looking at a 43-year-old dad-of-two in a pinstripe shirt, pink tie and paper hat and gone: that's me, that is, that is me in less than 20 years, I am going to die here, I am going to die here like Martin, slowly shuffling on a grey static carpet until my hair falls out and my shoes wear down to the leather, until I'm legitimately excited about the Next Christmas Sale, until I have to keep leaving the office for ever more alarming and invasive prostate exams. And that's the exact moment – just before the next round of shots, before the work experience kid is back from the off license with more tins – when you spiral into a tailspin, thinking about your life and your career and your future, and you're in a corner with someone with them going going, "You know what, you know WHAT? You're BETTER THAN THIS SHIT, you are!" and you're saying how you always wanted to be an artist, always wanted to create, and they are saying, "You SHOULD! You should DO THAT!" and you're like "YEAH!" and they are like "but shh, shh: there is an opening in Accounts in January and I can put a good word in", and that would be a three grand raise, and maybe— maybe you should do it, right? Maybe you could move sideways, do the art in the evenings, little evening course, make that 'zine you always wanted to do in all that spare time you have, when you're not at the pub or with friends, starving artist only less starving, maybe you should apply, maybe you sh—

And then you wake up and it's 2035 and you're head of Accounts, and the resident office 22-year-old is looking at you and having a crisis, and so the sand washes into the sea, and the cycle continues anew.

(Photo via US Corps of Engineers)

A FUN AND IMPROMPTU AWARDS CEREMONY

Every single in-joke that the office has shared this year in a desperate attempt to fend off the aggressive ennui of working there has now been printed off onto a faux certificate template and is being handed out by someone with zero banter and 1 x microphone as you all sit at a table littered with dirtied plates and hasty Secret Santa wrapping. Best Joker has already gone. Most Flirty. Now it's down to just making up something that vaguely happened to you, once, because nobody has a clue about the your intricacies, your layers, your mystery. And the award for 'Best Orderer Of Yellow Printer Paper When We Needed White Printer Paper' is — drum roll, please — you!

LOCATION OPTION #1: THE NEAREST PUB TO THE OFFICE

The person planning the office party has Googled far and Googled wide and phoned high and phoned low and then gone: actually the pub we always go to is good. The pub you always go to, the pub you go to every day, the pub where the landlord knows you by name but also hates you after you spilled that whole bottle of vinegar everywhere, the pub that for some reason – despite your office's patronage essentially keeping the place open all year round – can only seat you all for lunch at 10am in the morning. That pub.

LOCATION OPTION #2: THE FURTHEST POSSIBLE PUB FROM THE OFFICE

The person planning the office party has Googled far and Googled wide and phoned high and phoned low and then gone: let's go somewhere new, a thousand miles away. And that's how your entire office – apart from that one woman with rheumatoid arthritis in one knee who insists on taking a cab with three managers and when you turn up they've all eaten the complementary mince pies – that's how your entire office ends up getting a Megabus for 50 minutes just to go to a slightly different Wetherspoons to normal.

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SUBJ: Party time!

Hi guys—

[HO_HO_HO_COMIC_SANS_ANIMATED_SNOW.GIF]

Just to let you know that we'll be finishing up early today at 3PM!

As thanks for all your hard work this year you are invited to down tools and join us in reception for a complementary glass of bubbly!

CEO Alan Boring will be jetting in from the Bournemouth office and will be giving a brief presentation that you think will only last about five minutes so you just stand to watch him do it but 45 minutes in and he's still going so you sort of have to lean against a plate glass window and hope for the best while he says "growth" and compliments the sales team a lot before entirely ignoring you and the department you are attached to.

We'll then be walking over to The Jolly Lion for a festive meal (woo!) and more fun and fizz!

Please do remember to take your building passes with you and any drivers will need to take their vehicles as security will be locking the gates at 4pm. Also I'm clearing the fridge out for the holidays so any Tupperwares or old large cartons of yoghurt need to be disposed of or taken away.

[SANTA_WAVING_EXTREMELY_PIXELATED_SLEIGH.GIF]

x x x

(Photo via Jirka Matousek)

PEOPLE DRESSING UP

Always one person at the Christmas party who's gone into the whole 'being festive' thing a bit two-footed and dressed up as either Santa (oversized velour trousers over grey slacks; oversized Santa jacket over work shirt and tie; Santa hat; absolutely no false beard, no sack), an elf (rented elf costume, circles of blusher on cheeks) or some sort of 'Mary Christmas' character (Sue Pollard got into a locked bin full of flashing Christmas tree earrings). We know who you are, festive costumers. We see you every day changing toner cartridges. Who are you trying to fool.

JANUARY BOOKINGS

I don't think it's a great stretch to say that it should be illegal for companies to try and cheap out of buying you a Christmas meal by organising for it to happen in January, a month that essentially already has a grey-blue pall over it at all times anyway, and there you are in a quiet pub – with some repurposed and out-of-place tinsel and a cracker someone had to bring a box of from home, and nobody wants to be there and they don't have the proper festive food anyway – trying not to break. If your company tries to inflict this on you, report them to the army.

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A REALLY MISERLY AMOUNT OF MONEY BEHIND THE BAR

SUBJ: RE: Party time!

Hi guys—

Just to mention: there will be £200 behind the bar tonight! Go wild! There are literally sixty of you!

[GO_HOME_SNOWMAN_YOURE_DRUNK.JPEG]!

x x x

INEXPLICABLY HAVING TO GO TO WORK THE NEXT DAY

The Office Christmas Party is never on an actual Friday because that would be practical, wouldn't it, that would make sense, and also they negotiated a good rate on the pub lunch for a Thursday night and honestly they'd rather have you in the office green with hangover than spend an additional £2 per head to get you a Friday evening turkey dinner. And so you find yourself rolling in to work at 11am the morning after, crusty bacon bap with red sauce on the go, sunglasses, and your manager is there, inexplicably fresh, as is everyone else, all sober and all furious, all looking at their watch and going "What time do you call this?" Scabs, them lot. Scabs. Scum, absolute scum.

(Photo via Matt Brown)

A BUS FULL OF PEOPLE FROM AN OFFICE YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED TURN UP

Oh, god: the alt-universe office from Peterborough are here, and they are all weird and misshapen, a funhouse mirror reflection of your own office, plus that woman from accounts who fucked your pay up three consecutive months on the trot is here, stood next to you in seething silence, undoubtedly thinking about that HR complaint and the ensuing process. An extremely tall man leans over to you and tells you they've all been drinking since 11am. He smells like scotch someone forgot to refine. Sweat has caked his trousers to his legs. "Four hour coach, mate," he says. "Please, I'm begging you: do you have any Charlie?"

SOMEONE WHO HAS HAD A BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL ON THEIR DESK ALL YEAR REFUSES TO OPEN THE ALCOHOL

It's a bottle of Glen's that the bloke who does the stationary orders got for being part of the 'Viking-Direct 2015 Paper Chain™ High Volume Sales Hero Team' back in January, and it has just sat there, behind his monitor, part of the office furniture now where once it was amber and exotic, slowly accruing dust, 70cl of potential fun unrealised. Once you idly picked it up and cracked the lid and smelled it. Everyone is waiting for the day he breaks it out. He says he is saving it for a "special occasion". Is today a special occasion, Roy? Is Christmas a special occasion? He looks up from his stationary spreadsheet and looks over his bifocals and shakes his head: no. The special occasion is definitely going to be the day he ceremonially shoots himself at his desk, isn't it?

Everybody hit the dancefloor! (Photo via Heather Williams)

EVERYONE WHO IS LOW-KEY FUCKIN SUDDENLY GETS VERY HIGH-KEY ABOUT IT

WHY DOES THE PHOTOCOPY ROOM SMELL LIKE SOMEONE JUST SALTED A HAM, SHARON AND PAUL?

CONFUSION ABOUT WHICH FUCKER ORDERED THE VEGETARIAN STARTER A MONTH IN ADVANCE

For some reason whoever organised the Christmas meal organised the £16 for two-, £19 for three-course dinner at one of the locations detailed above, and for some reason the ordering for such has to be completed somewhere between four and six weeks in advance, which means when the food comes out – and it is never just Christmas food, always Christmas food with a twist, always something like 'brie mince pie parcels' or 'ham bites', some harried waiter standing at the head of three tables crammed together and at one chair with all the coats on shouting "STUFFING SCOTCH EGG!" – and the sole fucker who ordered a vegetarian starter will not stand up and own their mistake. There is a plate of 'pizza dough sprout mouthfuls' going begging here and someone won't claim them, and meantime we're down a portion of gravy mini kievs. This is chaos. This is madness. You know what: for all his faults, Mussolini wouldn't have let this happen.

(Photo via William)

SOMEONE FROM THE OFFICE THINKS HE IS A DJ

Now you have to listen to Cha-Cha Slide clumsily crossfaded into Happy Xmas (War is Over) and then back into Cha-Cha Slide again, an occasional bark of "is everybody ho-ho-having a good time?" over an airhorn sound effect ripped at 28Kps from YouTube, and when you go up to whisper a request you are legitimately asked the following question: "What's Drake?" Six-hour set, this guy has. Oh, good: a 2am mash-up of Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time with Whigfield's Saturday Night.

THE FEAR

But then you wake up and— oh, Christ, what did you... Christ. Hangover Fear is one of the worst adrenaline spikes that can be inflicted on the human body – and I am including heart attacks, in this list, I'm including being shot at while parachuting – but that goes quadruple when there's a chance you told your boss he was a "dick-sucking tithead" or shouted in the face of the reception temp that you loved her or very openly did gak in front of the CEO while crying.

Isn't it time you figured out why you – why we all – always go so mental at the Office Christmas Party? Is it that end-of-year near-endorphin rush, the swooping realisation that the culmination of 12 hard months have come to an end, a chance at rebirth, renewal? Are you only going so hard because you fundamentally hate your job – you're not treading water, anymore, are you? This is a career now; this is all you have – and can't seem to escape it? Is it just the job you're unhappy with, or it is more? Would this pain and energy be better managed if you regularly vented in the way you did last night, only with therapy instead of Corky's shots, with sharing over consuming, speaking rather than shouting? Maybe this is the year it has to change. It's time for a change. Yeah. Yeah. Starting now, starting righ— fucking hell, how did you spend £120 at Wetherspoons? Fuck this. Lucozade, bath, Domino's for lunch. Call mum and see if you can come home early for Christmas.

@joelgolby

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