We are a small group. Only 4 staff including me and we all WFH. Yesterday was a casual staff lunch. 3 of us (one is too remote to make it). We received a box of treats from a vendor and so we had BBQ and divvied that up. One guy’s wife is a holiday baker so she had sent some treats.
Tonight is our fancy end of year dinner. We didn’t do one last year. Nice dinner out with SOs. Our 4th guy and his wife are driving in. So 8 of us partying. Well - partying like old people.
virtual holiday party. i worked during it. took a few breaks to pay attention. it’s nice they do something i guess. too covidy to have a real party still.
I hate corporate Christmas parties, but I always like to do something for our small business. Lately we just have everyone over to our house (employees, spouses, and then some friends we work with) and cater in a dinner. It’s informal, inexpensive, and a lot of fun.
We were lucky this year, had everyone over in between delta and omicron.
A few of the senior folks were in the office yesterday and ordered in sushi!! Needless to say, I am a lowly WFHer that is far, far away from the office.
My company had anyone that felt they could cone into the office for a few hours one afternoon. I’m not sure what they did because I skipped it. Then, I had at least 10 people call or message me asking where I was.
We did nothing. Our departments associate directors, directors, and VP all came into the office for a 2022 strategy day. We went out for happy hour after it was over. That was the most I’ve done with coworkers in forever. It was really nice.
We didn’t do a holiday party but we did all get together for lunch to say farewell to a co-worker who is moving to a new job. About 20 of us and weather was nice so we ate on the patio at the local pizza place.
Our analytics team has a virtual party. Company paid for drinks and snacks, we did a white elephant thing. We used Gather to facilitate, which was fun, I guess it’s a sort of 8-but meta verse, so to speak.
I think they gave us $50 (or was it $100?) of allowable take-yourself-out expense last year, which I didn’t use because I just started in November and felt weird about it. They alluded to doing something similar on a call this week.
I’m not sure it’s so much a COVID problem as it is a people are all over the world problem.