Christmas at work

Posted by dodo

Gordon Selfridge used to give all his staff a plum pudding and a pep pill at Christmas, presumably because he realised the pressures they would be under.

Commuting, in particular, in the run-up to Christmas is absolute murder, with cars and buses at a standstill, and all the tubes and trains crowded out because everyone’s pouring into the big cities to shop or see the lights. On the way home from a hard day’s work you are liable to find everyone either festively drunk, or helping someone else to be sick.

It’s very difficult to operate efficiently at work if you have a raging hangover. When the Managing Director makes his rounds, ring up Dial-a-disc and, as he passes through your office, say: ‘Excellent — you’ll be clinching the deal in a few days will you, sir?’ and the MD will pass on, confident that you’re successfully occupied.

Then there’s the office party — the season of which begins in December. During it, people will drink far too much, lunge at one another, tell the Managing Director he’s a twerp and pour the office vegan’s sprout wine down the word processor to cackles of mirth.

Despite Mr Tebbit’s ‘Clean Up Britain’ campaign, there was absolutely no evidence that anyone behaved any better at office parties last year. At the Imperial War Museum, as early as i December, a couple were surprised copulating in a tank, and by 3 December a friend had been caught in flagrante on the office snooker table with one of the typing pool. The Managing Director who caught them wasn’t at all upset by the sexual transgression — merely outraged that they might be ripping the cloth.

How you behave at office parties, however, should depend on how much you value your job. There’s an unwritten law that no one actually gets booted out for a misdemeanour. But the transgressor will no longer be regarded as officer material, and will probably be kicked out on some trumped-up excuse in the New Year. Such a pity one can’t behave gloriously badly and Tippex the whole incident out afterwards.

But with fines for sexual harassment up to L’500 these days, how do susceptible males stay out of trouble at the office party?

One friend suggests that offices should introduce tube straps from the ceiling. Thus you could remain vertical, however much you knocked back, but with one hand in the strap and the other clutching your glass, both would be kept out of mischief. Or you could send every senior married man a Sarah-Keays-o-gram, in which a virago in a smock would burst through the door and warn him of’ the dire consequences of tangling with one’s secretary.

If men are determined to scuffle behind the filing cabinets, there are a few rules for cutting down the hassle when they get home. Wear a red shirt, so that the lipstick doesn’t show up. Avoid girls with frosted make-up — glitter clings to your cheek worse than burrs on a Persian cat. And slip an air- freshener disc into your breast pocket to neutralise the cheap scent.

In my experience, as this is the one night when the most junior typist can have a crack at the Managing Director, most of the sexual harassment comes from women. One good- looking boss was grumbling that at his office party last year a secretary asked him to hold her drink for her. The moment he had glasses in both hands, she promptly unzipped his flies, to whoops of joy all round.

And some women, at least, don’t seem to mind a liberty being taken if it’s civil enough. A peer I know, whose marriage is going through a sticky patch, promised his wife to be home from the office by ten o’clock. During the evening he was hotly pursued by a comely switchboard girl and was drunk enough to offer her a lift home. He pulled into a lay-by and, aware that time was fast running out, slid a hand under her skirt.

Whereupon she said in outraged tones: “Ere! D’you fink I’m common or somefink? Tits first, please.’

Some firms hold their bashes in restaurants. You see those rings of self-conscious conviviality in the middle of some trattoria, the whole department in paper hats, eating turkey and silicone chipolatas, the sales manager flushed under a purple fore and aft: ‘We’ll stick to the cha’eau-bo’led, Luigi, the Spanish one.’

One respected television programme has such disruptive office orgies that they’ve been banned from every restaurant in the West End, and last year settled for some unwary Indian restaurant in Twickenham.

`You don’t need directions to get to our parties,’ explained the floor manager, ‘You just follow the blue flashing light.’

The Kantara Taverna in Shaftesbury Avenue is so popular that it’s always booked solid throughout December. One of the incentives is that parties of more than fifteen get a belly dancer thrown in free. Watching her shimmering through the tables trying to galvanise a party from Barclays Bank, I noticed a sinister new development. Every time she pressed her juddering midriff against the flushed face of a department head, or persuaded some glassy-eyed cashier to roll his shirt above the nipples and dance with her, the entire typing pool leapt whooping to their feet, and, whipping out those matchbox cameras, snapped the compromising moment for posterity.

Even worse is the Christmas drink in the pub with secretaries smoking cigarettes at right angles, and lifting their thighs off bar stools to make them look thinner. Every so often one of them teeters across to order: ‘One Cointreau and lemon for Charlene, a Malibu and Coke for Tracey, a snowball for Carole, two light and bitters for Ray and Terry, a pineapple juice for Mr Patel; come on, Pauline, you’re one behind — try a Pernod and Cassis this time.’ Afterwards everyone is sick — it’s a pity that the Tories don’t start their clean-up campaign by erecting a few vomitoriums round the West End. The most intelligent garment for a girl to wear to an office party is a wet suit.

But finally, as you embark on the assault course of the office party season, spare a thought for the poor wife at home, who’s usually banned from office parties because she inhibits the fun even more than the MD. No wonder she gets a shade beady, as she copes not only with the Christmas run-up and the first riotous days of the school holidays, but also with her husband staggering home late and plastered night after night.

I am reminded of the touching story of a beautiful friend of mine, who’d just fallen asleep after midnight, when her husband returned tight from the office party with his equally drunk boss and the boss’s secretary. Dutifully, my beautiful friend got up, made black coffee and beds in separate rooms for the boss and his secretary, as neither was fit to drive, and collapsed back into bed again. Waking at five, she found no husband beside her, and set out to find him — no luck downstairs. Coming back up, she heard a giggle from the spare- room. Seeing the light on and the door ajar, she tiptoed forward, heart thumping unpleasantly. Recognising her husband’s back, she gave a wail of anguish; whereupon the back swung round in horror, turning out to belong to the boss.

Having solved one problem, she set out to find her husband. She finally located him, fast asleep in the nursery. Not wanting to wake her, he had curled up under the duvet with his threeyear-old daughter.

Next evening he came home with an early Christmas present from the boss — the biggest box of Black Magic she had ever seen.

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