‘Tis the season of giving… and attending office holiday parties. Just because you work from home all year, doesn’t mean you can’t give yourself a memorable office holiday party. Here are some guidelines for you to have a real office holiday party experience from the comfort of your home/office.
- Send yourself a colorful SAVE THE DATE invite.
- Check your calendar for conflicts. Turns out that it’s the only day you couldn’t attend because you have to get your car serviced in the afternoon.
- See if you can move the party to some other day. It won’t be possible. Some people are bound to miss the festivities. But not you.
- Reschedule the car-service. Good thing you don’t need to drive the car to work.
- Send yourself the actual party invite.
- Mark yourself a Maybe. You don’t want to come off as desperate.
- “Gift-exchange,Secret Santa, or White Elephant?” You can call it anything really as long as you remember that the real goal is to have a nicely gift-wrapped disappointment.
- Set a maximum budget of $15 for gifts. However, if anyone’s going to spend more than $15 it should be you. Go ahead and buy that $699.96 Jura A1 Ultra Compact Coffee Center for your favorite caffeine-addicted coworker, a.k.a you.
- Wrap one more memorable gift for yourself. Because you give one and you get one.
- Have a festive dress code. Be the only one to not follow it. There’s no better time to show off your rebel side at the workspace.
- Create a playlist of your favorite holiday songs. It’s OKAY if it’s only, “All I want for Christmas is you,” on loop for 2 hours. It doesn’t matter if you do or do not celebrate Christmas.
- It’s potluck style party. However, you won’t have time to cook so buy some cupcakes. Everyone loves cupcakes. Way to have your (cup)cakes and eat them too.
- Time your entrance. You don’t want to be the first one at the party but don’t be the last one either.
- Enjoy the party. Make small talk with yourself, avoid talking about work or politics, or work-politics.
- Compliment yourself on organizing a great party, but don’t really mean it.
- Make a mental list of all the fun places you could be right now. For example, home!
- Half-heartedly play “Name That Festive Tune,” game. Hum or whistle a line of your favorite holiday song and let yourself guess the name. Set at 10 second time-limit to make a guess. Take turns.
- Gift-opening: The most anticipated event of the office holiday party. Act curious while holding the gift with your name on it. Guess wrongly even though you know what’s inside. Open it. SURPRISE! It’s the same already-expired $10 gift-card from already-closed-down Sears you got at the last office holiday party at your last job the last time you had to work in an actual office.
- Lose faith in humanity. Again.
- Leave early.
- Start looking for another job.