Holiday office parties: so very merry — and awkward

WASHINGTON — It is time, once again, to celebrate the holidays with our friends and loved ones. And co-workers.

Please don't forget the co-workers.

It's not enough to spend five days a week with your dear colleagues; you must put in a few extra off-hours of chitchat and merrymaking for good show. Of course, the office holiday party is always fun and festive. Except when it's awkward and uncomfortable.

But above all, it's obligatory.

Skip it and you're a Grinch or a Scrooge or some kind of weird hermit who doesn't exist outside the workplace. Besides, this party is for you. To thank you for all your hard work and dedication throughout the past 12 months. They're not giving out bonuses this year, but here, these mini cheese tarts and rock-hard sugar cookies should make you feel better about your underemployment.

This is the double bind of the office holiday party: It's a party, so it's supposed to be fun, but it's a party populated by people who hold sway over your annual review, so how much fun can you really have?

“You're having an enforced social occasion. You don't necessarily want to be there, but there is something about it that you feel like you should enjoy it — and you should be there,” says Nikil Saval, author of “Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.” “Because sociability is important for work life.”

Which means that you have to show up and make nice and present yourself to be a well-rounded individual with at least a few social graces. Or else miss out on the chance to impress your boss' boss with your stylish party wear and witty banter.

Not that it's all bad. When else would you get to meet, in person, the spouse your cube-mate fights with on the phone every afternoon? Or watch as your colleague's demon child steals food off other people's plates? It's informative, if nothing else.

“Oh, they always get awkward,” says Jo Rhodes, who works for a British defense contractor and was visiting Washington last week. “Having had a drink — people don't have any inhibitions. You go out with work friends and start talking about things you wouldn't normally talk about with them — all your worldly troubles.”

Hence that other annual tradition: the office holiday party hangover. Gawd, why did I say that? Did I really have to dance that way in front of him? Why don't I remember how I got home?

A.T., an education policy professional who works in D.C. and asked to be identified only by her initials so that she won't get fired, said that the legend around her office is that a woman once got so drunk at the holiday party, she stripped naked and ran through the fountains in the building atrium. “Now there are no more drinks allowed on-site,” says A.T.

A 2010 poll by human resources consulting firm Adecco found that 40 percent of American workers had either done something inappropriate at a work holiday party or knew someone who had. An additional 20 percent admitted to having had too much to drink at such a soiree.

Saval says that office parties were notorious bastions of bad behavior in the 1950s. “It became legendarily a scene where debauchery took place — people slept with the wrong people,” he says. “Where everyone gets trashed and makes out with each other. There was a sense that the male prerogatives of the office could be exercised with greater looseness.”

And though the “Mad Men” era is over, the licentiousness is not. At least not everywhere.

Alan Lescht, a Washington employment lawyer, can usually count on getting a call or two this time of year to deal with tricky post-party situations.

“Alcohol and men and women working together in close quarters is always a problem,” Lescht says. “Then they call us or come in and more likely than not it's a woman (making the complaint). A man has had too much to drink and a supervisor has done something they shouldn't. People just tend to get out of hand. There's always going to be someone who drinks too much.”

It's Lescht's job to help clean up the mess and make things right with the employee — whether that means an apology, a transfer or more severe remedial action. Because, he says, “the reality is that it's hard for someone to go back to work after everyone has seen some crazy situation that they're all talking about.”

A.B., a former student who also asked to go by his initials, said that his worst moment came at an undergraduate department party at his old college. Everything was fine until a favorite professor — who was married with kids, but known to be having an affair — brought his mistress to the party.

“Everyone felt extremely uncomfortable, awkward and a little violated,” he says. “Everyone was just looking at each other going, 'This is so weird.' “

Usually it's too much alcohol that causes strained moments, but occasionally it's the lack thereof. Christina Tkacik, a journalist who now lives in Beirut, says that her most awkward holiday party happened in Washington. And that she was the source of the awkwardness. She had recently stopped drinking and shared her news with everyone she spoke to.

“I should add,” she wrote in an email, “that literally nothing is more awkward than someone who's three weeks sober. You might as well be a newborn horse fresh out of its mama's womb trying to simultaneously learn to walk and go shopping at Bloomingdale's.”

That night one colleague taught her a lesson in “how to tell when someone is no longer interested in having a conversation with you,” she says. “You can tell by their body language — their feet slowly start to shift in the other direction.”

Clay Barron of Woodbridge, Virginia, works for a government contractor that rents out a boat for a holiday sail along the Potomac every year. There's always good food and an open bar and a white elephant gift exchange. Because the firm's employees work at different locations, this is often one of the few times of the year that they're all together.

“So there's usually a lot of reminiscing about last year,” says Barron, 35. People especially love to talk about the time one employee's hair caught fire. “She got too close to a candle on the buffet table,” he explains.

It happens.

There's usually something like that. Something that gives people fodder for next-day gossip.

“It's always interesting,” says Jouli Mac, a 27-year-old Alexandria, Virginia, woman who works for a small business. “When alcohol is involved, you see different sides of people. It's very — uh — merry.”

She won't get into specifics. She'd like to keep her job. But she will say that it takes a long time to live these things down.

“Usually until the next year,” she says. “Until the next party.”