After a year of hard work, it’s customary for a company to throw a fun Christmas party as a means of celebrating what they accomplished together and to thank everyone for the effort they put in.
And usually, the biggest problem that parties like this run into is getting too wild as people start drinking and letting off steam. But unless the circumstances align in such a way that nobody shows up or a surprise the party’s planners had in mind falls through at the last minute, it’s hard to imagine many other ways that an office Christmas party can go that badly.
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But from the sounds of things, even Dwight from The Office ‘s “It is your birthday” banner would have gone down better than the disappointing affair one Australian business threw together.
On December 6, a man named Zach Mander uploaded a TikTok in which he made the bold claim that he’s attended the cheapest office Christmas party that’s ever existed.
And as he explained, he found reason to be suspicious from the get-go because rather than rent a venue for the day or go to a restaurant, his managers just asked everyone to go into the “multi-purpose room.”
But at this point, those who don’t work there might give the company the benefit of the doubt. Since they had about 20 employees, maybe they just didn’t need that much space for the party, right?
But it seemed that Mander’s suspicions were confirmed once he stepped into that room.
He said that the first thing he noticed was a child-sized desk with a pan of sushi on it, which he referred to as an “island of disappointment.”
He was also a little confused about why a camel was there, but I guess some Nativity scenes have them so maybe that’s what they were going for?
And it’s not like sushi’s a bad appetizer, right?
But if you’re thinking this party doesn’t sound that bad so far, Mander hasn’t got to the kicker yet.
In this one photo, we can confirm both his suspicions that his bosses cheaped out on this one and his suspicions that they just threw together whatever decorations they could find.
But it’s hard to even think about what leis have to do with Christmas when we see that the main course for each employee was a cup of two-minute noodles.
As Mander put it, “Like the pyramids of Giza is a tribute to dead pharaohs, this pyramid was a tribute to my dead career.”
All told, Mander figured that the cost of the sushi and the noodles totalled up to $60, which amounts to about $3 per employee.
And bear in mind that’s we’re talking about Australian dollars here, so it’s closer to $2 if we convert it to USD.
In Mander’s words, “Nothing says we value your services like ‘Hey, here’s some loose change. Pick it up off the ground.'”
However, the disappointing party turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it gave Mander the final push he needed to quit. And since the company ended up going bankrupt, it sounds like he got out at the right time.
