Not once have I heard of coworkers planning a surprise birthday party at the office for each one of their colleagues. Mostly it's just a "Happy birthday!", maybe a small gift from the people who know you better, and in some cases, they give you the day off. But in some offices, things work differently, apparently…
A new employee found out that at their office, every month each of the coworkers pitches in $27 to buy cake and a gift for whatever colleague is turning one year older. This time, a coworker named Emily declared that she didn't want that; she preferred that each of her coworkers spend the same amount of money to buy several individual gifts. The manager still thought it was necessary to buy cake and balloons to celebrate at the office, and she asked the new employee to organize it, even though she had already spent her $27 on the gift. She did it anyway, spending a total of $53. The best part? None of the other coworkers pitched in or paid her back, and Emily was mean to her and made her cry.
This Emily sounds like a delight to work with… Please, if someone knows of another place that has the same custom of organizing celebrations every month for every employee, I need to know. And I would very much like to ask the manager: if they're always partying in that company, when do they actually work?
Celebrating birthdays every month requires having the budget to do so, and maybe not everyone can actually afford it, especially when the celebration is for people who are not actually your friends, just your coworkers. What we're all hoping is that those coworkers pay the girl back; she deserves to have everything reimbursed for being nice enough to plan everything for someone who clearly doesn't value it. And next time, she'd better learn how to say no. Because obviously, you can't trust anyone in that office.