the boat party rations, the cook-off vote theft, and other food stories from work — Ask a Manager

All this week to get us in the holiday spirit, I’m going to be featuring holiday work stories readers have shared here in the past … and then updates season will start next week!

To kick us off, here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared about potlucks and other food gatherings at work earlier this month.

1. The chili cook-off

I worked for a nonprofit, and every year there was a few months long period where every department would do some kind of fundraiser for the nonprofit. My department was famous for a lunchtime chili cook-off that included, of course, voting for a winner. It was my first year there, and my boss kept talking about how popular the chili cook-off was. We were advised we needed to quadruple our normal recipe to have enough for everyone.

One coworker launched in right away with BIG talk about her recipe. And the day of the cook-off, she kept going around and checking out the competition and making allusions to her to secret ingredients. When the judging was over, we learned that she won and she was ecstatic … but then it came out that she’d been buying votes all afternoon! When the accusations were revealed, she refused to give up the trophy.

Oh, and remember the quadruple recipes. Turns out that was bananas, and since everybody ate only a couple spoonfuls of each chili, there was an exorbitant amount left over. Another coworker carried her crockpot of leftovers back to her car and spilled that triple recipe of chili all over it.

2. The boat

Office christmas party: on a boat. Possibly the worst six words in the English language, because once you’re on and sailing you can’t get off. And worse, the catering was a weird hot buffet with some of the smallest portion sizes I’ve ever seen, like a half serving spoon of rice and a half serving spoon of chicken in sauce. No dessert. And there was just one serving station for 150 people who were therefore stood in an hour-long queue for the food in the close confines of the lower deck.

When it became clear that even with the small portions, the caterers were likely to run out of food and we were trapped on the boat until 11pm with no further food available, people became quite grumpy and started trying to bribe those earlier in the queue to swap spots in return for drinks tokens. People accused others of cutting in line, or of secretly getting in for seconds before others had had any. The party organizing team had to start policing the queue, meaning they were then being exposed to a lot of snark because they had organized the caterers (though I don’t see how it’s their fault that the caterers had massively under estimated what was needed). Ultimately it was a sad boat full of very hungry people who had gotten drunk too quickly, there were lots of cynical cannibalism jokes, and there has never been a boat party again.

3. The banana

At my old workplace we would have potlucks “just because.” People who wanted to participate could, but no pressure if you didn’t want to. It was generally understood that in order to participate, you needed to bring something. One coworker clearly wanted to eat, but didn’t actually want to contribute. So what did she bring to put on the potluck table?

A single banana.

4. The grill guy

My office has a grill that we drag out on the patio for office parties/potlucks/etc. I have a coworker who considers himself to be the “grill guy” of the office, and always mans the grill for all these parties because he’s “the only one good at it.” (Side note: his grill skills are perfectly adequate but not spectacular.)  Once, we had an office potluck that accidentally got scheduled while he was going to be on vacation. This guy cut his vacation (at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean) short so that he could be back in time to man the grill. Because he’s the grill guy!

5. The bites

During a potluck, someone (the office never discovered who!) went to the meeting room where the potluck had to be held and took a single bite out of every biteable thing. Scones, bread, fruits, pizza slices. Just one single bite.

6. The horse hair cake

We had a supervisor who owned horses. Lovely person, but one day she brought in a cake for her staff. When she cut it and took pieces out of the pan, they had horse hair dangling from them. “Horse hair cake” became a potluck warning for years for those in the know.

7. The noon tradition

At a previous job, I was in charge of a monthly staff catered lunch for about 20 people at noon. There was a rotation of favorite local restaurants I’d get take out from, for a modest budget. Most restaurants opened at 11am or 11:30, so it could be a little difficult getting food by noon but I made it work. Additionally, on the selected day, there was one team of four that had a regularly scheduled meeting with outside clients until 1. We always saved food for them, but it felt silly to have an all staff lunch that not everyone could attend.

I floated the idea of moving the staff lunch to 1, which staff responded positively to. In fact, it worked better with everyone’s schedule. I emailed all staff to announce the change. In response I got a bombastic response from the CEO (who, mind you, never showed up to these lunches, or to work in general) that it WAS A TRADITION that these VERY IMPORTANT TO STAFF COHESION lunches were at noon, and THEY HAD ALWAYS been at noon, and MUST CONTINUE to be at noon, and he could ONLY MAKE IT TO NOON lunches, and anything else was an insult to the concept of the noon lunch being at noon. Alas, we kept them at noon and he never made it to the noon lunch.

8. The cheesecake

I had a coworker who just hated me right off the bat. I never did anything to her but I seemed to be a special target for her.

We had a potluck and I brought in mini orange cheesecakes with a burnt sugar top and this absolutely enraged her for some reason. She went in during set up and moved my platter to another table out of the way away from all the other food. Then she went around and told everyone about her cheesecake that she would make and how it was always from scratch. She was very seriously about her homemade cheesecake and how “other people” didn’t make cheesecake from scratch. She never asked me, but mine were scratch made as well. The cherry on top was she hadn’t even brought in a cheesecake.

9. The gasoline

Catered outdoor event that was open to the general public. The venue officially does not allow bringing in alcohol, but unofficially it was another story. REALLY another story.

A coworker was trying to light a campfire in a fire pit and poured gasoline into a red Solo cup. A drunken guest somehow thought he was hiding moonshine in the gas can and tried to walk off with the cup of gasoline. He had to forcibly take it back before it could be swallowed.

10. Waffle Wednesdays

My office had waffle Wednesdays once a month for years. It had all the executive leadership manning the line cooking waffles, pancakes, with one table/griddle dedicated to gluten-free food as we had a few celiacs. They would also do all the prep, purchasing and clean-up (the actual execs not their admin staff), although many people would volunteer to help clean-up and often get a bit more chat time in with the execs. There were also fruit platters and whole fruit if you were vegetarian and wanted a bit more, as well as various kinds of muffins that were vegan. Anytime a food restriction was brought up, they would bring in food specific to that person that was always respected. People were welcome to bring in their own food as well, to accommodate their restrictions or even just come by and have a tea or coffee and not eat.
Zero pressure.

Every Wednesday the entire building smelled of eggs, waffles and bacon. It also allowed people face-time with the executives that they would never otherwise meet. the whole thing ran about 2-3 hours, and the front doors were scheduled around that so even the front-line staff could participate. It was lovely.