Article created by: Austėja Akavickaitė
Throughout your career, work may spill out of the regular hours and seep into your personal time. There's the emergency 10 PM email that needs a response ASAP, the stressed-out client who thinks you're being lazy if you're not working on their project during the weekend, the list goes on.
A few days ago, Reddit user BrushProfessional350 submitted a post to the popular 'Antiwork' community, drawing attention to another way people sometimes have to "be there for the team." Company dinners. Yes, it has food, yes it has drinks, but you know you're expected to show up even if you don't feel like it.
However, in the example presented by BrushProfessional350, the situation was even worse. The workers had to pay for themselves!
Turns out, this appalling practice is quite common. As the post was going viral, other Reddit users flooded the comment section, sharing similar stories of their own.
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I had the same experience as OP once. Actually had a guy on the team do what you said and skipped out on paying his part of the bill. The rest of us were like "we're not covering for him." I think the manager had to pay his share because we all left.
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That's sort of like the downhill progression that holiday parties took at my former employer:
• 1st Year, big catered dinner at a fancy restaurant for employees, family and in some cases even friends, bonus checks handed out
• 2nd year, catered dinner at a restaurant for employees and family, no bonus checks but they did have gift cards for everyone
• 3rd year, catered dinner at a restaurant for employees and family, gift card raffle
• 4th year, catered dinner at a restaurant, no gifts or anything
• 5th year, catered dinner in the break room at work, a single +1, 3 junky prizes were raffled off
• 6th year, catered lunch in the break room at work, no guests, a few more junky prizes raffled off (always seemed to go to the same people too, hmm)
• 7th year, catered breakfast in the break room, no guests, no raffles, and you had to clock out for it
• 8th year, "pot luck" lunch in the break room, everyone was expected to bring something on their own dime, you had to clock out for it, and HR set up a table where you could set up a recurring donation to United Way straight from your paycheck
So glad I don't work there anymore. Also fun to mention that my 1st year, it was a $40M/yr company and it was a $700M/yr company when I quit. You'd think they'd have money to take care of employees...
This happened at the first law firm I worked at (at the height of the property bubble so the owner was minted). I should add they paid a pittance.
They took us out for Christmas dinner, seriously hit the wine and asked for the bill to be split 48 ways at the end of the night. Seemed surprised when most people walked out without paying.
I had a manager do something like that to me. He said that we (four of us in the "team") had to go out to lunch together to welcome the new person. Manager decided where we were going, and since this was mandatory, I assumed the company or the manager was paying for the lunch. When the bill came, he started to split it up – – but then he said the new person shouldn't pay because he was new, and that since I was the only one of the four that did not have kids to support, I should pick up the tab. No one objected, or seemed to think it was unfair. After sitting there with a totally stunned blank look on my face, and everyone looking at me and putting their wallets away, I ended up paying for it. I was so shocked I couldn't react otherwise, and I kick myself to this day.
I had a boss that would “take us out to celebrate some company accomplishment”, tell us we would all have to pay for our lunches, collect the money from each of us, then go pay the bill with the company credit card. Did it for years.
My husband was invited to go to a team happy hour during work hours. He didn’t want to go because he didn’t like his team, but he would have been the only one not going and his boss would start to notice. He went knowing this wasn’t a free meal, so he only ordered a burger, and had water. Everyone else ordered several alcoholic drinks and appetizers. When the bill came, he expected roughly $20 for his part. Nope- the manager “suggested” splitting the bill. My husband ended up paying $60 for his burger and cup of water.
Reminds me of my last boss.
He was a new 'manager'. I didn't like the guy before he got the role but I didn't let it affect how i did my job.
One day he sends out a message via email that he is inviting the whole team to lunch at a local favorite.
I had a lot of work to do and the local favorite was actually one of my least favorite, so I didn't bother to respond to the email. A few minutes later an MS teams message basically the same. Still ignored. Then a direct text from him. FML.
Decided if he was trying this hard to buy me lunch I'd go even though the place he wanted was a full 30 minutes from the job i was working on. I get there and the boss is already seated and eating. This was a pizza buffet place that you pay first then get whatever you want. He clearly had no intention of buying. What an asshat.
I'm ashamed to say I bought my food and ate there with the team thinking surely there must be a topic to discuss. Nope. This moron just didn't want to eat alone and bullied everyone into coming to lunch with him.
I don't work there anymore.
Don’t feel bad, I’m in trouble at work because I didn’t go to a unpaid meeting in a day off that would have spent 30$ for getting an Uber because I was working at another job.
Same happened to me at a job. I'm a new employee, boss says we're going out to celebrate coworkers birthday. Get to the restaurant, and order food, and they paid for the birthday person's meal, but no one else's. If I had known, I would have declined. Nice that the birthday person's meal got paid for, but don't say "we're celebrating", invite everyone out, then not pay for them.
My husband's company posted a billion in net profit this year. He PAID for 2 mouses for his employees. Yeah, $24 for wireless mouses because they wanted them to use ones that don't work. He also bought the fridge for their break room. This is at their corporate headquarters in the ONLY department that worked on site through the pandemic. They have a Children's Hospital Wing named after that company, but their employees can't keep their food cold working 12p to 7a while they eat WHILE WORKING.
My partner works for a Fortune 500 (136 to be specific) company and they give every employee $10 Walmart gift cards for Christmas. The company is worth $21 BILLION and gave out freaking $10 gift cards.
First day at a new job, I was given a welcome dinner. Good thing I had my wallet on me, because I got stuck with the bill.
Interesting story in this at my company. There was a dinner that got out of hand. It was like 20 people in Norway (very expensive to eat out) but the bill came to $10K the VP had just got back from some big trip and his credit card was maxed out.
One of the new college grads put it on her American Express. It was a whole big thing and she ended up having to go to the CEO of a fortune 500 company and explain. It was really the VP that should have been doing that.
My manager did this twice. Throughout the company there was a culture of managers taking out their teams for lunch, once every quarter. However my team's manager left the company and our director had to fill in that spot for about 9 months before they could find someone suitable. Our team had about 40 people, technically two teams run by leads and a manager overseeing those leads. This new manager lied about promoting me twice as well, before he left the company. Throughout his 3 years within the company, this guy took us out to lunch twice. He didn't do it for a long time and one of the leads let him know "hey you know it's good for team morale to go out for lunch and celebrate milestones" so this guy took us out to cpk, and again about 6 months later to cheesecake factory. Both times he left early from lunch and paid only for his meal and expected the team to pay for their expensive-ish meals. I mean I ordered the steak thinking it's a company paid event. I've had other managers invite us out to lunch and drinks after work for helping out their team and cover the bill. Some complained about this around, so the man decides it's better to have pot lucks instead of having everyone go out to team lunches. I'm glad he's gone.
Had one where they tied it to some charity so we were ok with paying. But the next one they said “hey everybody’s invited to come to this chain restaurant down the road”. Didn’t tell us we were buying our own food and drink until we got handed the menus. Half of us, including me, couldn’t afford to be eating out on the wages they were paying us.
It reminds me of a story I was told by a friend. He and a group of co-workers were away together and eating out every night. Each night a different person would pay (they had company cards). After one particularly expensive meal, they noticed that their boss hadn't paid once so they challenged him!
He explained that he had to approve their expenses, but that his boss had to approve his expenses.
The penny dropped at that point.
My former boss had drinks and appies to celebrate two people getting their property manager licenses. One of them was his daughter. The other one couldn't get there until later. So by the time the second property manager arrived to celebrate, all the food had been eaten, so she had to order her own. And pay for her own dinner and drinks.
That was my ex boss's way of celebrating and encouraging his employees.
