Our place decided to hand out vouchers rather than a free bar. Basically turn up, give your name to the person with a clipboard and get handed 5 vouchers. The expectation was handing out vouchers rather than a free bar for a period of time would somewhat limit the amount of drink being consumed and therefore less trouble with people getting sick and acting the bollox etc.
This proved to be a complete waste of time as people had already started drink since early afternoon and were fairly well on it by the time they got to the party. Nobody flashed anyone so it wasn’t too bad I guess.
I used to live with a lad years ago from West Limerick who works in there now. He’d be the type of fella that I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of the six
We had a very sensible work party where a lot of people were wary of being “that guy” and were actively avoiding that scenario. Grand craic and all, and at 4am things were messy, but there have been no controversies. There is a noticeable difference in how amenable the Irish attendees are in the wake of this to general requeats in comparison to the non-Irish attendees.
I’ve been at two christmas parties where there were punches thrown. The first row they were two of the cleanest punches I’ve seen thrown. The other one was a messier row, all instigated by one lad.
I didn’t bother going to the firm wide party this year but I went to our team lunch last week. Two lads had a blazing eve of UK election row fairly early on in the pub afterwards and it became quite bitter and awkward for the rest of us. They kept chipping away and making snide comments at each other as the night went on. No punches were thrown, however.
Our team had no xmas party this year or last due to issues we had previously. As a supervisor I had to break up a fight a few times, cover for a lad that was riding a married woman and pretend a female employee wasn’t sending me unsolicited nudes (thankfully she left soon after). It’s a terrible time of the year
An American company with a presence in the general GCD area had their annual Xmas party this evening in Weston Airport. This isn’t the first year they’ve done it. Last year there was a bunch of HR claims of what happened on the buses in and out.
This year they had the challenge of their marquee blowing up in the air due to high winds and effectively making itself useless to deal with. The reaction was to return the drunken snowflakes to GCD in all their finery by 10.30pm from a party which began at the Dublin Kildare border at 8pm.
yeah - its also common practice for the company to call time on it after a certain hour
e.g. meal and drinks in x restauraunt ( insert name of semi conductor company paying the tab from 7pm -11pm) after that its no longer on “work time” once the party leaves the venue for a boozer and hilarity ensues, etc so all off the hook including the lads who want to flash knobs and HR dont have to deal with it,
win, win for all involved
