Test your sanity today – organize an office party

Anyone who has ever arranged a staff function or end-of-year office party knows, it is impossible to please everyone. No, that does not quite capture it – it is impossible to even please the majority! By time the party comes around, the co-ordinator’s sanity has been severely tested. If the party organiser goes missing you often eventually find them curled up in an office storeroom rocking back and forth, sucking their thumb and mumbling incoherently.

I was not going to let this happen to me. Well not again anyway!

This year I found it particularly difficult since I had already used all the venues in the area that met the criteria set by usual moaners: close to the office; sufficient safe parking (in Johannesburg – I ask you!); a varied menu, large enough for 80 people.

Save the date
Since I was battling to find this perfect venue I sent out a ‘save the date’ to at least book out the time in everyone’s diary in the meantime. I also asked staff to confirm if they could make it so we knew what numbers we were dealing with.

I genuinely had a few staff members respond that they “would only confirm their attendance once they knew where we were going”. By that time I was not quite my usual polite and demure self, reacting with “Either you can make it or not – you decide NOW!”

Menu selection
In order make sure the food could be brought out reasonable quickly I limited the menu to five options and asked staff to indicate what they wanted to eat in advance. Once again I received really intelligent responses like “I’ll have option 1 or 4”. What the hell?

In the end I do think everyone had a good time and enjoyed their meal. I also managed to get sufficiently inebriated to forget the idiotic comments and requests from the staff.

I have, however, realised a fatal mistake. Overall I did a great job in organising the party, so you can be sure they will ask me to do it again next year. Lucky me!


Review of the restaurant

Click here for a quick review of the restaurant we went to, who did a great job in accommodating our every impractical request.