The Ghosts of Parties Past

As the party season comes charging towards like a herd of decorated elephants, I've been reminiscing about corporate festivities from days gone by. Whilst most company events start off like the Boots advert, they usually end like a scene from The Great Escape, with employees furtively slipping out the back door and making a run for it.

In between, a lot of strange things can happen.

At one major company I worked for a young (and v.ambitious) secretary had had a brief fling with a married boss at the Crimbo party the previous year. Thinking the same would happen again this year, she sat next to him all evening like a love-sick puppy, but he pointedly ignored her. She sobbed hysterically in the toilet when she (literally) couldn't pin him down, and finally ran off into the night like Cinderella, her dreams of stratospheric social status destroyed. I have to admit, we were all just a bit pleased.

And there's always one Secretary By Day, Insatiable Slut By Night, flinging herself in wild abandonment at anything above the level of associate and ending the night hugging an empty bottle in the corner of the room with makeup smudged over her face like a Picasso painting.

I worked at one company where the receptionist was like Hitler in drag, it was like dealing with a stick of dynamite. But at the Christmas party we saw her pissed and over-emotional being tended to by one of the top-level bosses (also pissed). They sat at the dinner table, arms around each other, glaring at everyone else like they were plotting mass homicide. Very strange.

That was the party where one secretary, finding she'd left her mobile phone in the office, encouraged a couple of us to break into the building to retrieve it. Somewhat inebriated, we also raided the stationery cupboard which the receptionist guarded like a rabid Rottweiler, virtually emptying it. The atmosphere the next day was hysterically horrendous as she tried to hunt down every stolen pen and stapler with all the subtlety of Attila the Hun.

Then there was the large formal event where one of the bosses with a particularly well-honed sadistic streak decided that a game of Charades in front of the whole company would be fun for everybody. Bar steward. Our names were called out at random, and employees shuffled up to the stage like condemned prisoners to entertain upper management.

My name was called. I shook my head at the CEO wielding the microphone. "Come on," he yelled jollily. I shook my head again, firmer this time. "Get on up here," he ordered in boss-like manner." I pursed my lips (to stop me mouthing F-Off), squinted my eyes and held up my hand - hell would freeze over before I humiliated myself for their amusement.

Even worse than company parties are the department parties which, because I'm specialised in my particular sector, usually consisted of a couple of bosses, and me. One year my two bosses took me to an ultra-chic restaurant where meals were just coloured dots on large white plates - I didn't know whether to lick it or frame it. They talked shop, which was as riveting as waiting for a saucepan of potatoes to come to the boil, only for hours. I texted a work colleague: "I'm dying." She replied: "Just drink to kill the pain." It didn't help, although I certainly gave it a good go - they poured me into a taxi afterwards with me wailing about how much I loved them. Facing them the next day was pretty dire, I can tell you.

Then there's the boss's 'home parties'. I only went to one of these and, like Scarlet O'Hara, swore I'd rather have my limbs cut off with a blunt blade before attending another. It was so stuffy they only served wine (horrors) and us mere workers could barely understand the guffawing of the other guests, so it's a good job they didn't deign to speak to us. Except one.

A big rotund man wandered over to me. "And who are you?" he bellowed. "I work with Mr X," I said. "Oh, are you a partner?" "No, I'm his secretary." There was a shocked pause, then without another word he turned on his heels and walked away, clearly unwilling to waste another breath on a mere pleb. Tsk.

The best parties, of course, were the girlie ones. Off us secretaries would go at lunchtime, determined to have ourselves a good time. And we did.

Boy, did we ever.

The drinking would start around 10am, with bottles surreptitiously pulled out of bosses filing cabinets, passed underneath desks and tipped with gusto into coffee mugs. We'd start off by sneaking to the loos to tart ourselves up but, once the alcohol took hold, we noisily disappeared en masse, leaving the office empty. One boss described the noise coming out of the Ladies as a 'hollering tribe of high-pitched viragos' - we had to look up the word 'virago' and weren't sure whether to feel insulted or not (but we were too drunk to care).

Barely dressed and covered in tinsel, we strutted unsteadily down city streets whooping and jeering at any male we passed and flirting outrageously with waiters and customers at whichever restaurant had been unfortunate enough to accept us. Then the drinking would begin in earnest.

One time a very quiet secretary merely sniffed at a glass of wine and was immediately rendered legless. Slurring and cackling wildly, she rang her boss in the office and said, "You're a dick." We tried to wrestle the phone off her, but she kept stealing other phones to ring his office and hiss abuse. Oh the grovelling she had to do the day after! (She wasn't sacked... you can get away with a lot at Christmas.)

One gorgeous secretary had a massive crush on her boss, who looked exactly like Alan Carr, complete with buck teeth. We simply couldn't understand it. After a couple of drinks she wailed and howled about her unrequited love, while we all glanced at each other thinking WTF. They eventually married (and we all thought WTF).

Sometimes bosses would ring us mid-party and demand our return. Yeah, okay, whatever. Sometimes we did, pouring into the office hiccoughing and giggling and lobbing Christmas decorations at each other. Most times we didn't return until the next day, hauling our hungover carcasses to our desks and falling across them to sleep it off.

Ah those were the days. I quite miss that. Christmas festivities for me this year will consist of one mince pie on a plate next to a large tumbler of whisky, with me singing It'll Be Lonely This Christmas with the keyboard people and the talking cacti.

It's gonna be wild!

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