How to have an office Christmas party for one

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/12/how-to-have-an-office-party-for-one

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Picture the scene: a mid-market hotel bar, exhausted office workers clutching free drinks, leering at people they shouldn’t and watching others they sit with every day make idiots out of themselves, again. But how much longer will we witness these charming panoramas? The Great British office party is endangered.

It’s getting less likely that those workers will be permanently contracted staff, let alone work in a physical office. The number of self-employed people is rising so fast that the UK is predicted by thinktank IPRR to become the self-employment capital of western Europe. Going it Hans Solo has become a popular (or the only) option for people having to work beyond pension age, as well as almost 2,000 people a month moving off benefits into their own business.

Working for yourself is one way to take some power into your own hands. But with that power comes a great responsibility: providing your own Christmas entertainment. Self-employed people like me can claim £150 as an office party expense (it’s an exemption, not an allowance, ie not free money, but every little helps), but then what? Here’s how to create that party feeling without stepping into an office.

Perform a solo secret Santa

Like many freelancers I work from home in my office/spare bedroom. If I took the party-for-one challenge literally my cat Puck and I would just put on a playlist (say, Cristina’s Is That All That There Is? and Talking Heads’ Burning Down the House), knock back some Aldi Prosecco and send an inappropriate email to a client with an awkward amount of kisses. I could scan my bum and perform a solo secret Santa by navigating Amazon with my eyes closed and see what arrives in the post, but that’s just a normal night in for some people.

Invent your own office bore

There are many Facebook groups and Google hangouts that allow freelancers to pretend they aren’t sitting in a room alone, slowly making their way through the contents of the fridge (and then the freezer). Generic Office Roleplay is a Facebook group run by Australian graduate lawyer David Frew, with more than 4,000 members. It posts “all users” emails, the likes of which clog up your inbox; niggly memos asking people to clean the microwave, or detailing agendas for meetings that will never happen. They will never happen because the company, Stackswell and Co, is fictitious. These are people distracting themselves from their own boring home office life by creating a fantasy boring office online, for a company that doesn’t exist. For example:

To: All staff on Level 5

Subject: Banana peels

Just touching base to address a small issue.

Someone keeps leaving a banana skin on the floor at the entrance to my cubicle.

“It’s all about the bureaucracy, politics and red tape that go too far in an office. The catch-22s and the horrible bosses,” 24-year-old Frew told me. “It’s the life of an employee, through the eyes of an employee, without worrying about what the company might say.” With colleagues this fun a mere scroll and click away, who needs real ones?

Don’t be afraid to be cheap

I run a choir, Gaggle, with by its very nature has many members, who happen to drink a lot. So last Christmas I took them to a Wetherspoons, where it was a fiver for a roast dinner and a drink. Bargain. That £150 can certainly take you places if you swap Pinot Noir for Spoon’s house wine Private Bin.

Throw a bash for strangers…

Portsmouth Freelancers Meet is an event run by Joanna Eyre since 2010. Here’s a recent invite: “This year we’re having a party at the Brewhouse & Kitchen in Portsmouth and depending on sponsorship there’ll be free beers, mulled wine and nibbles for guests.” Yum.

London’s #FreelanceOfficeParty, which gets a turnout of around 200, has a guest list full of “good people”, says its creator, journalist Michael Moran, who started the hashtag and the free parties five years ago, after being made redundant. The event was hugely popular, and the party turned out to be full of actors and writers he admired – this year there’ll be a Scottish edition, too. “I looked around and thought this is actually an event I would, in other circumstance, pay money to be at.”

…then try to forget you’re at a party with the competition

If you do organise a meet-up with fellow freelancers, you will find yourself in a room with the very people who pitch for the same business as you. The ones who got the job you wanted, who tweet about the contracts you were meant to win. Don’t forget your sharp elbows. But they can bring work, too – at the Portsmouth Freelancers Meet, local agencies have started wangling their own invite to get to know the freelancers. “We get agencies from all over the south coast turn up,” says Eyre. “It’s created employment opportunities.”

Gatecrash a stranger’s work party

If you can’t face being your friend’s or lover’s “plus one” and crashing their work do, there’s always the last resort – walk blithely into the middle of a total stranger’s party. Here, no one cares if you disagree loudly with the boss’s take on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, because you’ll never have to see them again and they don’t control your partner’s pay packet.

Find a busy pub any Thursday or Friday in December, request The Merrymen’s Hot Hot Soca (the world’s best party song) at the DJ booth then run on to that dance floor bow legged (it’s less aggressive), fingers pointed and fist pumping into the air, mouth gaping in pure joy just as “Olé, olé, olé, olé, feeling hot, hot, hot,” comes booming out of the speakers. You, my friend, will be the king of that party. If anyone asks, you’re Charlie from accounting.

Remember the real meaning of Christmas

Engender a warm glow by helping a charity with its Christmas do. Think about it: there are loads of amazing people, doing charitable, important things, and you’re worrying about missing out on a stock-cupboard snog? You won’t be alone if you do volunteer: I asked my local food bank if I could help and it turns out all volunteer places are filled until February; but with Crisis alone looking for 9,000 volunteers this Christmas there will be plenty of places that need some people with flexible diaries, so hello freelancers.

Parties are not just for Christmas

When my former employer, Feminist Times, folded, and my colleagues and I declared ourselves freelance once again, we vowed to meet up every Monday for what I called “Job Club”. No one else liked the name but it didn’t matter anyway because, even though one former colleague lives just a mile and a half down the road from me, we keep bailing on our own idea. Quality time with our peers throughout the year could help us build stronger networks, not just for parties. Divided, we’re conquered, especially when it comes to the crummy nature of British employment rights. Together we’re stronger, and just imagine how tall our tower of Ferrero Rocher could be if we clubbed together all those £150 exemptions?

Who needs karaoke and a punch-up?

The last time I went to a proper office party was 10 years ago – a music industry do unlike anything I’d experienced before – super posh, with Jimmy Carr doing a routine about fat wives and having affairs with secretaries which seemed to go down well with the crowd. Flashbacks include me being cajoled into sitting on a lord’s knee. Later I sat in a lift at the Ritz drinking Stoli with a man I didn’t know, both of us refusing to move for people wanting to use the lift because “it was funny”. In hindsight this may have made me look less professional than I had hoped my boss would find me to be.

There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing about the worst party in the world, the morning after, when you didn’t go. Where so-and-so was crying because people crashed her doing Sia’s Chandelier during karaoke, or what’s-his-face tried to punch his line manager after a fight over Bob Geldof. You can be smug: you avoided all the pain and enjoyed the final of The Apprentice over a bottle of Baileys, your dignity intact •