What chews my cud – Work Christmas do’s

The hatred for the word festive links into the sheer lack of enjoyment during Work Christmas do’s.
Its August, a meeting at work and the dreaded suggestion is announced we must book the venue for our Christmas do, everybody sits there waiting for that one person who has a hint of willingness/insanity to volunteer to arrange it. Little do they know this will take weeks out of their life to arrange.
Its August, an email comes round please can you confirm by C.O.B Friday if you are free on the following three dates 2nd December, 4th December or 16th December. Did I mention it’s august!
After this the whole Christmas do thing pipes down until you bump into that poor colleague who is arranging it, they mention we need a £400 deposit everybody needs to send money to them now or its not happening, It’s so stressful, If somebody doesn’t pay they are not coming, the venue has limited capacity etc.
Nothing more is heard of this and you start to ponder where did my £20 deposit go? Did they run off with the money?
October arrives and you bump into that colleague by now they are fully grey and chain smoking outside the building. You don’t know whether to mention the dreaded Christmas do, but you go ahead and ask. As you are half way through your question you see the sheer lack of enthusiasm in their eyes, like their soul has been drained out of their pupils and they no longer care for the world. To which they mutter quietly yes an email is coming out asking for you to choose your food. It’s October.
I’ll fast track now to December as this 4 month stint has lead the organiser to complete demise, you are sitting in an overcrowded restaurant, sweating and have ended up with the colleagues you don’t really know here comes the small talk. A strained looking waitress comes over and shouts “who ordered turkey” to which everybody looks blankly, we made our choices in October.
Nobody ends up with the right food and it is not always the best quality when cooked in bulk. Everybody pulls a cracker which is so cheap the whole thing collapses in your hand and a small plastic frog flies across the room, you are made to wear a paper hat that doesn’t fit your head, need I mention the jokes…
You finish your meal quickly as you overhear the waitress saying we are coming up to our time limit on our table and then we are set free into the bar area which is already full. You get separated from your work colleagues and feel forever trapped in the mosh pit of drunken mayhem. Once you locate your colleagues nobody is open to going to the bar as by this time it’s about 50 people deep. We all make our excuses and abruptly leave. The organiser is never seen again.