h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So, we had the 4th annual Christmas brunch thing at work yesterday, where the people who work on the Nordic desk over Christmas are supposed to have something to cheer them up a bit about considering they'll most likely spend Christmas in Scotland instead of at home with their families in their respective countries.

We started the tradition about 4 years ago, when I and a few others decided to try to create a nordic Christmas Smorgasbord for the day before Christmas Eve as it would be the last working day before the start of the Holidays. Mainly this was decided because the lines are usually not that busy, so people don't have to be too stressed out about getting a snack every now and then.

Anywho, since I am scheduled to have Christmas off this year, I told my team leaders that someone else should handle the organising of the X-mas lunch, and they agreed that they'd find someone to take care of it.
Of corse, the first thing they did was to totally not get the whole point of having it on the last day before Christmas, and promptly decided that they'd change it to a week anda half before the originally considered date 'so that more people could be involved, even the guys that leaves for their christmas holidays'.
again, the whole point was to get the guys who are staying behind over Christmas something to look forward to, but okay. Fair enough.

The tradition has also always been that home made food is usually better than store bought food, so anyone that can cook something for the Christmas lunch, should try to do so and to bring it in. The people who feel that they can't cook, should pitch in with some money so that the people who does make the effort to cook, can be reimbursed a bit for the cost of the stuff needed for cooking the food.

This year, since I had handed the reins over to the Team Leaders, they decided to make a change in the handling of this as well. They started collecting money from the people who decided they didn't want to/couldn't bring anything in themselves, and that created a kitty that would later be used to reimburse the people who brought stuff in.
The people who decided to bring stuff in, wrote down on a list what they'd bring, so we didn't end up with 10 eople all bringing ina mountain of meatballs, and nothing else was brought in.
Most people wrote that they'd bring some christmassy bread, some chese, some savoury fruit salad and other good stuff.
I decided I'dbring in some stuff (since I'd still be here) that I know most people like, but don't feel like cooking, because it taks a bit of effort to make. Like beetroot salad, the traditional Chritmas ham and a very Christmassy Swedish dish called Janson's Frestelse.

To make this, I needed to go shopping, and my shopping trip ended up costing me about £30, with the ham taing up about £12 by itself. I figured that if I could get back about £20 or so of that from the collected kitty, I'd be happy about that.
In the end, the collected kitty ended up at about £60 and I later heard that our manager had added another £40 to the kitty as well, from the department fund, which meant that altogether, we had about £100.
Now, that's a pretty good sum of money to spend on foodstuff for a Christmas Lunch.

ANyways, when things got sorted yesterday, one of our team leaders had apparently been to ASDA and bought some sliced ham, sausages, pate and salami and stuff to have on some bread, along with ASDA's own brand Cola and some other stuff that he'd brought in, including a toaster for toasting some of the bread he'd also bought. Looked like it was waaaay too much, however, and at the end of the day, we had a whole lot of those stuff left over.

ANyways, what I was going to say, and the whole point of the rant wa, today, when I came in and asked my team leader for some money back, as I was out of pocket from buying all the stuff I needed, and I was then told that there was no money left in the kitty as it had all been used on buying the stuff my team leader brought in.
Apparently, the team leades and my manager had decided that the list that told them what everyone would bring in didn't show anything that would cost more than the £5 that people gave to the kitty if they didn't bring anything in, so instead of paying those £5 to the kitty, they'd just bring in the food instead.

Now, let's remember that the total of my purchases that was needed to cook what I brought in, was about £30. The kitty is gone. The stuff my team leader brought in was pretty much untouched and I'd say that about 75%-80% of what he brought in, he had to bring back home with him.

So, what we then have is me, £30 out of pocket, and no way to get reimbursed because it's not an officially sanctioned event and the kitty is gone, and we also have my team leader's fridge, jam packed with all sorts of stuff that he brought in, but wasn't used. So in effect, the whole team chipped in so that my team leader could have a well stocked fridge over Christmas.

Merry frigging Christmas to everyone.
That's the last damn time I try to help out to make things a bit more bearable here at work.

Ouch, that's really bad!

I guess the moral of the story is don't trust you manager, even if it is Christmas. What they did really is bloody rotten

That's really bad form, even by the usual standards of the particular company you have the misfortune to work for.

Apparently, the team leader who bought all the other stuff didn't use up all of the money after all, so I did get the money back.

Still wasn't too happy about the way they handled it.
But what would I expect from them, right?

apparently noone wants to have anything to do with a christmas party at my office this year