Office politics

Most of the time I enjoy my job, but every now and then (and I don't think you can escape this in ANY job) office politics get in the way. Yesterday I came home from work quite satisfied with myself for standing up for what I believe in. Here is what happened:



Quite a while ago my manager, knowing that she would be in the middle of her maternity leave over the Christmas period and not at work to give this matter her full attention, gave the job of organising our annual team Christmas party to somebody else. The lady that got given this task I am going to call "D". A bit of background into D is that she is quite a wealthy lady and kind of only works for something to do, rather than for the money. She and her husband have a million dollar house and she wears designer clothes. Her husband is a surgeon. This is all totally fine, but what is not fine is the fact that there have been incidences in the past when she has really rubbed this fact in everybody's faces. She also often suggests ideas for team events and so forth that the average person really can't afford as I don't think she understands what it's like for money to be scarce.



Anyway she never took a vote within the team or anything about what we all wanted to do for our Christmas party. Usually it is a dinner at a restaurant. Last year it was at a little Mexican place near work. It was about $20 a head, we could bring partners and it was a lot of fun as well as being affordable, even though it wasn't a 5 star gourmet place. At the time though, D made sure everybody knew it was very beneath her to eat food like nachos. This year D has taken it upon herself to book in for an exclusive restaurant in the city. The cost is $100 a head which makes it $200 if you want to bring your partner. That is out of reach of most of us in the team. Because at the time, our manager was heavily pregnant and just finishing up at work before starting her leave, she didn't do anything to make D organise a more suitable outing and so all the plans went ahead and we are having this party that hardly anyone can afford to go to and as a result lots of people are boycotting. This has caused a lot of tension in the team for the last couple of weeks.



Usually within our team at Christmas we do a Secret Santa. For those of you who don't know what that is it is the same as a Kris Kringle where you put everyone's name in a hat then everyone draws a name and you have to buy a present for that person. We usually exchange gifts at the Christmas party but because so many people aren't going now we have decided to have a "bring a plate of food" day at work the Monday before Christmas and exchange gifts then. Usually the person who organises the Christmas party also organises Secret Santa because they are kind of related, but because of all the trouble, our new manager decided to allocate this task to someone other than D. I volunteered as I thought at least if I run it I know I will do the right thing. Our manager announced I would be running it so right away I get all these people coming up to me giving ideas on what they think the money limit should be on the gifts and new ways to run it etc. So last week I called a 5 minute team meeting to talk to everyone about it. I said that the running of Secret Santa this year was going to be a democratic process to make sure we did what was fair and what the majority of people would be happy with. I explained I would be sending out a team email with some questions about how people wanted it run and that everybody had to email back so that it would be like a confidential vote. I added for people to remember that this is supposed to be a fun activity not something designed to stress people or burden them financially and that was why I was going with what the majority would be comfortable doing.



I sent out an email asking people 1. whether or not they wanted to participate in Secret Santa 2. to nominate what $ limit they would be comfortable spending, and 3. Did they want a traditional Secret Santa or did they have any ideas on any new fun ways it could be done? There are 20 of us in the team at work and the results went like this:

Everyone said yes they wanted to participate

Out of 20 people, 17 people said they wanted a $15 limit and the other 3 said higher than that.

Out of 20 people, 16 people said they just wanted a traditional Secret Santa, 2 gave ideas for a new way to run it, and the other 2 never answered the question and said they didn't mind how it was done.

So with a pretty overwhelming majority, yesterday I sent an email out saying that after considering everyone's preferences we would be doing a traditional Secret Santa with a $15 limit on the gift buying. Everyone seemed really happy that they had had a say and people were excited about doing it. But guess who started to voice her opinion and the fact that she had issues with it? You guessed it! D! First she says to me "traditional Secret Santa is boring. It's been done. We need to do something new." and then proceeds to tell me about how her family always does it. Apparently everyone buys a unisex present then someone selects one and opens it, then the next person can either choose to select another present or take the first person's gift off them if they like it better. I politely listened to her and then said that out of 20 team members 16 had voted for a traditional Secret Santa so that's what I have to go with. I also said that I thought the "taking people's presents" idea had the potential to cause arguements but told her thanks for her idea. After that, twice more throughout the day she tried to convince me why we should do Secret Santa her way and I met her comments with a very simalar comment to what I said earlier.



Then she started saying how a $15 limit was measly, that the team must be a bunch of cheapskates if they can't afford more than that. She asked me to tell her who said $15 so she could convince them to spend more. I said no that the vote was confidential and that it was a vast majority that voted for the $15 limit. Several more times she comes up to me and loud enough for everyone to hear made rude comments about people being pathetic not wanting to spend more than $15. I got really angry as she was upsetting everyone and so I went to my manager and told her what was happening. I said that she was welcome to address the issue with D personally if she felt it more appropriate, but that I wanted her to stop D from behaving this way, and that as Secret Santa is my project that D is ruining I feel I am entitled to address the issue with her provided I didn't get aggressive. My manager agreed and called a meeting with the 3 of us.



D walks in and thinks it is about the Christmas party so she didn't realise she was "in trouble" so to speak. My manager explains she has called the meeting as D's behaviour towards the Christmas celebrations has been unfavourable and that I have been upset and made a complaint. She had a talk to D about how and why her behaviour had been unacceptable and then let me talk. I was very calm and tactful but I told the truth and it all came out beautifully. I explained how the Secret Santa is being ruined by her selfish attitude, that she was hurting people's feelings by calling them cheapskates, that I had taken a vote to try to do what was fair and that the idea behind votes is to go with the majority not with what one person wants. I also gave her the oppurtunity to withdraw from the Secret Santa if she was that unhappy with it. My manager and I then gave D the option to talk but she suddenly went quiet. All that big talk she does all day escaped her and she had nothing left to say except to apologise to me which I accepted. I said to her I like coming in to work and I like the friendly team atmosphere and so I hope we can be friends as it was not my intention to be aggressive or yell at her, that I was just trying to sort out an issue with her by talking with her about it.



For the rest of the day she never said a peep about Secret Santa and was nice to everyone including me. I was very proud of myself as I really think she was being a real bully and I think standing up to a bully is always a positive thing.