Did your boss give you a bag of coke for Christmas?
Visiting the ghosts of holiday parties past. 🪦🎄
Hello everyone. I started writing this newsletter in the back of an Uber on the way to Charles de Gaulle airport with my parents and husband after a long weekend in Paris. My friend Colin Nagy always says that if you have the ability to show your parents new cities, you should. (Colin historically has excellent bits of travel knowledge, you should all be reading his work). I’m finishing this newsletter drinking free champagne in the sky somewhere over the Atlantic and trying to avoid holiday-induced blues.
Feed Me will be publishing almost every day during the holidays, so if you have a tip you’d like us to look into or a news item you’d like us to cover, text the Feed Me Tip Line: (646) 494-3916.
Today’s letter includes: 22 New Yorkers on their most bonkers holiday party stories, an Expense Account holiday surprise, How Long Gone teases a new video podcast, and charli xcx has been shopping for memoirs.
If you’ve never been to an office holiday party without nonalcoholic options, you’re probably young enough to be on your parents’ insurance plan. Before the days of 6pm office parties at pickleball members clubs and tagging your coworkers in Instagram Stories, office holiday parties were for kissing the boss under the mistletoe and wearing a bathing suit in front of colleagues. Today, 22 New York professionals told us their memories of holiday parties when the going was… going.
“We had a party on the Gawker roof in 2013. It was a branded rooftop super-soaker party sponsored by a waterproof phone. I wish I could remember how much they paid us. I’m sure it was too much. I think it was the same party where one of those popup folding tents flew off the roof and landed in the middle of Elizabeth Street. Anyway, everyone at Gawker got the flu the day after. We later discovered that people had been using the inflatable hot tub water (there was an inflatable hot tub) to fill up their water guns. The only living creature to use the hot tub was a dog. We called it ‘the dog flu.’” (F, 34-45, advertising)
“I worked at a very decadent ad agency a decade ago where the COO left dime bags of coke under people’s keyboards before the party. Lots of drugs in the office bathroom, lavish food and drink all night long, glamsquads for all the employees, high stakes bingo, EVPs puking in the street. Actually, maybe the office party IS dead these days.” (F, 35-44, writing and advertising)
“Back in 2023 I was working at an early-stage education startup that doesn’t exist anymore. My friend at the office got drunk at the party and complained to a guest she met about how pointless the work was, how the C-suite was using the company to get over their loserdom, etc. The guest was the CEO’s wife and she was fired.” (F, 25-34, growth strategy)
“Boss gets a BJ at the party and ends up marrying the girl, who happens to have been in HR.”
“I worked at a social justice nonprofit from 2017-2020. I got so drunk at my first holiday party (the food was bad and I was nervous) that I took a cab to the UES instead of my place in Brooklyn (same street number, different borough). There was always a lot of flirting happening and one of my older woman colleagues saw a guy flirting with me and wanted me to file a sexual harassment claim with HR (I didn’t and she never forgave me). I saw my colleague get into a cab with my other colleague (married) after the after party. I flirted with a new board member and ended up (years later) having the best sex of my life with him. The holiday party planted the seed.” (F, 25-34)
“At a company holiday party I had a tarot card reader tell me things were looking bleak. I got laid off the next month.” (F, 25-34, copywriter)
“I was at the Vice party in 2014 where they handed out year-end bonuses in cash envelopes at the Christmas party. Each envelope had $1,500 in it. At least one person got so fucked up they lost their cash. After the 20th anniversary things got more and more buttoned up; by the time I left the holiday party was really pathetic, everyone got like a branded backpack and some cheap flip-flops that said Vice on them.” (F, 25-34, journalist)
“I can’t say where I worked, but in the late nineties someone hired thong-clad Brazilian dancers for our staid law firm Rainbow Room holiday party. Best thing about those parties was the smoking room. Several senior partners were seen dirty dancing or more with the barely-clad dancers.” (F, 55-64, lawyer).
“When I was working at an investment bank I was in charge of planning the holiday party (assigned by my MD — I was the only girl on the team, so duh). I obviously took everyone to karaoke with an open bar. We got really drunk and people got messy — my VP locked himself out of his apartment, an associate with a girlfriend kissed another associate. All things considered though... my main takeaway was how lame and elementary those people were even after several rounds of drinks. Didn’t get to smoke cigs with anyone.” (F, 25-34, VC associate)