I’ve actually been to some really good company Christmas parties, but there hasn’t ever been one where at least half of the employees there weren’t saying “Couldn’t they have just paid us the amount of money they could have saved by not having this party?”
Some company out there paid Bob Dylan and his son Jakob’s band a ton of money to play the same party. I’d easily pay a grand to see that, but you know there was somebody there whining about their salary. Then again people love to complain about their salaries. Shockingly, the more money you make the more you are usually upset about your salary. There are guys who get paid tons of money for taking pictures of beautiful models and they are still probably whining about either money or respect.
That may have changed lately since the economy has been so bad. My grandfather lived during the depression and he never complained once about a penny he gave to the Government. Here was a guy who was in the Country Club section of the economic stratum, and yet he had framed copies of the Government auditing him and finding his tax records to be sterling nailed up on his office wall.
This was an amazing guy who knew the value of money and what it meant. Some people would call it being cheap, but maybe in the case of this Jewish guy he realized more than most that money was power. He was truly thankful to be in a country where he could earn a fabulous living wage. He owned a company but he probably never threw a Christmas party for it. It was an era where it would be considered inhumane to fire someone during the month of December. These days I’m sure most places are more than happy to have you escorted from the building during the Christmas Party.
