Employees Were Only Allowed To Order One Drink At The Party, So One Employee Looked Over The Drink Menu Very Carefully And Slowly

Jayne Elliott

3 months ago

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance/pixabay/elle_kh

Is a party really a party if it has rules? Do employees really feel appreciated if they feel like the boss is cheap?

Those are questions to ponder in today’s story where an employee appreciation party comes with a lot of rules such as only one drink per employee.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Christmas/Employee Appreciation Party

This happened a few years ago, but being this time of year it always makes me laugh to think about it.

I worked at this place for close to 14 years, and I’ve always been the type of person to put up with a lot.

We always had our “Christmas/Employee appreciation” party in January, as December was crazy busy.

I had only been there a few months when we were told about when and where the party would be.

The party had rules.

A few weeks before, there was a memo posted in the staff room titled “The Rules of Going Out” (I kid you not).

Basically it was the owners rules of how things were going to go down for our party. It went like this (she liked to use lots of capital letters and exclamation marks):

The party is for employees ONLY, no spouses.

I will pay for ONE DRINK ONLY!!!

You can have an appetizer or dessert, NOT BOTH!!!

Attendance is MANDATORY!

The boss was NOT joking.

I thought it was funny, and laughed about it to one of my colleagues.

They didn’t laugh and told me that the owner wasn’t joking, she was dead serious.

Keep in mind that at the most, there would have been 12 people attending, and that she would completely write this off as a business expense, so why be so cheap?

I didn’t want to rock the boat, so the first year I just toed the line.

The same memo went out every year.

The next year the same memo appeared a few weeks before the party (pretty sure she just saved it to the computer and printed it off every year).

The second year and the few years after that we still went out to a restaurant I thought, fine, you’re going to be that cheap in “appreciating” all the hard work we do all year (plus not treating us very nicely)? Fine.

Cue malicious compliance.

Here’s how the meal started…

Everyone orders their drinks before their meal.

I get water.

She looks at me and asks, “Aren’t you going to order a drink?”

I tell her yes, but I will have it with dessert as I can’t drink without eating anything first (true).

They ordered the most expensive drink on the menu.

Everyone orders a glass of wine, a cocktail, what have you. We eat our entrees, then the dessert menu comes.

I ask if they have a scotch menu; they do, and she asks to look at it when I am done with it (they also had those fancy coffees on there as well).

I order my dessert, and look at the scotch menu and order the most expensive per ounce scotch they have (about $26 bucks an ounce at the time).

I’m not going to waste my “one drink only” on a $7 glass of wine, I’m getting the most expensive scotch there is, and make a point of savouring it.

“Mmm mmm! So good! I’ve never had this one before!”

I get the death glare, but hey, I’m enjoying my ONE DRINK ONLY!!! Still makes me laugh.

They followed the rules! There wasn’t really anything the boss could say about that.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story…

This reader hopes they got paid for attending the party.