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Office birthdays are supposed to be one of the lower-stakes parts of having a job. Someone buys a cake, everyone awkwardly gathers around it, and you spend three minutes wondering whether the birthday song should include your coworker’s name or mercifully end after one verse. What they generally shouldn’t involve is one employee unexpectedly financing the entire celebration.

One new hire thought she’d actually gotten a bargain when a colleague we’ll call Emily made an unusual request for her birthday. Instead of everyone contributing the usual amount toward one group gift, Emily wanted individual presents, with a suggested spending cap of $27 each.

Fine. The employee found something for $21, brought it to work and assumed her financial obligations to Emily’s birthday had officially been fulfilled.

Her manager had other plans.

She was suddenly tasked with organizing the cake and balloons, with assurances that the rest of the team would chip in afterward. That sounded reasonable enough—until another coworker revealed she’d previously been given the exact same job and was left footing almost the entire bill.

The new employee spent another $53 anyway.

Now nobody seems particularly interested in paying her back, and somehow the coworker whose birthday she’s funding also managed to make her cry in the bathroom.

Happy birthday, Emily!

Was forced to pay for a colleague’s birthday

So this week is my colleague’s birthday (I’ll call her Emily) usually everyone would pitch in the same amount to buy each colleague a gift plus birthday cake but Emily wanted each person to give her a gift instead of pitching in to get one gift.

Her rule was that the gift shouldn’t be over 27 dollars since that’s the amount we usually spend when we pitch in.

I bought her a gift that cost me 21$ & I was glad that I’m spending less money on colleagues gifts this month and brought the gift with me today.

What a win.

During work I was suddenly called by my line manager who asked if I bought Emily a gift and when I said yes she looked a bit surprised but then she told me to plan with another colleague (I’ll call her Sera) to order cake and ballon for Emily so we can celebrate and she said the whole team will pitch in.

I went to Sera with the news which she was not happy about because apparently she had to deal with the same thing before and at the end only two people paid her (one of them being the line manager).

When she told the line manager that the rest didn’t pay her, she just said “okay” and moved on so she didn’t want anything to do with it.

Uhhh, excuse me?

I didn’t want to do that but I ended up paying for the cake and the balloon which cost me around 53$.

I already told another colleague about the amount and how much they need to pay me after I decided the amount between us so they can pay me back but so far no one took me seriously 😭

Sara told me I should’ve said sorry but I can’t but being a new employee I just felt pressured to do it.

Easier said than done.

I’m not a confrontational person & honestly I hate that this was pushed into me so what can I do to get them to pay me back?

P.S the worst part of this is that Emily was being mean to me & I ended up crying in the bathroom.

The whole thing was dumb but I hated it even more cuz I’m the one who’s paying for her birthday celebration!

Commenters were firmly on the employee’s side, and the biggest piece of advice was to stop treating the $53 as a casual favor and start treating it like the workplace expense her manager effectively instructed her to make.

She didn’t volunteer to host Emily’s birthday. Her line manager specifically told her to arrange the cake and balloons and said the team would contribute. That matters, especially when she’s a new employee who understandably felt there was an element of authority behind the request. It’s easy to say she should have refused, but telling your new boss “no, I’m not doing that” can feel considerably less simple when you’re still trying to establish yourself at work.

The revelation that the exact same thing previously happened to Sera makes the situation even worse. Management already knew employees weren’t reliably reimbursing the person stuck making the purchase, yet apparently decided to repeat the system with the newest person on the team.

Rather than individually chasing coworkers who never personally asked her to spend the money, commenters suggested going back to the manager in writing. She can calmly state what she spent, remind her that she was told the team would be contributing and ask how reimbursement will be handled. Keeping the receipts certainly wouldn’t hurt either.

And going forward, this is a boundary worth establishing early. Birthday gifts and celebrations should be voluntary, not an unofficial payroll deduction—and nobody should be expected to front money for the office simply because they’re too new or too polite to push back.

The fact that Emily was reportedly unkind enough to leave her crying in the bathroom just adds insult to a surprisingly expensive injury. Spending $21 on a present for someone you don’t particularly like is already generous. Spending another $53 because your manager cornered you into becoming the office party planner is not a birthday tradition anyone needs to continue.

This person can’t believe the audacity of Emily.

This person says this has NEVER happened to her, and never should.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who received a work email from a place she never even applied.

And this person says screw you, Emily.

Nothing says “welcome to the team” quite like a $74 bill for the coworker who made you cry.