Potluck At Work

[Cypress]

I have an unusual observation that I cannot understand. I have worked at two different organizations at which somebody in the office proposed a pot luck luncheon. At both places, the first pot luck was fine and people brought whatever they could with what seemed like a free spirit of community. Immediately after this, someone starts to organize the idea and make it monthly pot luck. From here, it typically disintegrates into a circulated list with your name on it whether or not you agreed to attend or not. Then, the organizer starts to pick apart who is bringing what and starts to control things even more.

These things continue to degenerate to the point people are in a conflict mode and fighting internally. Why? After the very first pot luck at the first organization, I bowed out and declined to participate. For me, it’s a money issue, I live on a modest income and cannot feed as many as 5 – 10 people routinely. I understand the group has complained about this as well. I bring my lunch most every day and explained once, I lived on a modest budget and was saving for various needs in the household. Also, observing the conflicts, I stayed away as not to be in the middle or involved at all. I tend to keep my distance on workplace relationships and try to keep it business, more formal than informal. I’ve learned that for me, boundaries are important and I want to work, go home and keep both separated.

It seems to become a control issue and feelings get involved. What is the social problem here? Not for me, but the pot luck becoming so conflicted?

[iris lilies]

I have an unusual observation that I cannot understand. I have worked at two different organizations at which somebody in the office proposed a pot luck luncheon. At both places, the first pot luck was fine and people brought whatever they could with what seemed like a free spirit of community. Immediately after this, someone starts to organize the idea and make it monthly pot luck. From here, it typically disintegrates into a circulated list with your name on it whether or not you agreed to attend or not. Then, the organizer starts to pick apart who is bringing what and starts to control things even more.

These things continue to degenerate to the point people are in a conflict mode and fighting internally. Why? After the very first pot luck at the first organization, I bowed out and declined to participate. For me, it’s a money issue, I live on a modest income and cannot feed as many as 5 – 10 people routinely. I understand the group has complained about this as well. I bring my lunch most every day and explained once, I lived on a modest budget and was saving for various needs in the household. Also, observing the conflicts, I stayed away as not to be in the middle or involved at all. I tend to keep my distance on workplace relationships and try to keep it business, more formal than informal. I’ve learned that for me, boundaries are important and I want to work, go home and keep both separated.

It seems to become a control issue and feelings get involved. What is the social problem here? Not for me, but the pot luck becoming so conflicted?

I've seen this happen with The Birthday celebration. It starts casual with someone saying to the group "hey, it's my birthday today, I brought in cake for ya'll!" Next someone brings in cake for the birthday of someone else. Then a couple of people confer to recognize the next birthday with cake. Then someone says "everyone should be honored, it's not fair* that only some people should get cake for their birthday and a planning group forms. The planning group makes assignments: now it is cake, punch, and a card for each person's birthday. That runs for a while until someone says: It's Ted's 50th birthday, this should be BIG celebration and so a potluck lunch is planned and assignments are made for who brings what and there is lots of food in addition to the cake, the punch, the card. And flowers. Yes, at my last place of work "flowers" became a necessary part of the deal. And because the celebration has grown to be overly complex, there are snide remarks about who is not pulling their weight in providing this lovely event and yadda yadda.

But clearheaded managers should refocus the group on their work tasks (what a concept!) and say no, we will not do this potluck/birthday stuff unless *I* decide it's a good thing and then *I* will lay out the parameters for The Party.

When my department was in that birthday mode I allowed one birthday celebration a month for all of the birthdays in that month. About 25% of the group gave a chit about the birthdays, most did not. It petered out. yay! Same thing with Secret Santa, 25% get all twitterpattered about Secret Santa at work, most do not give a chit. Boundaries between work and non-work are great, I love them!


It seems to become a control issue and feelings get involved. What is the social problem here? Not for me, but the pot luck becoming so conflicted?

Perhaps the social problem is that you have too many women in your workplace. Get some testosterone in there to change the focus. Rooms of male engineers do not have this problem. But I will also admit that, after decades of having dogs, I see that the females are ALWAYS the ones controlling the social environment so perhaps it's not that simple. Where is your boss in all of this? That social pile-on crap is hard to control.

*my favorite phrase from employees. not.

[Simpler at Fifty]

I started working at home fulltime in Sept. This is the one thing I do not miss. I feel for all of you.

[herbgeek]

I concur with Iris that this doesn't happen among groups of (mostly male) engineers. We'll attend a party if we're told we have to, but its not usually in our nature to suggest one. I'm fortunate enough to be working at a company that encourages working from home and most folks do several days a week, so this is not a drama I have to deal with at the moment. I'm usually not a participator either, but I'll do the token show-and-go if I think the politics of the place demand it.

I will also concur this sort of thing you describe happens in female predominant groups. Its not just enough to go out for lunch with your friends, they want everyone else to play along too. I can't say I understand it at all.

[sweetana3]

In groups, I was one of the participants if the food was determined to be usually good and was happily able to stay away if the food was usually bad. We generally had a good group that had specialties which everyone loved and they got a lot of positive feedback. Boss had one potluck once a month for celebrating birthdays and anything else. She used that time to pass out thank yous, read good letters, etc. and only in a positive vein. We had 3 groups and they rotated main dish, veggies/fruits and desserts so we had an equal division. Some of the men gave money for supplies or such.

We did have one head secretary who coordinated but it worked well and if someone did not want to participate, nothing was noted or said. Helped that it was spread among 30 people or so.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I concur with Iris that this doesn't happen among groups of (mostly male) engineers.

Well it doesn't get so crazy that's it's every month but it does happen. And I know EXACTLY how it's done. The men have THEIR WIVES cook for them to bring to the potluck (pretty much always, it's almost always the wives that do the cooking and they don't seem to mind volunteering them at all. funny that). Although some just pick up take out for the group (this is actually quite sensible). Meanwhile I don't have a wife - so I"m supposed to cook for the whole group myself? oh right I'm a woman, guess I am .... It's always more of a TIME issue than a money issue. Some men have expressed surprise at this, but I do cook for myself AND hold down a job (some people just get takeout all the time). Yea, but that's different than cooking for a group which is much more work than that. When people get sick of potlucks (maybe even the wives are rebelling) it tends to degenerate into everyone just bringing takeout (so lets see ... fried chicken, chinese food ... why didn't we just go out to lunch or see if we could get pizza on the company charge card again? :)).

The birthday things, when I've worked at places where they were done, HR was in charge (not the bosses - laughable to think they would be - it was an HR thing).

The thing is in my ideal world I'd be happily regularly contributing to potlucks all the time and stuff (it makes me happy), but in this world with work schedules as they are: NO ...... barely time to keep my head above water and cook my own dinner :\