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John's office night out was pretty awful to start with but improved as it went on.
We always pick up Xana, the secretary, and her husband P. They're both really nice and luckily we ended up sitting by them for the meal but before we went I said to John that it'd be just my luck to be sitting next to Ken. Ken is in his late 50s, has got an Alan Partridge hairstyle, is overweight, talks incessantly thinking he's funny and is a typical dirty old man. When we arrived there was only one table left out of the three the company had been assigned and Ken was the only one sat at it. It was a round table with 12 settings and P sat two settings away from him, then Xana, John and myself. He said he'd move so that it looked cosier and could've shuffled along two spaces and sat next to P...but he decided to come around the other side of the table and sit next to me. That was when I discovered that he was a dirty old man with bad breath. Oh, and he'd been drinking all day. There was a table of women next to us and he was talking to me about trying to decide which one to go for. In the end he decided on the one in the skin tight black dress because it looked like it'd be difficult to get off and he likes a challenge....

After the meal there were two DJs overseeing some party games on the stage, if the light shone on your table you had to go up to take part, thankfully it never shone on us. P disappeared and Xana had been called over to speak to someone at one of the other tables. John went to the toilet and came rushing back with a big smile on his face, he told me to get my bag and follow him. He'd come across a bar area and P had escaped to there...so that was where we spent the rest of the night. Xana found us after a while and a few others joined us later on - although Ken was one of them and he leched at every woman who walked past. It surprised me actually because P is very loud and upbeat and is always laughing and joking, really good fun to be around, but he said he hates anything like the party games and being bullied into having a good time so he escaped the first chance he got and Xana said the same when she joined us (even though she was the one who'd organised the night out lol).

Why why why do I always have some oddball sat next to me?? A few years ago it was one of John's colleagues (now retired) who had a terrible cough and kept touching my tableware...for instance, turning my coffee cup so that the handle faced a different way but touching it around the rim of the cup

Oh, and I'm never ever ever ever ever wearing heels again!!!

Oh dear .... <<<Jo>>>

Still, it's over with for another year ......

Two years! We'd already decided before last night that we're not going next year

We were in your next of the woods again, Aston Wood golf club.

Oh yes, been there, done that one ...... at least 10 years ago, though.

I remember that the night we went there, they did pick on various people from a couple of tables or so, and drag them onto the stage for heaven knows what I can't recall now - but my understanding was that it had all been pre-arranged with the so-called "victims", so they knew what was coming, and had indeed volunteered for it.

I would always, but always make my excuses for a works do

Glad it wasn't quite as bad as you'd feared

Oh god - my idea of hell!!!!

I don't go to my works do anymore. In fact none of us from our office do (there's only 4 of us). Its always held somewhere in Leicester, which is where our head office is, so its a real trek for us and either someone has to drive or we have to spend a fortune to stay over (head office put on coaches for the staff but obviously we don't have one from our neck of the woods).

You end up sitting with people you don't really know - we rarely visit head office so therefore don't know people all that well - and they do the stupid party game thing. We used to end up sitting in a bar area, the four of us, moaning about how we hated it!!

So now we just do lunch on the run up to xmas. Just the four of us, occasionally with a couple of members of staff from head office that visit us on a regular basis.

It means we miss out on the free Christmas meal but at least we don't have to go through the horror of it all.

a nightmare jo
just think up a good excuse for next year
i used to love out works xmas meal
there were only 5 of us we used to go to a carvery
it was lovely

I hate big office do's too. For some reason our surgery like to to go to a big hotel dinner dance, where you get other places joining you, horrible. Plus its always on a Saturday and Saturday is family night not work night.

Well done for enduring it Jo

It sounds a nightmare Jo, especially pervy Ken

Glad it's over with, and that you're going next year

Yuck! I hate those do's too and have avoided D's works parties for a few years now. They were never really bad, just boring because they are all engineers