Throughout your career, work may spill out of the regular hours and seep into your personal time. There’s the emergency 10 PM email that needs a response ASAP, the stressed-out client who thinks you’re being lazy if you’re not working on their project during the weekend, the list goes on.
A few days ago, Reddit user BrushProfessional350 submitted a post to the popular ‘Antiwork’ community, drawing attention to another way people sometimes have to “be there for the team.” Company dinners. Yes, it has food, yes it has drinks, but you know you’re expected to show up even if you don’t feel like it.
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However, in the example presented by BrushProfessional350, the situation was even worse. The workers had to pay for themselves!
Turns out, this appalling practice is quite common. As the post was going viral, other Reddit users flooded the comment section, sharing similar stories of their own.
#1
About 7 years ago we passed our audit so we were told to all meet at this fancy steakhouse to celebrate it. We were all pumped for some good eats on the company dime.
When we all got there and got seated the 5 of us staff were told by a higher up manager we couldn’t order any apps, no steaks, too pricey. (This was a Fortune 500 company btw) so we were all bummed. Ordering drinks…no alcohol, only allowed to get soda or water cause the lemonade wasn’t free refills. Okay whatever.
So we order our chicken dishes, fish dishes. salads, whatever that wasn’t steak. It was still good.
While eating our meals the VP head of our division shows up. She sits down and orders 2 appetizers, a filet with 2 lobster tails, 3 sides, and a bottle wine for herself.
A few of us politely excused ourselves after eating and just walked out. I left the company a month later.
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#2
I had a manager do something like that to me. He said that we (four of us in the “team”) had to go out to lunch together to welcome the new person. Manager decided where we were going, and since this was mandatory, I assumed the company or the manager was paying for the lunch. When the bill came, he started to split it up – – but then he said the new person shouldn’t pay because he was new, and that since I was the only one of the four that did not have kids to support, I should pick up the tab. No one objected, or seemed to think it was unfair. After sitting there with a totally stunned blank look on my face, and everyone looking at me and putting their wallets away, I ended up paying for it. I was so shocked I couldn’t react otherwise, and I kick myself to this day.
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#3
My husband was invited to go to a team happy hour during work hours. He didn’t want to go because he didn’t like his team, but he would have been the only one not going and his boss would start to notice. He went knowing this wasn’t a free meal, so he only ordered a burger, and had water. Everyone else ordered several alcoholic drinks and appetizers. When the bill came, he expected roughly $20 for his part. Nope- the manager “suggested” splitting the bill. My husband ended up paying $60 for his burger and cup of water.
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#4
That’s sort of like the downhill progression that holiday parties took at my former employer:
• 1st Year, big catered dinner at a fancy restaurant for employees, family and in some cases even friends, bonus checks handed out
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• 2nd year, catered dinner at a restaurant for employees and family, no bonus checks but they did have gift cards for everyone
• 3rd year, catered dinner at a restaurant for employees and family, gift card raffle
• 4th year, catered dinner at a restaurant, no gifts or anything
• 5th year, catered dinner in the break room at work, a single +1, 3 junky prizes were raffled off
• 6th year, catered lunch in the break room at work, no guests, a few more junky prizes raffled off (always seemed to go to the same people too, hmm)
• 7th year, catered breakfast in the break room, no guests, no raffles, and you had to clock out for it
• 8th year, “pot luck” lunch in the break room, everyone was expected to bring something on their own dime, you had to clock out for it, and HR set up a table where you could set up a recurring donation to United Way straight from your paycheck
So glad I don’t work there anymore. Also fun to mention that my 1st year, it was a $40M/yr company and it was a $700M/yr company when I quit. You’d think they’d have money to take care of employees…
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#5
I had a s**tty boss that did this to us once. She scheduled a team dinner at a fancy restaurant downtown. The bill came, and she said she was covering the first $200 of like a $500+ check, the rest was on us. After much other f**kery, we eventually went to HR and got her removed from management back to an “individual contributor” role, somewhere else in the company.
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#6
I had something like this happen when I was working for my tribal college in the Capitol around 2008. The project we were working on wrapped up and the museum’s project director invited everyone (over 15 of us) to a private room in a fancy-ass tapas restaurant in Washington DC for dinner. In the email invite he bragged about how his connections can get him in anywhere on short notice.
It was an expensive multi-course dinner of tiny food (it was just small expensive food not good or impressive in anyway) and all the while pitchers of margaritas were flowing like water. When the bill came he stopped everyone from leaving the private room, announced what their share was, and since he was generous that he’d pay the tip. Each share was $195, I know the usual gratuity was included because of how big the party was, cheap f**k.
I was pissed and told him how f**ked up and tacky it was to invite people to an expensive place like that and not pay, because over half of the project’s workers were already struggling interns; some of them unpaid. My interns were paid and had per diem, but its was a lot less than I got. The asshole could have picked a cheaper place like buffalo wild wings or any sports bar to celebrate if we were to pay for ourselves.
The meal itself was $80, and I had 1 $10 bottle of mexican-bottled Coca-cola. I had been sober for a couple years at that point and didn’t partake in all the margaritas. I handed him $300 of my own money and told him it was enough for me and the 2 interns that I worked with; as they were also sober non-drinkers. He tried to say it wasn’t enough and called me cheap. I just told my interns to wait for me outside. I told him take it or leave it, the reservation and bill came in your name. I then walked out and never worked that guy again.
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#7
Had a boss that pulled something similar; this was a pretty nice spot (maybe $30-$50 a plate) and she tried to pull this s**t, even though it was a “mandatory team building dinner”.
Pretty much everybody left before the check came. Her (and the store’s) name was on the tab so she was stuck with it and was furious.
TBH I think maybe one of us ordered a beer, the rest of us had standard soft drinks, and we all just ordered off of the regular menu— nothing cute.
Sorry don’t make it a work thing if work ain’t gonna foot the bill. You are not my friend and I’m not beholden to spend my off time with you to help “build a team”.
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#8
This happened at the first law firm I worked at (at the height of the property bubble so the owner was minted). I should add they paid a pittance.
They took us out for Christmas dinner, seriously hit the wine and asked for the bill to be split 48 ways at the end of the night. Seemed surprised when most people walked out without paying.
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#9
Oh yeah, I’ve been there. Was at a national sales meeting and got invited by a department VP (outside my own) to an escape room and dinner and drinks afterwards with his team. End of the night, “OK, everyone, VENMO me your share for the night!! I was like…..W…….T…….F??!!? Totes should have stayed at hotel for free dinner and drinks.
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#10
I also had a similar experience. The whole team was invited to a pizza party after hours, then once we said yes, we were asked to put in for the expected cost.
Thankfully covid restrictions came in and it was cancelled.
Having to hang out with my co-workers, after hours, and pay for it myself, f**k off.
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#11
Same happened to me at a job. I’m a new employee, boss says we’re going out to celebrate coworkers birthday. Get to the restaurant, and order food, and they paid for the birthday person’s meal, but no one else’s. If I had known, I would have declined. Nice that the birthday person’s meal got paid for, but don’t say “we’re celebrating”, invite everyone out, then not pay for them.
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#12
Had a group meal with some execs (of Atari, this was a while back). We all knew we had to pay for our own food, that’s the way the Tramiel organization was.
VP sitting next to me orders a huge meal with drinks. Towards the end of the meal, he plops down five dollars, says, “I’ve got to go,” and bails.
We paid for his meal. And that VP (of sales, I think) got absolutely no help from engineering ever again, f**k him.
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#13
I had a boss that would “take us out to celebrate some company accomplishment”, tell us we would all have to pay for our lunches, collect the money from each of us, then go pay the bill with the company credit card. Did it for years.
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#14
My partner works for a Fortune 500 (136 to be specific) company and they give every employee $10 Walmart gift cards for Christmas. The company is worth $21 BILLION and gave out freaking $10 gift cards.
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#15
Don’t feel bad, I’m in trouble at work because I didn’t go to a unpaid meeting in a day off that would have spent 30$ for getting an Uber because I was working at another job.
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#16
My husband’s company posted a billion in net profit this year. He PAID for 2 mouses for his employees. Yeah, $24 for wireless mouses because they wanted them to use ones that don’t work. He also bought the fridge for their break room. This is at their corporate headquarters in the ONLY department that worked on site through the pandemic. They have a Children’s Hospital Wing named after that company, but their employees can’t keep their food cold working 12p to 7a while they eat WHILE WORKING.
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#17
My manager did this twice. Throughout the company there was a culture of managers taking out their teams for lunch, once every quarter. However my team’s manager left the company and our director had to fill in that spot for about 9 months before they could find someone suitable. Our team had about 40 people, technically two teams run by leads and a manager overseeing those leads. This new manager lied about promoting me twice as well, before he left the company. Throughout his 3 years within the company, this guy took us out to lunch twice. He didn’t do it for a long time and one of the leads let him know “hey you know it’s good for team morale to go out for lunch and celebrate milestones” so this guy took us out to cpk, and again about 6 months later to cheesecake factory. Both times he left early from lunch and paid only for his meal and expected the team to pay for their expensive-ish meals. I mean I ordered the steak thinking it’s a company paid event. I’ve had other managers invite us out to lunch and drinks after work for helping out their team and cover the bill. Some complained about this around, so the man decides it’s better to have pot lucks instead of having everyone go out to team lunches. I’m glad he’s gone.
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#18
It reminds me of a story I was told by a friend. He and a group of co-workers were away together and eating out every night. Each night a different person would pay (they had company cards). After one particularly expensive meal, they noticed that their boss hadn’t paid once so they challenged him!
He explained that he had to approve their expenses, but that his boss had to approve his expenses.
The penny dropped at that point.
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#19
I used to work for a boomer who’d pull similar s**t. He’d saunter out of his office, announce that he was generously buying lunch for the team, tell one of us to go pick it up, pay for it, and he’d approve the expense. There were 8 of us so whoever ended up going was out of pocket $300 until whenever he decided to do approvals.
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#20
Had one where they tied it to some charity so we were ok with paying. But the next one they said “hey everybody’s invited to come to this chain restaurant down the road”. Didn’t tell us we were buying our own food and drink until we got handed the menus. Half of us, including me, couldn’t afford to be eating out on the wages they were paying us.
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#21
First day at a new job, I was given a welcome dinner. Good thing I had my wallet on me, because I got stuck with the bill.
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#22
I worked part time at a place that sold things I love to collect in their warehouse dept. small business, about 12 employees. During the shutdown, the shipping manager and all of us asked for hazard pay. They denied it, so since the shipping manager had all the company’s credit card info, he made it a point to make sure we’d get lunch paid for by the company. This was ok’d for two weeks, and the owners even joined us a couple of times. One of them made a big deal about how generous they were for buying lunch.
When the two weeks of free lunch were over, we had a staff meeting, and I asked about overtime pay, hazard pay, and PPE, because we were working through a f**king pandemic. They claimed there wasn’t enough money for it. Well, the shipping supervisor was having none of it. He continued to buy us lunch for months, up until the day the company closed down because they had (shocking, I know) been ripping off investors. I later found out they even had applied for and gotten PPE loans from the government but used them to invest in themselves and a side company rather than ensuring that their “essential workers” were ok during a f**king pandemic. When the company shut down, I helped myself to some of those things that I like as severance pay.
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#23
My boss did this too, but for a company lunch. He invited everyone to lunch, which in my experience, suggests he is paying! Then at the end of lunch he asked everyone to pay their share. Wtf
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#24
Reminds me of my last boss.
He was a new ‘manager’. I didn’t like the guy before he got the role but I didn’t let it affect how i did my job.
One day he sends out a message via email that he is inviting the whole team to lunch at a local favorite.
I had a lot of work to do and the local favorite was actually one of my least favorite, so I didn’t bother to respond to the email. A few minutes later an MS teams message basically the same. Still ignored. Then a direct text from him. FML.
Decided if he was trying this hard to buy me lunch I’d go even though the place he wanted was a full 30 minutes from the job i was working on. I get there and the boss is already seated and eating. This was a pizza buffet place that you pay first then get whatever you want. He clearly had no intention of buying. What an asshat.
I’m ashamed to say I bought my food and ate there with the team thinking surely there must be a topic to discuss. Nope. This moron just didn’t want to eat alone and bullied everyone into coming to lunch with him.
I don’t work there anymore.
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#25
Interesting story in this at my company. There was a dinner that got out of hand. It was like 20 people in Norway (very expensive to eat out) but the bill came to $10K the VP had just got back from some big trip and his credit card was maxed out.
One of the new college grads put it on her American Express. It was a whole big thing and she ended up having to go to the CEO of a fortune 500 company and explain. It was really the VP that should have been doing that.
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#26
My former boss had drinks and appies to celebrate two people getting their property manager licenses. One of them was his daughter. The other one couldn’t get there until later. So by the time the second property manager arrived to celebrate, all the food had been eaten, so she had to order her own. And pay for her own dinner and drinks.
That was my ex boss’s way of celebrating and encouraging his employees.
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#27
Years ago, when I decided I’d had enough of ‘working for the man’ I left the company and the industry entirely. To be frank, I didn’t work for the monsters I hear about here so often but I also knew they could do a lot better taking care of employees than they did – and that it was going to get way worse.
The owners had done the unthinkable thing and sold the company and in my first conversation with my boss after the internal announcement I made him aware we needed to plan for my replacement. He was a fantastic guy, had literally brought me in as HIS succession plan. I was already doing about 80% of his job. I had no worries about getting shoved out the door. I gave 6 months notice; worked with them to get my replacement up to speed and had three goodbye parties thrown for me.
I saw the bill at the 3rd which was the most intimate event. There were only a fozen or so of us. My regional manager picked up a $15k tab that evening. It was the company dime.
When I think back on that and compare what my company spent just to see me off (when I didn’t even want to work there any more) and I compare that to the fact your company won’t even spend on you to celebrate a good year, all I can think of is how s**tty your company is.
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#28
Yeah I was peeved when my work forced us to participate in “secret santa” in which we had to spend minimum £15 (2 hours of work for me) on a gift for one of our co-workers. I don’t even like them and you’re forcing me to spend 2 hours of my life of a s**tty little gift otherwise I’ll be fired for not being “part of the family” (Obviously the bosses didn’t do nothing for us, no Christmas bonus no free food… we got 1 free drink and that was it) just nasty. Either give me a Christmas bonus or don’t but why would you force me to LOSE money for Christmas!!!
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#29
I had the same experience as OP once. Actually had a guy on the team do what you said and skipped out on paying his part of the bill. The rest of us were like “we’re not covering for him.” I think the manager had to pay his share because we all left.
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#30
This reminds me of the time I worked physical labor for 12-16 hours a day and the boss would take us out to eat. He paid, but when I was absolutely famished and ordered a TON of food to get my caloric intake my body needed, he would b**ch.
I finally told him if he’s going to b**ch then stop paying for my meals. I need this food and if it bothers you then I’ll just buy it myself.
I seriously needed a LOT of food, like near athlete olympic level food. It was really hard work in the heat. He continued to pay for my meals, begrudgingly. I wasn’t being disrespectful, I needed that food to perform my job adequately. And I was more than willing to front the bill myself rather than hear him complain. Why pay for my meal if you’re going to limit what I can eat? These bosses are seriously stupid.
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