Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report, she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.
Let’s face it, most office routines aren’t exactly thrilling. You answer emails, survive meetings that could have been a Slack message, and silently curse your co-worker for not saving the spreadsheet you need on the shared drive. But some offices have embraced the weird and wonderful, establishing traditions that range from hilarious to outright bizarre.
Here are 15 of the greatest work traditions I’ve heard about from readers. (And it’s probably significant that all of these traditions appear to have developed organically. None of these stem from organized team-building or “mandatory fun.”)
PB&J Parties
“We once had a co-worker who was a young, single guy right out of college and living on his own for the first time. He always forgot to buy groceries, so he would bring really random things for lunch every day (one day he brought a jar of spaghetti sauce). One of my co-workers brought him a loaf of bread and jars of peanut butter and jelly for Christmas so that he could make himself sandwiches.
Thus, the PB&J party was born. That was almost 10 years ago, but now right before Christmas, we all get together, reserve a room, and everyone brings something. We have had fancy peanut butters, homemade jams and breads, and various other spreads and different food—and we all sit around and eat PB&J.”
Formal Fridays
“I worked in a very casual workplace (shorts, jeans, basically anything goes as long as it’s not too revealing), and we would occasionally have a ‘Formal Friday’ (like casual Friday, but the opposite). Some people would just dress snazzy, some would wear something you’d wear to a cocktail party, and some people used the opportunity to bust out their ’80s/’90s apparel with shoulder pads and chunky gold jewelry. Good fun. (And, of course, totally optional.)”
Attack of the Clones
“For close to 15 years now, dressing up as one of your co-workers has been a Halloween tradition where I work. It actually started when someone came dressed as me the first year. A year later, I waited until I saw what a co-worker was wearing that day, got a co-conspirator to bring a matching outfit, and sat down next to them. People have worn the CEO’s face printed out as a mask. Nobody’s ever gotten offended by it—it’s just a strange tradition now. I think it has more to do with the culture and the intent than anything else. Our clones are in a spirit of fun and respect.”
The Goat Shrine
“We had a goat shrine. It was just this little alcove with a few pictures of goats and in the center was a little toy goat statue that would scream when you pushed down on it. Whenever someone accomplished something or completed a difficult task they would hit the goat and we would all cheer for them. New hires would hit the goat when they got out of training and got their first real work assignments.”
Wacky Fruit Wednesdays
“At the start of this year, I realized that I dreaded Wednesdays specifically (I’m in the office Monday/Wednesday/Thursday), so I started bringing in fruit I had never tried before from the grocery store to share with my team. This morphed into Wacky Fruit Wednesdays, where my team and people seated near us talk about anything other than work for 30 minutes and try new food.
We’ve tried over 100 fruits at this point, and people have brought in different things like hot sauce and pickles. We pivoted to a paper airplane contest for Ramadan, and it was a blast. This week we tried the Miracle Berries that convert sour into sweet and ate plain limes. It’s become the highlight of our work week.”
Adult Bibs
“I have just joined a team where people have huge adult terrycloth bibs to wear at lunchtime. (The kind that can be bought in bulk for nursing homes.) Mine was bestowed on me this week and I am surprisingly happy about it.”
The Rubber Ducks
“When I was an executive assistant, I used to discreetly put one of two little rubber ducks on top of my monitor to indicate the CEO’s mood that day. The librarian duck (reading a book) meant ‘Shhh … maybe not today’ and the jazzercize duck (wearing an ’80s track jacket) meant ‘We’re up and running and getting things done! Feel free to approach.’ The other members of the C-suite loved it.”
The Talking Shrimp
“My office has a ‘talking shrimp’ that we use instead of a ‘talking stick’ in brainstorming meetings where we otherwise run the risk of all talking over each other. It’s a foam replica of a cooked jumbo shrimp—headless and legless, but we’ve added googly eyes. The tradition has evolved to the point that now in virtual meetings people will sometimes put a shrimp emoji in the chat when they want to talk and the meeting leader will recognize them by saying, ‘You have the shrimp.’ ”
Elaborate Pranks
“Our engineering team started playing pranks on people who were out for any length of time. When one of the managers took a few weeks off to refinish his basement, they built him a basement in his office (basically a loft) but the fire marshal made them take it down. They set up a beauty salon for another manager when he was out for surgery. When the director of QA was overseas getting a new acquisition integrated, they built him a deck outside his office which had an internal window looking out at the rest of the QA department. There was a mural on the wall, plants, and a water feature.”
Vegetable-Themed Showers
“All of our baby showers are veggie-themed. It started several years ago when the pregnant person and the office clown were talking about gift baskets. The office clown said, ‘Wouldn’t an onion basket make a nice gift!’ It went from there. I started a week before the shower, which did in fact feature a basket full of every kind of onion known to man. Showers since then have included sprouts, potatoes, and turnips. The most recent one was asparagus.”
Handmade Blankets
“On the first day at one of my first jobs out of college, I was given a $30 gift certificate to a local yarn store and told to go find yarn that ‘felt right’ to me, buy $30 worth of it, and bring it in the next Monday. There were a couple of suggested weights and the firm instruction that I not purchase acrylic, and while it was extremely weird to me, I did as I was directed and showed up for work with a couple of skeins.
Turns out we had a woman who’d worked there longer than God and who crocheted in all her meetings to help her focus. She’d make granny squares out of every new hire’s yarn and they’d be added to the office afghan blanket. By the time I started, she’d been at it for years and there were multiple blankets floating around the office. Anyone could check out a blanket, but only for a day at a time because they were extremely in demand. The director had started the whole thing years and years ago when he’d noticed her crocheting, was fascinated, and asked if she’d mind taking on a special project. She said OK, but she wasn’t providing the yarn. He said that’s fine, and had it written into the budget.
She retired when I’d been there for five years, but by that point she’d trained a successor and the tradition was still alive when I left a couple of years after her.”
Made-Up Holidays
“In my department, we celebrate a wide variety of made-up holidays. For example, a policy such as Policy 9.13 Nepotism would be celebrated on Sept. 13 with your relatives’ favorite treats. There are also a variety of other holidays, such as Toast Day and Fa-La-La-Latte Day.”
Wall of Same
“We have a ‘Wall of Same.’ If two or more co-workers happen to come into the office dressed very similarly, they’ll ask someone to take a picture and add it to the board. It’s fun to notice with someone, ‘Hey, we’re wearing almost the same thing! Let’s take a picture.’ One day, a few years ago, there were about six of us who happened to wear something burgundy on the same day—a sweater, blazer, pants, or skirt. I’ve moved on from that office but I still have that picture!”
International Snack Battle
“We have a periodic international snack battle, where people bring food in a given theme from a place they have lived or a culture they like (including here). Themes have included milk, dessert, (nonalcoholic) drinks, pineapple, lemon … Everyone gets the chance to try new things and learn about new recipes, local bakeries, and unique products, as entries need not be homemade. Each person present can vote for the top three on presentation and on taste. Spreadsheet tabulation ensues. The winner chooses the next theme. (People usually include allergen info on a label without being prompted, and they sometimes bring something that stretches or doesn’t fit the theme, if that’s what they’re feeling.)”
Intern Nathan
“We have a companywide White Elephant gift exchange every Christmas. It’s absolute madness, and a lot of fun. One year, an intern submitted several beautifully framed photos of himself. The recipient proudly displayed them at his desk until the following White Elephant, when he wrapped them up and put them back in the gift pile. And the same thing happened the year after that, and the year after that … It’s now been more than 15 years, and the photos of Intern Nathan have showed up in the White Elephant every year since.”
