Generally speaking, I always try to have the Christmas party on a Friday. Otherwise you end up with people coming to work with stinking hangovers, which basically means I’m paying them to do nothing. It also means that you can start a bit early – nobody expects anything to get done between the hours of 4-6pm anyway (at least not in our industry), so you’re less likely to offend any of your clients.

To be honest I always slightly dread these things. With my business hat on, it’s great: a chance to celebrate and reward the efforts of my hard-working staff; a chance to get to know some people outside the office environment; a chance to build up team spirit and a bit of company mythology.

But from a personal point of view, it’s not exactly the highlight of my social calendar. I can’t really relax and enjoy myself, because I’m basically on duty all night. Since I’m not the biggest drinker in the world, I’m always a bit wary of having one glass of wine too many and saying something highly inappropriate, so I usually end up nursing an orange juice for most of the evening, just to be on the safe side. Not that I generally have much time to drink – since I’m the quasi-host, I generally spend half the night running around organising stuff and making sure everyone’s OK.

Plus there’s always one person who decides to make it their mission to suck up to the boss all night, on the ludicrous basis that this will enhance their promotion prospects. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for networking – but why is it always the person you least want to talk to that ends up chewing your ear for three hours?

Anyway it was the usual melodrama this time round. The girl who’s leaving (the one who jumped before she was pushed, as you may recall) got absolutely legless and threw herself at virtually every man in the room, eventually settling on our IT guy (who didn’t give the impression this was a regular occurrence, quite frankly). The girl in Marketing disappeared half way through the evening in a flood of tears, having apparently had a big fight with Mammon, my head sales guy, who spent the rest of the night telling me all about it. And one of the blokes ended up spending the night on a railway platform in Woking after falling asleep on the way home.

Personally I called it a night just before 11. It’s a hard balance with these things – you want to hang around until late to show willing, but at the same time you don’t want to cramp people’s style all night (not that there was much cramping going on, by the looks of it). As I was sitting in my cab home, I was just thanking my lucky stars that Christmas comes just once a year…

So that’s it from me for 2008 – I’m off for a rest, and I’ll be back in 2009. Have a great Christmas, and thanks to all of you who have blessed me with your words of wisdom. You’ve made this year a lot easier than it might have been...

secretdiary@managementtoday.com

A remarkable thing happened to me this week. I'd just about decided that I had to take the plunge and sack my worst-performing straggler, when she called me into a meeting room and told me she was resigning.

Apparently she’s going to get out of the industry altogether and become a teacher – she’s just been accepted onto a training course in September, so she’s decided to spend six months in Africa doing some charity work and travelling before she starts. ‘To be honest,’ she told me. ‘It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. But it was only recently that I managed to pluck up the courage.’ I suppose the prospect of a P45 does tend to sharpen the focus somewhat.

The news left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, of course, it’s worked out perfectly. Given holiday etc she’ll be gone by January, just as I planned – but I don’t have to look like a bitch by sacking her a few weeks before Christmas. Instead, everyone gets to walk away on the best of terms.

On the other hand, it makes me feel like I should have done the deed ages ago. If this really has been preying on her mind for months, it means two equally annoying things: one, I mistook her distraction for incompetence; and two, I'd didn't get her as well as I thought I did. I suppose it's possible that she saw which way the wind was blowing and made a snap decision (it wouldn't exactly take teacher-eque empathy - it doesn't exactly take Columbo to work out when I'm on the warpath about something), but it didn't really sound like that. Plus of course it means that I expended all that time and energy on her for nothing...

Still, there are worst things for a leaver to go and do, I suppose. When someone ditches us for a competitor, I can’t help feeling resentful about them choosing someone else’s business over mine – it feels like being dumped (even if they end up going to somewhere massive like Coke, which is the equivalent of being dumped for, say, Scarlet Johannsen). By contrast, when people leave us to go and do something worthy and noble, I feel like we’re making a contribution to the public good. Perhaps it just assuages my guilt for my devoted suckling of the capitalist teat.

And I wouldn’t be surprised to see this happening quite a lot in the next couple of years. With the private sector in the toilet, the idea of taking a nice safe public sector job will look more and more appealing. After all, however bad things get, we’re still going to need teachers and nurses and policemen (and Treasury mandarins).

But the major downside is that I still have to pay for her to come to the Christmas party (which is now going to double as her leaving do). It’s bad enough paying for people you actually employ, let alone those who’ll be out of the door even before their hangover kicks in...

secretdiary@managementtoday.com

The first question was whether we should have one at all. I know lots of companies have decided against it this year – partly because cash is tight, but largely because they don’t want to be seen to be fiddling while Rome burns. Someone told me the other day that private equity firms are so desperate not to be seen enjoying themselves that they’re coughing up 80% of the cost of their parties – but not actually having them. As far as the City’s concerned, Christmas seems to be cancelled this year.

And to be honest, this idea was quite appealing. If you’ll permit me to go all ‘bah humbug’ for a moment, I’ve always resented shelling out for Christmas parties. Not because I’m too much of a skinflint or because I’m lacking in love for my fellow (wo)man (well, perhaps partly that) – but because there are few things that annoy me more than being ripped off. And Christmas parties are a total racket: every year pubs and restaurants get away with charging a ludicrous amount of money to serve up a limp piece of turkey, two cold roast potatoes and a frozen mince pie (I thought this year we’d at least have a chance of snagging a bargain, but as far as I can see the Christmas menus are just as a big a rip-off as they always are).

But eventually I decided against it. For one thing, cancelling Christmas might save me a few quid, but it would go down like a lead balloon with my team – it’s one of the few things they’ve had to look forward to recently. And I reckon that as far as the outside world is concerned, not having a party could look even worse than having one – everyone would think we were on our last legs. But it’s more than that: great social events are part of the mythology that grows up around a small company – I quite like it when embarrassing stuff happens (as long as it doesn’t involve me) because it creates a kind of shared history and (I think) increases people’s buy-in. So the party’s going ahead, even if it will cause my physical pain to sign the cheque.

However, that gave rise to a second question: who should be there. As I mentioned the other week, I have two people that I’m dubious about – and I’m increasingly thinking that one of them definitely has to go. The thing is that I’ve had a word, my HR manager has had a word, and I’ve still not seen any noticeable improvement. I’d expect that someone who’d had a rocket would at least buck their ideas up for a while - the question tends to be whether this is a temporary or a permanent change. But with this girl, she just seems to be ticking along as she was before. Not good enough. The longer it goes on, the more I’m convinced we can manage without her.

And if I’m going to make her redundant, there’s a very good argument for doing it right now. It seems incredibly harsh to do this to someone just before Christmas, I admit – but otherwise I just end up paying her all through December, when there are zillions of bank holidays and everybody’s too distracted to do any work even when they’re in the office. Plus it will shave another £40 off my exorbitant Christmas party bill...