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