WORKPLACE POTLUCKS: EVIL OR JUST PLAIN WRONG?

A few years ago I wrote an extensive post on why workplace potlucks had the potential to destroy us all. As you all no doubt know, potlucks are a uniquely American “tradition” wherein workers are pressured to bring in a “dish to pass” during some celebratory function such as a holiday or a meeting that runs longer than a few minutes.

I came to see the true evil of potlucks while working in the public sector. Tax dollars sustain the environment necessary to facilitate this ridiculous concept. For example, during my six wasted years in that place, I probably dropped hundreds of dollars on potlucks and birthday parties.

The rules, both official and unofficial, are fluid in the public sector. Shifting realities is the name of the game, as the agenda is to keep people constantly off balance and unable to form lasting alliances involving change. Groupthink hovers over everything that is said and done, a grim and unforgiving specter whose goal is the withering away of individuality. If I sound like a conservative, too bad. Truth is truth regardless of political leanings.

I am in no way defending the corporate mentality, which is every bit as oppressive but perhaps not quite as philosophically bankrupt only because it doesn’t make any pretenses towards intellectual growth. This would be a laughable fact if it weren’t so frighteningly destructive. You might be laughing at the apparent melodrama of this post and its alarmist rhetoric regarding potlucks, but allow me to place them in proper perspective.

Any good brainwashing technique requires a benevolent activity to be effective. On its surface, the idea of bringing prepared foods for holidays is a harmless one. But when dissected we can hopefully see the true goal. It starts as an idea: “Hey, let’s do a potluck. I’ll make my famous blah blah blah!” Somewhere along the line, somebody appears to decide it was a great idea to have the potluck and starts asking when there will be another one. Naturally, there is another and another until eventually it becomes a staple in that particular office.

I don’t know about anybody else, but I don’t appreciate being made to feel that I have to participate in such an activity at MY OWN EXPENSE while others in the office make two and three times as much as I do, not to mention those who make less than me. This exploits workplace inequity in a way that forces people to feel ostracized if they don’t join in. Now that everybody has responded to the pressure, the frequency and reasons behind the potlucks must increase. Soccer moms are ideal for facilitating this.

In my case, birthdays were used as the excuse. Somehow the director of our department convinced people it was a good idea for each person in the office to finance the birthday of the next person on the list. In other words, if yours was on May 5th, the person whose birthday preceded yours financed it. You financed the birthday of the person whose birthday came after yours and so on. Naturally to be socially accepted, we had to get whatever the person wanted, which in some cases was often quite expensive.

To this day, three years out of there, I still can’t figure out how the hell anybody thought that made sense. If your workplace is too cheap to spring for a cake or, in our case, diverting tax dollars to administrators so they could take trips to Japan and Mexico, then I say screw it. The only other viable choice is to take up a small collection from everyone for each birthday.

Basically, any one person in that office could expect to, at their own expense, take part in a minimum of five or six potlucks per year. Depending on what you bought or prepared, you could have easily spent a hundred bucks during that year. Multiplied by six, you see where I got my estimate of hundreds. There were nearly thirty people in that office. That’s 18,000 dollars per year!

But what’s the purpose of these types of insanities? Certainly it isn’t to make people spend money they might not have. Well, maybe that is part of it, although perhaps not why you’re thinking. The goal isn’t to make people broke, it’s to wear them down to the point where they will take part in things that aren’t smart for them. Much like organized religion, groupthink depends heavily on the willingness of its victims to suspend all common sense in abeyance to the absurd.

I didn’t speak out against the potlucks back then; the politics of that place were twisted and evil, a hive of scum and villainy, to borrow two Star Wars references. I wouldn’t have had any backup and if I had, that person would have suffered greatly when I left. So I remained silent, brooding, but never hungry.

Recently I have noticed a trend toward meeting potlucks where I work. I spoke out this time, refusing to participate and referring to them as evil. Spreading potluck awareness is my latest calling. Join me if you dare~



*After I wrote this stunning piece of commentary, the potluck being planned at my job degenerated into an anger and resentment as people dropped out like flies off shit. See what I mean?*