Military precision

I attended my first Xmas party of the year on Friday. It’ll probably be the last, I generally don’t do many, but it made me reflect on similar ones in the past. Given that this was a company party, I’ll limit this to similar occasions when I’ve enjoyed the hospitality of companies or other institutions.

The first I recall were the ones in the mid-80s when I was working for Dow Chemical Europe and when business was good we enjoyed pretty good Xmas parties. When business was bad we simply didn’t have them as the company tried to squeeze every last profit out of the year.

I remember two in particular when we stayed overnight in a hotel in Arosa. There would always be plenty to drink, no limitations of one bottle of wine per table or similar, and one year we enjoyed the spectacle of the drunken waiter. I guess events where the staff are part of the entertainment are pretty common place now, I’ve also been to ones they burst out in song.

I left Dow to join FMC and they didn’t do Xmas parties for the staff but they put on parties for their children.

Then came Linx in the mid to late 90s which took over the Burgess Hall in St Ives. The company employed 300 or so which meant a big event. As a director I was supplied with a brown envelope of cash with which to buy drinks. There must have been a cash bar to supplement the free wine at the table.

I went to one Xmas party with Willett and that was rather sad. The company was barely profitable and paid for tables as a part of a bigger offering at a local hotel. There might have been wine but there certainly wouldn’t have been any pre-dinner drinks nor any brown envelopes! As a measure of the company’s munificence it gave all employees a Xmas gift of £10 the next year!

After Willett of course I became self employed with spells if interim management at Macsa in Spain. Macsa did Xmas parties well and they were generous with both the quality of the event and the quantity of wines etc. I think I enjoyed three Macsa Xmas parties over the years

As I was self employed I got involved in political work and was elected as a county councillor. The County Council didn’t do Xmas parties but my local parish council did and I was first invited to attend Impington Parish Council’s parties which they always held at the Railway Vue in Impington. Then later on there have been the parties of the ‘joined’ Histon & Impington Parish Council which I’ve enjoyed variously at the Boot, the Red Lion and Tawa Lounge in Histon. Because these parties are self funded they have not been very well attended and seem, sadly, to have died out.

Which brings me back to last Friday which was the second Sensotec Xmas party to which I’ve been invited. They’ve been held at Slepe Hall in St Ives and Sensotec’s been big enough to have its own room as a part of a bigger Xmas party night at the hotel.

This year it’s fair to say that the event has been run with military precision by the hotel. We were required, nay told, to be seated at 1830 and were then served our three courses in little more than an hour! I had booked my taxi for 2130 but then brought it forward an hour. We had wine on the table, with an extra bottle on request, and there was a cash bar. Methinks that’s where the hotel made its money because I paid £20 for just 2 pre-dinner drinks.

In these days of ‘feeling the pinch’ you can see the efforts that Slepe Hall was making to keep its costs down and to make its profits from guests’ discretionary spend. I reckon portion sizes were much reduced and the careful scheduling of serving times meant that they could make do with fewer staff. Good for them and they did it in a way that didn’t significantly degrade the experience of the event (as long as you didn’t mind going to bed early!).

There have been other Xmas event. At Shell in the early 70s we had incredible alcohol fueled sessions on the morning of the last working day before Xmas and at Dow in Hong Kong in the late 70s we had very civilised drinks in the Mandarin at lunch time on Xmas Eve.

So that’s it for this year. Fingers crossed that I get another invite next year.