The office Christmas party is a carefully laid trap. The company provides a free bar, encourages everyone to “let loose,” and then waits for the inevitable HR incident to occur. It’s a corporate-sponsored social experiment where the subjects are plied with alcohol and then judged for their results.
There’s always one person who takes the bait a little too enthusiastically, becoming the star of the next day’s gossip. But what happens when you’re the only sober witness to their wild night? For one worker, a clear-eyed memory of a colleague’s antics has turned them into a reluctant key witness in a corporate witch hunt.
More info: Mumsnet
The office Christmas party is a corporate-sponsored social experiment that often ends in HR paperwork
Image credits: Ellwed Mag / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
At a boozy company party, one colleague enjoyed the open bar a little too much and ended up groping a man and flashing a boss
Image credits: gstockstudio / Freepik (not the actual photo)
A sober narrator was the sole clear-eyed witness to the most shocking moments of the night
Image credits: Roberta Sant’Anna / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Management requested that the narrator give an official statement about what they saw transpire
Image credits: Pukkajones
The narrator felt conflicted and argued that the company was being hypocritical, considering they encouraged drinking
The company Christmas party was a perfectly engineered recipe for disaster: a hotel, 200 employees, a free bar, and drinking that was “very much encouraged.” It was the kind of corporate event where legends are made and careers are unmade, a boozy battlefield of bad decisions and next-day regrets. This year’s legend was a “lovely, usually quiet” colleague named Jenny.
Jenny, however, got a bit more “merry” than most. Her night escalated from enthusiastic dancing to inappropriately touching a male colleague. After being escorted to her room, she made a daring escape and returned for a grand finale: flashing her chest at a senior male colleague. Our narrator, the sole sober witness in a sea of drunken revelry, happened to be in the side bar for this final, spectacular act.
As the hangovers set in, management launched an investigation, and they set their sights on the one person who remembers everything clearly. The narrator is being asked to come in and give an official statement about what they saw. But they are deeply conflicted. They feel the company set Jenny up with free booze and now wants to punish her for the predictable results.
The narrator is now caught in a classic ethical dilemma. They are being pressured to provide the testimony that could get a “lovely” colleague fired for a drunken mistake at a party designed to encourage exactly that kind of behavior. They’re now asking the internet if they’d be the jerk for simply denying they saw anything and staying out of it.
Image credits: Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
The narrator’s feeling that the company is hypocritical is backed up by a common, predictable reality. According to a survey from Slater and Gordon, a staggering one in four employees admit to regretting their behavior at a company Christmas party, often fueled by the free-flowing alcohol provided by the employer.
However, the narrator’s internal debate over being a “snitch” is where HR experts would draw a very clear line. According to HR specialist Amy Drader, there is a huge difference between tattling on a minor issue and reporting serious misconduct. Jenny’s actions fall squarely into the category of sexual harassment, which is illegal and creates a hostile work environment.
The best path forward, according to expert advice, is to separate the personal from the professional. The narrator’s role isn’t to be a judge or to decide Jenny’s fate, but simply to be a factual witness. Amy Drader advises that when reporting a coworker, you should stick to the objective facts of what you saw, without adding emotion or opinion.
By calmly and factually stating what happened, the narrator fulfills their professional obligation without having to feel like a malicious “snitch,” leaving the final decision in the hands of management, where it belongs. In the comments, the OP later revealed that this is exactly what they did, much to netizens’ relief.
Would you have snitched? Tell us which way your moral compass guides you in the comments!
The story sparked a fierce online debate about loyalty, responsibility, and the “snitch” dilemma, with an almost 50/50 split on the poll
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