🎧 AUDIO QUACK 🎧
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Skip Introduction 1:45
Last December, I was playing darts with Dad and Jack. I was great. Brilliant, in fact. But my dart skills are not what this Quack is about. No. This is about what was happening next to us – an office Christmas party. There were Veja trainers, beards, and a Christmas jumper theme. It’s a wild guess, but in a game of ‘guess the industry’, I reckon they were in digital marketing or something similar.
They were a little stiff at the start, crossed arms, swigging their Budweisers. One of them was on his phone, aimlessly walking around. “I’ll get it to you by the end of play tomorrow,” he yelled.
Two frollegues, had matching ‘Let it Snow’ jumpers on. They were using the time to fill each other in on gossip but kept getting interrupted by the game. “Your turn, Josie! Jose!” Josie would swiftly throw the darts and return to the gossip circle.
The guy with the wiriest beard was the best, casually collecting his three darts from the bullseye like it was nothing. The woman with the penguin jumper was the worst, chuckling to herself when the dart would bounce off the wall.
A platter of chips and chicken wings arrived and was demolished in minutes. After three rounds, Wire-Beard was crowned the best dart player in the office, and they said their goodbyes and went home. And that was the Christmas party. Done.
It was a far cry from the office party we saw in the 2003 Christmas film Love Actually.
The office manager, Mia, had organised a boozy do in an art gallery displaying photos of naked people. “Full of dark corners to do dark deeds,” she had told her boss as she opened her legs an inch or two. She then rocked up at the Christmas party dressed as a devil and asked the boss for a dance in front of his wife, Nanny Mcfee. How ballsy.
Perhaps scenarios like these are why we are now choosing social activities to celebrate Christmas with our colleagues rather than tipsy dos in art galleries.
Over the last few years, social game clubs have popped up all over the place: Flight Club (darts), Swingers (crazy golf), Clays (virtual clay pigeon shooting), and Whistle Punks (axe throwing). I suppose Mia wouldn’t have had the chance to have been so seductive if she had to book Flight Club.
“I’ve booked Flight Club…it’s full of sharp darts to do sharp…” Nope. Doesn’t work.
I was 24 when I went to my first office party. It was an out-of-space theme. Some came dressed as astronauts in skin-tight-silver onesies. I went dressed as the Milky Way, wrapping fairy lights around me.
The party took place in a club, down an alley in Soho, which sounds dodgy but wasn’t. I can’t remember the club’s layout exactly, but there were booths, a dance floor and a bar stretching from one side to the other. A free bar.
24, on an Assistant Producer wage and free alcohol… What could go wrong? Let’s just say that when a limbo stick appeared on the dance floor, I was thrilled to show off my Shakira skills. “I’m super flexible!” I boasted to my new colleagues before I ended up on my back, looking up at the disco lights.
The Head of Production must have seen this tragic fall because he came over and suggested I go home. So, I did. I ran out of the party before anyone could see me cry. I ran past Nelson’s Column and down Whitehall. If David Cameron were to peep out of his curtain, he would have seen a blob of tangled fairy lights running down the street. A wailing comet, you might say.
I planned to get home to Stockwell on foot but only got as far as Big Ben. It was 2:15 a.m. I called my then-boyfriend and sobbed on the phone, retelling him what had happened…kind of.
“There were these pink vodka shots. Everybody was limbo-ing. I’m going to get fired. It’s so unfair.” I rambled. Not long after, he turned up in the car, found me perched on the wall outside the House of Parliament, and took me home.
I didn’t get fired, but I was shy back then and deadly nervous about returning to the office. Of course, nobody was bothered about the assistant who failed at limbo. Two people on the account team were found making out in one of the booths – so that was the headline.
Perhaps this tightrope we must balance when mixing booze in a professional environment is also why activities such as pizza masterclasses and axe throwing are on the rise. As long as you don’t accidentally hit your colleague with an axe, there isn’t much you can do to embarrass yourself.
Besides, alcohol is not what it used to be. The health-conscious Gen-Z are not as lured into getting ‘trashed’ as we were in our early twenties. According to Beer Guild, In 2023, 19% of drink bookings were alcohol-free, which has climbed to 21% for 2024. Even me, the run-away-milky-way, doesn’t touch the stuff anymore. (I did, on another occasion, tear a muscle while trying to do the splits. The drunken Shakira era was quite a health hazard).
But it did make me think at 3 a.m.… If Richard Curtis were to write Love Actually today, how would Karl and Sarah confront their sexual tension if they didn’t have Norah Jones to slow dance to? Sure, there was the bad stuff with the boss and the PA, but sometimes there is nice love, and a bit of Dutch courage on a dance floor can be the trick to pushing two shy colleagues together.
But if Love Actually was set in 2024, would Karl and Sarah be paired up at a pizza-making masterclass at Pizza Pilgrims? Karl using his tanned, strong arms to roll out the dough? Or would Karl retrieve Sarah’s golf ball from the neon-lit Ferris wheel during a crazy golf tournament at Swingers?
OR would Sarah be rubbish at darts, struggling to get one stuck in the board. And Karl, seeing her struggle, would come up from behind. He smelled like the chicken wing he had just consumed, but Sarah didn’t care. It was Karl. She’d loved this man for two years, seven months, three days, four hours, 2 minutes….
Karl would lean in and say in Sarah’s ear, “Sarah….there’s a short, blonde woman over there who is brilliant at darts. Maybe… you don’t have to… but maybe you can get some tips from her? “
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