It’s October 19th and the emails are starting to pour in about Halloween office parties and costumes.
- What’s acceptable?
- Can you provide examples of costumes that cross the lines?
- Should we skip the pot-luck lunch with these flu concerns?
I don’t care if you celebrate Halloween at work, but for the love of god, please do not ask your Human Resources team to plan the party. They have better things to do. Every minute spent planning a party is a minute that could be spent saving your company from implosion. Do you want your HR team focused on the profitability of your organization, or do you want them worried about who’s bringing potato salad to the party? Should we break out a spreadsheet so we don’t have duplicate cupcakes?
Here’s my spooky advice. If you work in HR, please do not send out a memo on the appropriateness of Halloween costumes. If someone comes to work looking like a sexy goth cheerleader or a pimp, send that idiot home.
If you are an employee, use some common sense. Don’t wear a diaper, a white t-shirt, and a bonnet as your Halloween costume. I speak from experience on this one. It’s just creepy.
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THANK YOU!
While I try to inject fun into the workplace by buying beer for happy hours at the end of the week and making sure we do a BBQ once in a while, I am not the Party Planning Committee! It’s such an old school (and, frankly, sexist) view of HR. If you want to have fun at work, think of something and bring it forward. Don’t kvetch about how HR should be planning a company picnic for you.
And I’d like to add: Please don’t complain to your HR Department that the company isn’t family-friendly because we don’t let you bring your kids to work on Halloween and let them trick-or-treat around the office.
If you want to bring in your kids and show off how cute they are in their costumes, I’m all over that. I love seeing cute little Halloween costumes. But to expect your co-workers to bring in candy and let your kids go cubicle-to-cubicle while people are working their tails off trying to keep the company afloat? C’mon, folks!
Going to work as yourself is scary enough people!!!
We do costumes but not the pot luck thing (thank god)…I agree, if someone is stupid enought to show up in an inappropriate costume—send their ass home. Sending a memo out just sucks all the fun out of it.
This year my department is a bunch of super heroes. Because since we are HR they all thought it would be funny to be witches. I just think that is like wearing a big sign that says “call me a bitch”. No thanks. So I made the executive (ha) decision that we would be super heroes.
And secretly, I just wanted to be Batman for a day.
We have a committee that makes decisions on things like holiday parties. They coordinate the entire thing and do a bang up job too. Our Center Director told the office that the dress code was relaxed for Halloween but if anyone came in “showing too much back, crack, boob” he was sending them home.
I’m coming as a 1920′s Flapper Girl; I liked the dress.
adowling: Any boss who can pull off using the term “crack” in a frieldy, preemptive admonishment definitely deserves props. No back, crack, or boob is a good rule to follow for all occasions.
I used to go as Alex from A Clockwork Orange every year when I worked in customer service. Only a few customers ever got it, and of those, only two were seriously freaked out…
I was Sarah Palin last year…..not really a costume I recycle again for this year (kind of like Ted on “How I Met Your Mother” and his Dangling Chad costume.) I am open to new ideas though…anyone?
still trying to figure out what’s wrong with a Sexy Goth Cheerleader or a Pimp costume…
Weaing a Halloween costume past the age of 15 is sad.
@Renee – Our staff thought it was hilarious that he said no back, crack or boob but no one is brave enough to show up any of the three showing.
Maybe you can crash an office party dressed as a cat in a costume.
We have an employee relations committee that is made up of one representative from each department in our office. One of their projects is to plan the holiday party. Although the group is facilitated by HR, it is not an “HR thing”.
Everyone gets to share in the responsibility of planning it and it saves us (HR) from having to coordinate the dreaded potlucks.
I used to work in the corporate office of a now defunct national computer store. We had the most amazing halloween festivities. I don’t believe any other company went to the lengths we did. We had a multi-level office building with many teams, and each team created an actual theme, and sometimes a full show, singing and dancing included! On halloween, each team would perform their show in full costume and props, and the president and other bigwigs of the company would visit each show, and judge. After all the shows were performed, everyone headed over to the hotel next door where the finalists performed for the entire company. The winning team usually won a monetary prize.
My team, a group of creatives, did Rocky Horror Picture Show, and we were one of the finalists one year. Another team did Thriller. We also had some truly talented employees who did solo performances, one memorable show was a Tina Turner impersonator.
This may not have been a good day for productivity, but it was a huge moral booster. Everyone had tons of fun, and it was good for the teams.
@Boris- why is it sad to dress up for halloween after the age of 15? I LOVE halloween, and am over the age of 15! (not telling how much though
)
@H.Aria What now? Who brings kids to the office to trick or treat? Are you for serious?!
@MattyMat Exactly.
@InkedHR When isn’t HR a bunch of superheroes, indeed.
@adowling THat is hysterical. Also, I want to see your picture in that dress. You will look adorable.
@Renee That is super-freaky.
@HRU Politicians aren’t the hot costume, this year.
@Charlie Nothing wrong, per se…
@george Nah, I’m too lazy for costumes!
@HRinDC That’s a great idea.
@Kristin Maybe I don’t like Halloween because it’s such a team activity at most companies. That’s just not my style, although I do like Rocky Horror.
@Jaimie Boris is cranky.
Here’s my Halloween office horror story… I worked a place where the HR “leader” (yes, using that term VERY loosely), not only got all jazzed up about organizing the festivities year after year, they insisted that the entire HR department spend an inordinate amount of time, resources, etc., to be visibly involved. It was like watching an eleven year old ‘tween get all pumped up for their first Jonas brothers’ concert.
Talk about a major embarrassment and complete lack of respect for the HR profession. This person did everything possible DAILY to ensure that no one took HR seriously. It was a constant battle to atttempt to inject even a tiny amount of professional integrity into that environment.
Their take on the Halloween extravaganza went as far as them stating they would rather give smaller HR team salary raises than scale back the Halloween budget – which for some bizarre reason was attached to the HR funds. To make matters worse, several non-Halloween fanatics would routinely confide in me that they really just wanted to do their job and couldn’t care less about having a big shebang to celebrate.
Personally, I could take it or leave it as far as the workplace goes – PLEASE just keep HR out of the party planning business!
I am reminded of a night in college when a friend of mine and I went to Applebee’s for dinner. Yes, I’ll say the name of the restaurant – no love lost.
All of the wait staff was dressed in costume (don’t get me started on the safety implications of walking through the kitchen or bar with Lady Godiva sleeves) and our waiter arrived at our table dressed – barely dressed – as a male dominatrix. Leather hot pants, no shirt, fishnets. Yes, fishnets.
We left. It was 15 years ago and is still burned in my memory.
Where was this person’s boss?