To think £38 for a Christmas meal is a lot?

[MrsGinnyPotter]

Work have just announced the annual Christmas meal. It's £38!! I know it's not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things but for a Christmas dinner with a cracker and a bit if pudding it just seems a lot!! We usually lay around £25 for the Christmas meal which is fair enough but this just seems a lot.
It's not a huge work place and everyone is unofficially expected to go. I will go as it would create a lot of problems not to but it just seems a lot.

There were cheaper options but this was the most popular!

I paid well over £40 for a bog standard Christmas day meal 12 years ago.

In Amsterdam I'll be having 3 courses in a pub on Christmas day for €19. No booking in advance either.

I arrange ours, £30 per head. We would rather lots of people came so try and keep the cost down.

If I had to pay to go to our works Christmas Party I wouldn't be going. Ours is a 3 course meal, overnight stay and breakfast, and partners are invited. It's one of the few things I love about my job!

Ours is in a nice Italian and its £34 for 3 courses. We are all donating £40 and then the company will "surprise" us with a donation too for a few "sherbets".

I will be 6 months pregnant, how many cokes do they think I will want? Fucking sherbets...

Bat, yes i do feel for the staff having to work christmas day etc. we never go out xmas day or that reason.
I can see why its so expensive, but on the normal days on the run up to christmas or new years they do tend to inflate the price.

At work we got sick of paying loads for mediocre dinner dance things at Xmas, so last year we had the party at work instead! A couple of us ran a quiz, and everyone else got into teams. Everyone brought food to share. It was great and only cost everyone a few quid for some buffet food and drink (we do have a full kitchen in the staff room though so it was easy to cook everything).

I'm NHS and unsurprisingly have always had to pay for my work do. Some of you are lucky!

£38 is a lot of money for a Christmas meal.

I hate the way pubs hike up the prices at Xmas for often very substandard meals.

We used to get £25 per head so we found somewhere serving a £10 meal and spent the extra on drink. Having to eat a Christmas dinner is rubbish!

MissShunImpossible No, I don't work in the public sector, but yes IME taxpayers money is definately used to pay for fun. Over the years I have often served NHS dinners that were in excess of £150 per head, I assume for the 'higher ups.' Usually classed as 'meetings' or 'working lunches/dinners' Based on a few conversations I've caught around the table, it is the NHS footing the bils, not the individuals.

TBF in the majority of cases it does seem as if they are discussing work throughout, I'm not sure why you need a multiple £70 bottles of wine to do so though?

I live in south London, our Christmas lunch in the local pub will cost £9.95 a head (two courses) and extra for drinks.

It's at a carvery type pub.

p.s. We all pay for our own Christmas lunch and drinks.

We have a vote about where to go. We pay ourselves but work contributes £10 per head.

NHS staff here. I'd agree £38 for a pub meal is very steep. Ours was £20 a head last year (pub) for 3 courses and I thought even that was a tad on the steep side considering how much they would inevitably make on top of that in alcohol sales not that us nurses drink, on no .

NHS here too.

We always pay for our own. I mentioned the cost of mine up thread (just under £30 for the meal, then most spend an extra £20 or so in the pub afterwards) which I think is okay as it's three courses with a drink and mince pies.

We're paying £32 for 4 courses without wine in a decent gastropub. I think that's steep, but it's a place we know pretty well and the menu is really good. I wouldn't pay that much for the kind of work do where you go to be polite and leave asap, but I actually like my colleagues.