I work in an office of about 65 people.
There are various teams who sit together (6 teams in total) and there is me and another lady who are our own team but we work very closely with the other teams in a support role. Without us, their roles would be much harder but we are all on the same level, just different aspects of our business.
When it’s someones birthday, the team that the birthday person is on do a collection for them, decorate their desk and get some gifts. The average collection is £30/£40.
It’s the first birthday of my colleague (let’s call her L) on our ‘team of two’ since I’ve been there and she mentioned last week she was going out on this Saturday night just gone for her birthday (this was yesterday btw).
So last week I put the feelers out about ‘what is done’ re collections and nobody really seemed interested. For full disclosure, I tolerate my colleague and we’ll never be good friends but we work ok together.
Our Line Manager also mentioned it was L’s birthday and I said I’d got a card and had passed it to the teams for those who wanted to sign it.
The card made it’s way back with about 16 signatures. No money was forthcoming whatsoever from a single person.
So I had two choices, get L decent presents (like everyone else gets) or stick the card and a £2 bar of Galaxy on her desk.
I’ve ended up spending about £25 on presents, mentioned it to those who signed the card and was met with ‘oh lovely, she’ll like that’ etc etc.
I just feel a bit hard done by and really don’t want to have to repeat this next year.
I didn’t even spend £25 on my own DP’s birthday last year!