To want to pay less at work Christmas drinks?

[Rainallnight]

Agh, I just wrote a long post and it got lost!

the short version is - it’s my work’s tradition that SMT members split the bill for drinks at our Christmas lunch. I am the least well paid member of SMT by some distance and have begun to feel this is unfair.

I’d rather we make a contribution that’s proportionate to our salaries.

AIBU?

Non drinkers still have a drink with their lunch! I often don't drink on nights out and my non alcoholic drinks cost similar to the alcoholic versions (0% beers and mocktails).

Your maths is off. If there are three SMT paying £1000 each the total bar tab is £3000.

Rather than the whole bill, can’t SMT each just put in £100 behind the bar and when it’s gone then people pay for themselves?

I agree with pp this is highly unfair for various reasons such as one person could be married to an investment banker on 200K and the other is a single parent but because they’re both SMT they are funding others drinks equally.

As someone who is more or less teetotal (I have on average about one glass of bubbly a year plus maybe a few Baileys hot chocolates at Christmas!) it would especially irk me.

OP I would speak up but I’m that kind of person, I don’t mind about being disliked when I’m calling out something I see as unfair or asking for change. If you get backlash for voicing your opinion on this, it’s probably not a good environment anyway.

My maths was off ETA: Perhaps as a compromise propose SMT pay a token amount towards the set Christmas lunch menu say £10 off the meal cost so it’s subsided and then everyone pays their drinks bill themselves so it means you’d have saved money while still making a modest contribution.

OR, SMT pay for one drink for everyone.

In my experience, people with lots of money don’t think about money. So it probably hasn’t even occurred to the £100K person that it isn’t fair on you.

I would just say that you can’t afford your share, it’s too much in the run up to Xmas and you can only donate X amount. Don’t be embarrassed, there is nothing wrong with not being able to afford it.

I wouldn’t get into a whole ‘you earn more so should contribute more’ discussion though. They can work that bit out themselves.

Just don't go and if asked why state that you can't afford to subsidise the drinking habits of others.

I think you need to clarify what it actually cost you last year for us to comment on what might or might not be reasonable. There is a big difference between whether it costs £50.00, which you could spend anyway on a reasonable bottle of wine for your immediate team or thousands of pounds.

But the problem with this is that it is a taxable benefit and has to be declared.

It's 15 people having lunch. So a couple of hours max not the whole evening knocking back shots and cocktails. SMT buying the drinks is a nice gesture and perfectly normal. We are also a team of 15 and my manager pays for our drinks. Its the middle of the day, we're all going back to work and driving home. We have a soft drink with our meal. Its just a gesture and much appreciated.

For 15 people's drinks at lunch, even if people have the odd beer or wine, your share of its split between 4 is probably around the £20- 30 mark. Honestly, I think you'd look a right twat if you started suggesting proportionate payment or even worse, the suggestions on here to not go to try and get out of paying.

You need to bring this up.

The team I’m in arranged a separate Christmas lunch to our general office one and the meal was £60 set menu plus drinks. I manage a couple of team members who are in their 20s and felt uncomfortable with the amount but didn’t feel they could rock the boat. I spoke to my Director and said that as there was an implication that everyone paid their own way I thought it was striking the wrong note to expect everyone to shell out upwards of £70-80 for a meal just before Christmas. My Director agreed and we change it to drinks.

Thats a long winded way of saying that unless you flag something then people often genuinely don’t realise there’s an issue. A quiet word with your Director to say that for personal reasons you will struggle to pay your share and could you either pay a smaller share or perhaps just pay for your own drinks is the only way this will be resolved.

We didn’t get any sort of Christmas party in higher education either, at least not at my university. We each had to pay 40-50 quid each for a Christmas dinner at a restaurant, sans drinks. I rarely went, as the last bus to where I live was at 9 pm, and my DH didn’t want to drive to it, because then it was £80-£100 for us both to attend. Most of the lecturers were on about 35-40K.

Leaving aside the fact that you don't know what people are going to drink or how much it's going to cost, why is it your place to decide what the OP can afford or wants to pay?
Even if it's 320–£30, that might be more than 'just a gesture' for the OP, for any of a multitude of possible reasons.

I think this is a good idea. Have a set amount to contribute each.

Exactly it’s the charity that is a charity not the employees, if a person wants to do charitable work they can volunteer somewhere. People
dont have expect British Gas to provide energy for free because somewhere is a charity so why should employees be expected to work for free

I would have a word with your line manager/ others on the team and agree to a set amount that you will contribute in advance. Otherwise you are going to have a terrible time worrying about what everyone is ordering.

I very much doubt that the OP is complaining about putting in £30 given how concerned she’s feeling about the disparity in income verses contribution.

I suspect her share of the bill in nearer 3 figures.

OP, as someone who doesn’t drink alcohol, this is part of an outdated culture you should probably try and change.

I’m retired now but when I was a SM, I was responsible for organising a few work events and refused to use a considerable chunk of the entertainment budget buying expensive wines, like my colleagues in other departments did. Cheap boxes of concentrate orange juice as the sole concession to non drinkers used to piss me right off. Instead, I spent the money for my department on better quality food and a wider variety of non alcoholic drinks. It’s easier these days as there’s so much more choice but back in the 90’s/00’s these items were harder to source. (Midlands based.)

I didn't decide what the OP can afford at all, her company did. The OP has started a thread and asked for opinions and mine is just as valid as yours. The OP has not once said that she can't afford the amount, only thst she is peeved she pays the same as others that earn more. Opinions here can only he based on what the OP tells us.

@Rainallnight i think that regardless of salary money is tight for everyone just how. The higher the salary normally means the higher the mortgage etc. I wonder if others feel the same and feel the awkward about saying something. Do you have someone you are closer to that you could maybe mention it to and see what they think. I wouldn’t go down the route of ‘x earns more’ but perhaps mention with Christmas money is a bit tight. I don’t make what you make and I wouldn’t expect my bosses to pay for my drinks all night, if they bought me one I’d be really grateful!

I work for a charity in SMT on similar salary to OP. My last job in the private sector saw me earning nearly double this - it was brutal and I hated it but wanted better work/life balance and to feel I was doing some good so took a big hit. Charity work is notoriously poorly paid. I work for a large national charity and the majority of our staff are on low salaries: L1 eg admin £23-4k L2 officers/project team £26-27k, senior project team/officers £29-30k and I'm pretty sure most could leave and find better paid work in the private sector.

Those people who are aghast at the salaries paid to SMT of a charity, don't forget any awful lot of work is done by amazing volunteers, but, how do you think a charity would run without a team to deliver? How would you even hear about the charity without experienced staff to market and promote, who do you think administers the donations, who researches and applies for grants, who runs events bringing in thousands of ponds, who plans and delivers the marketing, the PR, the press, looks after the staff. You can't run a business with junior staff all on minimum wage so why would you be able to run a charity this way? If a charity is well run, the higher the outgoings the higher the funding going towards the cause.

We don't get a Christmas lunch as we all work remotely so can't help on that one I'm afraid.

This feels insane 😬 I was going to go on YABU because in my industry this is often the norm for senior leadership. But not on £50k!

They never do think before flapping their mouths, that's the problem. You can always tell the posters who've got no idea about how charities actually function.

No, you did decide this, by suggesting that it's fine for the OP to pay this and she'd look a 'twat' if she suggested anything else.
The fact that we don't know the ins and outs of the OP's finances only reinforces the point that it's wrong-headed to make an assumption about whether she can genuinely not afford the bill, or just doesn't want to pay.

I think it depends how much the bill is.

Could you not all put in a manageable amount, 100 quid for example, and once it's gone it's gone? Rather than bankroll everyone all night?

Someone on 100K is getting to lose 40% of anything above 50k on tax. It could get really complicated working it out.

If you are drinking your share, you should pay like everyone else. If you drink much less or don't drink at all then you might have a point.
If you can't afford it, don't go. For all we know you and other lower paid staff might have rich spouses, and the one on £100k is a single parent to triplets.
Sounds a shit place to work though - paying your own expensive bar bills and you're too scared to say anything.

I’d rather we make a contribution that’s proportionate to our salaries.

I think this is a reasonable approach. Whilst you're all SMT, there are some who earn 100% more than you. It's obviously unfair for you to be splitting costs equally in those circumstances.