Colleagues missed my birthday

[englishrosi3]

Every year in my small workplace we have a collection and buy a birthday present for whoever’s birthday it is. I run the birthday collections and buying of the gift. There are 8 of us and we usually contribute £10 each. Nobody complains about the out and they can out as much or as little as they want but £10 is average. I’ve topped it up a couple of times if it’s something that costs a little more.
it was my birthday last week and I didnt even get a card. I’m a bit upset about this and never want to get any of them anything ever again. Only 2 out of them wished me a happy birthday. I had been off work for two days as I went away with a friend and they knew this was happening and why I was off. I posted on Facebook photos of my birthday night away and caption it “birthday” they “liked” the pictures.
I do a lot to help everyone in their jobs as I’m the most senior and experienced there, I really appreciate all my colleagues and that they work well together.. I’m not in massively higher pay than them. I do things for them outside of work like help with lifts and picking up items they need if I pop out to the shops.
im often told I’m a kind and considerate person.

I know I’m a big girl and it’s just a birthday but I love to make a fuss of others and make them feel special and appreciated.

even things like if someone’s work anniversary eg they’ve been here a year I get them Starbucks or cinema voucher.

SO MUCH EASIER to just not do birthday stuff at work. What you’ve been doing sounds like a massive faff and I agree sounds costly for everyone involved.

I only did cards and presents for my actual close friends at work.

Children would be upset, not adults. It’s pathetic.

Do they usually get you something? When did you get promoted to their senior?

In my workplace this is the kind of thing that senior staff do for ‘their’ employees, but not the other way round. They also might buy their reports Christmas presents, buy a round of drinks at a meal etc but it doesn’t happen the other way round.

You do you. But I think it would be a hard hearted adult indeed to have made a lot of effort for somebody's birthday.And for nobody to make any effort back for yours.

My mother died about a year ago and she still used to make a real fuss about my birthday.Because, you know she gave birth to me. It was a big deal for her as well to remember the day she had me. Now that she's gone I still feel that there's something missing.Ive had one birthday without her and it made me sad.

Nobody else made such a fuss of my birthday and if people like you would say it's pathetic and webshould grow up well fuck off.

A birthday is a little bit of a special day amidst all the other boring monotony of the rest of the year. And if absolutely nobody acknowledged somebody's birthday, I think it would be a very hard hearted adult to not be upset.

I bet you ve never had a birthday absolutely nobody acknowledged it.And if not, I hope you do.

I would really dislike that much gift giving at work. Id imagine a lot of them are just doing it as they feel obligated and that is why they didn't organize when you weren't initiatied. My workmates are really close and none acknowledges birthday s

Are you a manager, that might be why? Otherwise, stop right now, it's as easy as that.

I hate all this contributing to birthdays of people that I'm not really invested in.

Close family yes and even then a happy birthday is more than enough, colleagues no i never want them to remember

I agree with this. I’d just leave it from
now on and at most do a birthday card that people sign.

that happened in our organisation
no definite amount was ever suggested and the usual organiser i assume got far less for her birthday
the collector was blamed
and it was decided to only buy for special birthdays

It’s really harsh no one did anything for you but they probably don’t want to have a birthday collection at all. Did you make it optional or just automatically add people in?

I am self projecting but I hate any kind of attention at work : birthdays, anniversaries etc and would rather not be included in collections etc.

I bet you ve never had a birthday absolutely nobody acknowledged it.And if not, I hope you do.

I unfortunately have but I wasn’t expecting my workmates to remember. In fact I don’t think any of them know except possibly my manager if he has access to my personal details file.

However I understand why Op was hurt since it was a thing in her office and she made sure everyone else’s birthday was celebrated. It is unfair the way it’s played out but she should just learn from it and stop playing this role of birthday organiser.

Bloody hell. DH and I spend less than £70 on each others' birthdays. I'd be incredibly pissed off at being expected to fork that out for colleagues and embarrrased to receive £70 of gift(s) from people who are unlikely to know my taste well anyway. How wasteful.

That said it's nice to recognise in a more toned down way and sad you didn't even get a card. At my workplace a card is signed by everyone and there'll be cake/flowers paid for by the boss.

Brilliant ! Puts it in perspective. A mild addiction to arranging work collections is much less serious.

I remember one workplace we would do a collection for a birthday cake and card . It was less than a pound each as there was about 12 of us. We would get a cake from the nearby Waitrose or M&S.

It ended up being a toxic workplace but that was the one nice thing they done 😂. If I remember correctly the manager would usually pay for it outright and then take the money we had collected as reimbursement so no one ever got passed over.

Maybe you could do something like that instead OP or just do a card alone? I think expecting people to pay £10 each is a bit much.

If we know when it’s someone’s birthday in my job we usually will bring a few cakes or a packet of nice biscuits to our weekly team meeting to mark the occasion. The £10 spend per person for each birthday for work colleagues seems excessive especially with the cost of living now being so high. Time to knock it on the head

When i worked, we took in cake for our own birthday. If we wanted to.

Collections only for leaving, weddings and maybe something small births (mainly men).

Based on your rant I suspect you have rather more deep rooted issues than just birthday acknowledgments.

My work does absolutely nothing for birthdays and I think we all prefer it that way. None of us needs to "feel special for a day" - we're grown adults!

@ElleintheWoods your generous Italian community does sound nice, but very unlike the UK. I don't think society could work like that here - not because people are inherently better or worse, just because of cultural differences

I came here to say the same thing. £70 is a huge amount and completely unnecessary for a colleague's birthday and as you've no doubt realised, OP, a card is much more thoughtful & meaningful. It makes no sense to be donating around £70 (or any amount) throughout the year and then get the same amount back for a present on your birthday.

Whenever we do a collection at work it's only for leaving and even then it's a couple of quid each.

This is a signal to ditch the whole birthday thing

£70 is too much OP.

I used to work in a dept where every week there was a collection for someone- birthdays, someone was having a baby, someone was retiring, someone who had already left was moving abroad, someone who had already left was turning 70, someone who had already left was getting married etc

The sentiment was nice but it became stressful and pressured because I didnt even know half these people who had left but they were apparently very well known by older members of the team. In the end I had to say "I cant afford it- sorry". It was mortifying and embarrassing but it had got to the point it was literally every other week.

If we assume your team members birthdays are spread evenly across the year- you are asking them to contribute £10 every month for 7 months of the year. Thats too much. You say you want to be kind but it's not kind to put people in a position where they feel obligated to give money they dont have. Also, not everyone feels comfortable with a huge fuss made of them, for shy people it can make them shrink inside.

Extend your kind nature to thinking about these issues as well because there are lots of ways to show kindness and not all of them involve money or buying people stuff.

This is costing all of you over £100 a year. In the current economic climate, I think that's unreasonable and I would stop it right now. Your colleagues aren't your friends, any of them could leave at any time and you probably will never see or speak to them again. Stop wasting your money and putting pressure on them to waste theirs (and I know you said they can contribute what they like, but they would feel awful contributing nothing, which is what they may want to do).

As for your birthday, it sounds like no one else stepped up to organise a collection for you, because you always do it for everyone else, so it didn't occur to them. Hurtful? Yes, but I would use it as a reason to put a stop to all this ridiculous present buying right now. Don't you have better things to be doing at work?

Thing is- no-one ever has a true understanding of anyone elses finances, and £70 (or more) throughout the year for colleagues is likely to be too much. None of us exist in a vacuum and it 'might only' be a tenner for some, but not for others, and added into that is the whole set of personal gifting or other financial obligations people have.

I am in a social group of a number of women- numbering around 10 and one of the women is very intense about gifts. It's become a gift exchange for everyones birthdays and christmas also, and it's too much. I don't WANT to spend circa £200 a year on shite for other people. We have tried to rein things in but the organiser wails that she just LOVES giving gifts and 'come on, it's only a tenner'. She has a husband, they both have professional full time roles, they don't have children and neither have nieces or nephews. So her experience and obligation for gifting is a little different from others in the group.

Most people are happy enough to have a friendly working atmosphere, but at the end of the day work is work and your private life is your private life and people have strains on their finances.

Like pps I suspect that your colleagues have wanted to scale back thr gifting expectations for a while and did not know how to tell you.

The birthday £10 is so annoying. I really dont like it. Card would be great and maybe £10 a year, enough to buy a card each and a chockolate.

I was about to post a similar thing.

I'm an NHS consultant and most of us chip in to buy all the staff in the dept a gift card at Xmas. I'd never expect a more junior colleague to do this - some staff are on low wages.

If they are your peers, then yes, this is a signal that people aren't as thrilled with the gift giving as you are (you say that you are senior, but it's not clear if that just means you have been there a long time, or are actually in a designated senior role), but if you are clearly more senior, they might view this as a "manager's job" to organise these things as part of teambuilding/morale.

If this is the first year that this hasn't happened, then I'd go for cock up over conspiracy - everyone thought someone else would do it, though.

If the only good thing in your life is your birthday and the rest of the year is boring monotony then maybe you should look at yourself. I've never relied on others to make me happy; I mostly plan what I want to do on my birthday. I'm a grown woman and it wouldn't bother me if I wasn't made a fuss of on my birthday. Same with every other day of the year. I do little things that I enjoy every day, either alone or with people i care about so very rarely get bored.