How sweet it is, the office birthday cake. But wait: This collegial communion can serve up some sticky protocol issues.
By JANET K. KEELER
Published June 18, 2003
[Times photo illustration]
When it comes to office birthday parties, let them eat cake.
And if they don't want to eat cake, let them hide in the supply closest until after the wobbly rendition of Happy Birthday to You.
Every day, in offices around the country, employees gather to raise a plastic fork to a co-worker who is another year older. The celebrations almost always include store-bought cake, often purchased in a mad dash after someone announces, "Uh, did you know it's Marla's birthday today?"
So ubiquitous, and potentially bothersome, is the office cake that it has been immortalized on TV sitcoms The Simpsons and Seinfeld, and discussed at Weight Watchers meetings by people trying to avoid the fattening pitfalls of the modern workplace. There's even a phony news story circulating on the Internet: "Man commits suicide after yet another office birthday party." (Read it on www.cakehole.blogspot.com.)
Yet, the office wingding proliferates, further blurring the line between work and home. We take our work home in satchels on wheels, and we bring our home to work via photos of kids (or pets) and parties in the break room.
A German businesswoman told the magazine Der Spiegel last year that American-style chumminess at work hampers productivity. Judith Mair's book, Schluss mit Lustig (End the Fun), outlines her management theories, which include mandatory uniforms, a ban on personal phone calls and, certainly, no Black Forest cherry cakes. They don't call it work at Mair and Others advertising agency for nothing.
On the bright side, Mair's employees will never have to deal with the pain of a forgotten birthday, nor will they come to work to find a half-eaten cake abandoned on a table. Who was it that promised to clean up? Though Mair's ideas have merit, it will take more than a lecture from "Germany's toughest woman boss" to get Americans to give up their office cakes.
Everything you need to know about office birthday parties you learned in kindergarten. Treat others kindly. Wait your turn. Keep your hands to yourself.
"My recommendation is to establish a celebration fund for only the people who want to participate," says Jacqueline Whitmore of the Protocol School of Palm Beach. "It should always be optional. There are some who can't afford $5 every time the envelope comes around."
Whitmore teaches business etiquette to executives, who are not likely the ones making sure that everyone in the office is properly feted.
That job, she says, is handled by an executive assistant unless the boss is "extremely hands-on." More often than not, the celebration is a grass-roots effort rather than a company- or boss-sponsored occasion.
In a classic Seinfeld episode, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) angrily erupts when presented a "get well" cake the day after she had missed work because her confection-crazed co-workers made her sick.
She dismisses the cake and her shocked co-workers: "What is nice? Trying to fill the void in your life with flour and sugar and egg and vanilla? I mean, we are all unhappy. Do we have to be fat, too? . . . I don't want one more piece of cake in my office!"
A round of applause was heard across the land on April 23, 1998, the night that episode first aired. (Fans who watch "The Frogger" episode in reruns know that Elaine later sneaked a bite of wedding cake that her boss had bought for $29,000 at a Duke of Windsor auction. Big trouble.)
Yes, there are Elaines among us who gather around the office cake, grumbling about forced collegiality and extra calories, but even they can't deter the self-appointed cruise directors from collecting money and buying more goodies. In fact, many workplaces have elaborate setups to make sure that no birthday goes unnoticed.
Like Wachovia Davis Baldwin in Tampa, a place in which you do not want to work if you can't stomach the birthday song sung opera-style or maybe with a country-western twang.
On the first Friday of each month, the insurance company's 133 employees, give or take a few, gather for lunch, paid for by the company but planned by employees. Birthdays, along with work and personal successes, are celebrated. There are themes (June was Hawaiian) and humorous roasts to tickle and embarrass celebrants. Wheels are spun; prizes are won.
Wright's Gourmet House delivers the cakes, either six three-layer numbers at $26.95 each or a full sheet cake at $64.95. Always, the birthday boys' and girls' names are written on the cakes.
And what if you don't want anyone to know it's your birthday?
"Occasionally, we get someone who doesn't want to stand up, but in true Davis Baldwin fashion, we make them," says Katie Lang, human relations manager.
Wachovia Davis Baldwin is one of several businesses that have a standing order with Wright's for birthday cake delivery, says general manager Tammy Lambert. Wright's makes 50 to 60 birthday cakes a day, some of which are picked up at the deli and plunked down on someone's desk. The most popular are the triple chocolate (chocolate cake with chocolate icing studded with chocolate chips) and the Alpine (yellow cake with chocolate frosting and white chocolate shavings).
If public adulation (or humiliation) is not your style, you might fit in better at Clearwater Central Catholic High School. There, 40 to 50 members of the teachers birthday club drop their names, along with party food preferences, into a hat. At the beginning of the school year, each club member picks a name and is responsible for making that person's wish come true. And it's not always cake that does it. Bagels are a popular request, along with junk food. Ah, yes, the traditional bag of birthday Chee-tos.
Everyone hopes to be drawn by the principal, Sister Mary Dion Horrigan, says Spanish teacher Peggy Carrington.
"(She's) a wonderful baker, and whoever gets her as the "provider' usually has the best birthday of all," Carrington says.
The party spread is set up in the teachers' lounge, and the only rule is that the birthday celebrant makes the first cut in the cake. When something is exceptionally good, the message spreads quickly, and teachers hightail it to the lounge.
The teachers' birthday club is anonymous, so no one knows who's in or out, which diminishes the grousing about co-workers who eat but never contribute.
At Publix's Consumer Relations Department in Lakeland, the birthday celebrations have one thing in common: All the food comes from Publix.
"We have had giant chocolate chip cookies iced and decorated, ice cream cakes, pound cakes with fresh fruit, and beautifully decorated birthday cakes iced in the honoree's favorite colors . . . and even Publix breakfast bread iced and made like a cake," says department head Leslie Spencer. "We have also brought in chips and salsa or ice cream with a separate cake."
Sounds like the consumer relations folks contribute quite a bit to Publix's massive cake business, of which 15 percent is office birthday cakes.
Even though only eight employees are in her department, Spencer says they are fine-tuning the party planning system so everyone bears equal responsibility.
"We are considering having the person whose birthday preceded the honoree be responsible for the food and beverages," she says. "For instance, the person with the August birthday would order everything for the person with the September birthday and so on. This gives a break to the sole person who always does the ordering."
So much for the haves; now for the have nots.
No matter how tired you get of gathering for (or buying) cake for someone you hardly know, consider the 11 guys who work at Tire Kingdom on 16th Street N in St. Petersburg. They've got birthdays, they've got feelings, but do they have birthday cakes?
"No, we don't do anything," says service manager Joe Johnson. "We just say "Happy Birthday' and pat them on the back. "Now get back to work.' "
A no-frills office birthday wish, if there ever was one. And they haven't even read Schluss mit Lustig.
