These stories prove that the heart of any job is the people in it. Some offices have a baker who recreates TV cooking show dishes just to see coworkers smile. Others have a remote colleague who drives in once a month with homemade sausage rolls and quietly disappears. The best reason to show up has nothing to do with the job description. I work remotely and we have an important day called Cat Friday.
Every Friday everyone shares cat photos in the chat. They post their own cats or someone else’s cats or even random cats spotted on the street. It gets hilarious. One of the managers showed off a gorgeous Thai cat. The chat practically melted with adoration & people asked if it was his. He replied that it was his neighbor’s cat. Then the next week he posted another photo with a ginger kitten that had round eyes and a carrot-like tail. He wrote that this one was his because he couldn’t resist and wanted to join Cat Friday too.
At work we bring treats to the kitchen for tea. We have fans of tiny bagels with cream. If someone brings them one coworker regularly proposes to me as a joke by putting a bagel on his finger. It’s become a tradition. I tell myself he has a difficult character and if we start dating we would break up quickly. It would never get to a real ring. Working in the same office with an ex is not the nicest experience. Better to stick with bagels and friendship. I got a new job and all the ladies at my new job are married.
They all criticize their husbands. Just a couple of months ago during a session of complaining about their husbands I mentioned how my sweet & handsome husband made pasta at home. That’s how it all started. It turned out that almost everyone’s husband is wonderful. Praising their husbands slowly became a tradition. Now while having tea they say things like can you imagine what my husband did. The ladies have blossomed and surprisingly things in the office have taken off.
I transferred to another department where there’s a tradition called the Red Folder. Once a week it’s secretly placed on someone’s desk. At first I was afraid and thought it was fines or a reprimand from the boss. But when the folder ended up on my desk I opened it and instead of reports found notes from all my coworkers with compliments for my work & a couple of movie tickets. It turns out this is how we choose the hero of the week who is officially allowed to finish work two hours earlier on Friday. We have a woman in customer service that works fully remote but once a month she will come in and drop off a box of homemade sausage rolls & go back home. They are unbelievable as a snack but I’m unsure how the whole thing came about.
We have a keen amateur baker who loves the reality show The Great British Bake Off. He tries to recreate the winning showstopper after every show and takes it in the next day to share. We are fully flexible but almost everybody comes in that day. We have a tradition of drinking tea at our office. It is so strong that we even formed a club called Mad Tea Party. The agenda usually sounds like this: let’s sit down and chat about our business. Apparently our employees have a lot of free time. I discovered this piece of art and was really charmed by it. Who knows maybe one day this masterpiece will make us rich.
Around noon the staff settles in to have tea with meat pies. One day a lady from another department rushes in & says “Girls is there something missing?” The head librarian sighs and responds “There are no men in the team Anna!” The lady is taken aback and says “I thought maybe I’d grab some sausage to put on the table too.” We laughed so hard we scared off the readers. A guy joined our crew. One day he comes to work with a huge cake. “What’s this? Why?” “It’s my birthday today. Help yourselves.” We treated ourselves to it.
But we didn’t realize at the time what would happen next. The following month Stan showed up at work with a cake. “What am I some freeloader or something?!” And so it began. Every month there was one and sometimes even two tea parties. This went on for about three years. Even after the guy left we kept celebrating birthdays. Then one day someone groaned that they couldn’t eat so much sweet stuff anymore. And that was it. The tradition was quickly forgotten.
We have a tradition at work where you bring candy on your birthday and put it on each employee’s desk. Just like we used to do it in our school days. Our MD is a massive cricket nerd. So every year in July we have a voluntary inter departmental tournament officiated by him. Awards are given for best shots & most entertaining. The rules state that the person has to be working in your department throughout the tournament.
So now us senior managers actively shuffle staff between departments trying to get the best teams and it’s not unheard of for catching skills to be asked about at interviews leading up to it. Our logistics manager has openly had conversations notarized by HR like this: “What are your catching skills like?” “I’m very good at catching mistakes.” “That’s brilliant but I meant actual balls. Do you enjoy playing cricket?”
Our department had ten people & it was customary to lay out a spread for your birthday first thing in the morning. I find this tradition strange because it’s your special day when people call & write & congratulate you yet no one cancels your work and meanwhile you have to bring bags from the supermarket. I suggested a new tradition where starting from January everyone should prepare the celebration for the birthday person. And the birthday person only needed to bring a cake. Everyone supported this idea.
Several winter and spring birthdays passed like this. Someone would bring a salad and others fruits or sandwiches. Mine was in October but by fall everyone had already forgotten about the tradition. I usually get a Kinder egg every few weeks as a snack and to show my colleagues I like them I build the toy and leave it at the desk as a surprise for whoever is away from the desk at that moment.
Every morning we have coffee together. Once or twice a week we have croissants or fruit baskets purchased by the company. Many employees attend various clubs during lunch breaks together including embroidery and painting and yoga & massage. My son had been looking for a job for a long time and finally got one at a fast food place. Two months later he brings home a bunch of trinkets including a keychain & a pen and a notebook.
He says he was named employee of the month and his photo was even hung up somewhere. A month later I ask him how it’s going & if he’s proudly carrying the title. He replied that someone else got named the employee of the month. I’m surprised thinking maybe my son isn’t working as well. But he says “No it’s just a way to support and motivate the newcomers.”
We get together at a restaurant at least once a month. It’s usually a Friday.I lunch at work every day. Also every week someone bakes cookies or pies without planning it & the boss brings croissants once a week. No wonder I can’t lose weight. We visited friends over the weekend and a French friend told us they have breakfast together every Monday. There are 14 people in their accounting services company.
Each person takes turns once every 14 weeks bringing croissants or chocolates or rolls. Then they all have coffee or tea together and talk about how their weekend went. I think it’s great. There are 4 of us in the office. When we arrive we start working right away. The only tradition we have is a Christmas lunch at a restaurant. When we get to our desk we log into Slack & say morning. People usually react with a little wave emoji to your login message. Except on Fridays people react with a little image of Rebecca Black for some reason.
At work it’s a tradition for everyone to contribute an equal amount to a gift envelope for someone’s birthday. No one minds and in the end all the money you put in throughout the year comes back to you on your birthday like an interest-free cycle of money. There was a tradition at work to draw a gift every Friday. It started when someone didn’t eat some tasty food at lunch. We decided to draw papers from a hat.
Whoever drew the winning paper would win and take the gift. So we decided to do this intentionally every Friday. We drew for candy or pickles. Everyone wanted to come up with a more interesting gift. It was fun and entertaining. Someone could win twice in a row. I never won. But then came my last workday before maternity leave and the long-awaited victory. It felt like I’d won more than just a treat. I went on maternity leave feeling happy.
Some workplace traditions get passed down through years of team changes without anyone quite remembering how they started. Others begin with one person who simply wanted to make a Monday feel a little less like a Monday. Either way they stick. Does your office have a tradition like this? Tell us in the comments.
The same kindness that makes an office feel like home has a way of showing up in families too. These real-life stories of family love & human connection are proof that the warmest places are built by the people in them.
