Cake With A Side Of Depression
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“I was working at a crappy company a long time ago in December, and we found out suddenly that our whole division was getting laid off days before it happened.
Most of us knew it was happening a day before the year-end party which would be our last working day before the holidays and then we wouldn’t be coming back. We were all bummed, so our manager came in with a Christmas cake. He was going to be laid off, too. He said, ‘So, at least we should have a cake to celebrate the season?’ We all kind of agreed, but with broken spirits. But he didn’t have plates or spoons or knives or even napkins.
We all just had to scoop out a bit of cake with our hands and just eat it. All the while, a cloud of sadness hanging over us. It was quite depressing.”
They Had To Make Due With The Guests They Had
“My fifth-grade year, the nerdiest kid in my class sent out invitations to almost everyone in our grade.
His mom had planned a huge pizza party and had strung streamers and decorations everywhere, and we were going to go to Laser Tag after. I was the first one to show up, so we ate some gummy worms and watched Digimon while we waited for everyone else.
No one else came. She made us wait a couple of hours before just driving us to Burger King and taking us home to play Nintendo.
So, all in all, it was actually a pretty awesome party because, you know, Burger King and Digimon and Nintendo. I even got to take home three treat bags after the fact, and probably would have taken more but wanted to look polite and not like a candy-addicted diabetic-in-training, you know?
I would later hear from one of my other friends and a group of kids we were hanging out with that most kids had thrown out their invites or hidden them so their parents wouldn’t force him to go hang out with the unpopular kid.
Moral of the story: kids are not adorable bundles of innocence. Kids are awful.”
He Was In No Position To Make A Hasty Exit
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“I had the misfortune of attending a work Christmas party where we were fed some ‘banquet spiced chicken’ (if you’ve ever been to any catered conference ever, you know what I’m talking about) which wasn’t cooked all the way through and nearly immediately made me ill.
This would have been fine if we weren’t forced to watch a corporate video for 45 minutes. I was at the front, and there was a weird ‘you probably shouldn’t leave right now’ energy.
My stomach sounded like Bobby McFerrin singing underwater.”
She Basically Tricked Her Coworkers Into Coming To Her Lame Party
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“I went to a new co-worker’s house party where she ordered food and drinks only for herself and ‘her friends,’ telling everyone else there was nothing in the house to eat. We later found out that the cupboards had been filled with snacks that very evening, but the host didn’t think the guests should be allowed to have any. Not just that, she took another co-worker home early from work to buy these snacks from the grocery store, even asking her to contribute to the cost, but once the party started there was no mention of any of that food.
Most people at the party didn’t know each other really well, yet we were made to play some random card game where you get points based on knowing each other’s deepest fears and ambitions. It got awkward fast.
A few hours into this, a giant pizza arrived, and one co-worker picked up a slice and she was told, ‘Um, that’s for us’ (host and her friends), leaving the rest of the party to order food for themselves. I should add here that she spent the whole week urging people to attend this party, giving up their Friday night to be at her place
Horrible, to say the least. The host even suggested that if guests wanted to drink, they could contribute per drink consumed from her bottles, even though no one was told we had to bring our own. Where I’m from, you either let your guests know they BYOB or it’s understood that they are allowed to drink and eat from bottles and plates of food you’ve placed in front of them.”
She Made Sure Only Her Son Had A Good Birthday
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“I think I was around 8 years old when I had a joint birthday party with a friend of mine at this laser tag place. My mom paid for the laser tag for all our friends and for transport there, while the other mom volunteered to pay for the food and the cakes (one for each of us).
We had a fairly small party, so it was all of us as one team against another party as the other. The other party were some of the most vicious girls I’ve ever met: they were two or three years older than us, so they were faster and stronger than us, and they constantly pushed us around and whacked us after whenever we got within close range. One of them jammed the laser blaster into my stomach. It was a nightmare.
After that, we ate and we soon realized that a) the other mom hadn’t got enough food, and b) she didn’t get me a cake. My mom asked her where my cake was discreetly and the other mom loudly went, ‘Oh my god, you didn’t get your own daughter a cake?’ My mom had to rush out and go to the nearest supermarket to get more food and a cake for me. I never ended up getting any cake because the other mom sliced all of it up and put in the gift bags for everyone else (her defense was that she also put slices of her son’s cake in the bags, and the slices were the same size; however, since his cake was bigger, only a quarter of his went into the bags).
She later tried to make it up to us by inviting me to her son’s football club after school. It turns out, it was a private invite-only club and she denied she invited us when we showed up, so it looked like we’d just forced our way into the club. She then started a year-long campaign of making us look like entitled brats and convincing all the other parents to start excluding us from all school-related things. This progressed to all of their kids bullying me for a year straight.
We later learned this was all because she was jealous I got better grades than her son.”
A Disorganized Reception Leads To Hungry Guests
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“I went to a wedding reception and dinner which was, for some reason, overbooked. Though there was plenty of food, there literally were not enough places to sit and no assigned seating. The worst part of it was: there would have been plenty of seats if only people had agreed to eat in shifts, but the people who arrived first ‘saved’ seats for their friends. We tried sitting in several places, but each time, someone spoke up and said, ‘Sorry; that seat’s saved.’
At any given time, half the seats were empty because the people who had claimed them were off talking to someone at another table. After going through the buffet line, my wife and I had to go outside and sit on the concrete steps while we ate, and while the mosquitoes ate us alive. We left as soon as we were done eating.
And my wife is a musician who played during the wedding. She had refused payment because she was a friend of the bride. At the end of the wedding, we had to pack up her sound equipment, which is why we were among the last to arrive at the reception.”
They Came To Eat, Not Babysit
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“Last summer, my dad’s work friend invited our family to a barbeque for Memorial Day. Now, my dad’s a little older than his coworkers, so my youngest sibling is 17 and most of his coworkers’ kids are around 8 years old.
We got there and my dad and brother went out to drink with the guys and cook some meat and all that jazz. Meanwhile, after hardly introducing herself and ignoring our presence, the hostess led my younger sister and myself downstairs where the kids were hanging out and just left us there as if we were going to be the unpaid babysitters for 20 kids.
I left that kiddy dungeon and sat in my dad’s chair/armrest for the rest of that extremely awkward bbq and have avoided seeing that rude witch ever since.”
The Worst Place She Could Have Possibly Thrown Up
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“My senior year of college, two classmates and I rented a big, crappy house in which we held big, crappy parties most weekends. We were all theatre majors, so every time a show opened or some other big event occurred in our major, we invited everyone over afterward to get sloppy and stupid.
One of our last parties before graduation, my roommate invited her friend from high school down. He seemed like a pretty nice guy when I met him during the day, and at the party he was even nicer, giving out party favors to all of our friends in my roommate’s bedroom!
Now, I’m not too prudish about that type of recreational activities people use. Though I wouldn’t do coke myself, I don’t necessarily have a problem with other people doing so. But this dude was a bonafide dealer. Sooo…I drank a little more and avoided my roommate’s bedroom.
Flash forward a few hours, and suddenly some coked out chick I didn’t know was puking in our fridge. Plenty of people have puked at my house (it’s what you get when you throw parties), but never in my fridge! I had just gone grocery shopping earlier that day, so I wasn’t too happy. At least this girl was kind enough to move over to the sink for her second wave.
As I accompanied the girl out of the house and called her a cab, her friends arrived and were all like, ‘WHERE ARE YOU TAKING OUR FRIEND, SHE’S SICK! WHO ARE YOU?!’
I responded: ‘I live here, and your friend just vomited on my cauliflower.’
The friends were also pretty wasted… not sure if they were coked out, but they may have been. Anyway, they shouted a little bit at me, but when they realized that I was not actually doing anything wrong, they started shouting at their friend for being ‘such a freshman.’ By this point, the girl was sitting on my lawn and pulling up the grass. I explained that I had called a cab and told the two others to just wait until it got here and to please get their friend home.
Back inside, the party was starting to wane, and I was grateful because I had a fridge to clean… But when I got to the kitchen, there was the dealer: whistling a happy tune and cleaning the puke out of my fridge. He looked at me and said, ‘Hey, don’t worry, man. I’ve got this!’
The next morning, the dealer was gone, but the fridge was spotless. He even bought me some new cauliflower.”
When The Secret Came Out, Everyone Lost Their Minds
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“A few years ago, my friend threw a big party at the house she shared with three guys. Everyone who lived in this house was in a relationship, and all of them had been friends since they were about 11. The morning of the party, it emerged that a few days before one of the guys had taken advantage of another guy’s girlfriend.
At the party, everyone was trying to keep this down low because only three people knew. I was told that the guy in question couldn’t come because he was ill and went to stay at home for a day or two. The entire story came out at about 2 am. Everyone was screaming, tears everywhere, so many punches were thrown, and the guy who did it wasn’t even there. The house was wrecked completely. It ended at like 4 am with me and a couple of other people just sitting on the steps eating the cupcakes someone brought staring at the mess.
That party (and the events leading up to it) completely destroyed a friend group. The guy that did it maintains that it was mutual. The girl it happened to maintains he tried to violate her. The four people that lived together divided down the middle and haven’t spoken to the other two since they moved out three weeks after the party.”
She “Didn’t Want Fat Friends”
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“I was invited to a sleepover in high school. The girl was a bit bratty, but she lived in this huge lakefront house and everyone wanted to go because they wanted to sleep in her mom’s mansion.
This sleepover party turned into a rich kid brag-fest. She wouldn’t let any of us touch anything she owned because it was hers. She showed off her birthday present – a tanning bed. Someone mentioned that we should watch a movie. We all agreed to watch something but she put her foot down and said we were watching a musical she wanted to watch or we could go home.
Her mom ordered pizzas for us and had bought adult beverages (we were all in the 14-16 age range). The girl dictated that we were to only have two pieces each because she ‘didn’t want fat friends.’
Some of the girls were bored with the movie, so we decided to do manicures instead. The girl came UNGLUED! How DARE we interrupt movie time. She ran upstairs and tattled to her mom, who then told us we had to put that stuff away and watch the movie because we were being disruptive.
We played truth or dare afterwards and we dared this girl to eat a third slice of pizza as a joke. She got so mad that she started crying, stomped off to her room, and locked the door. She didn’t come out for the rest of the night, but we heard her screaming and throwing things.
The mom came downstairs and unlocked her door, trying to calm her down. The rest of us just sat around, shocked at her behavior, and a few of us called our parents, asking for them to come pick us up (myself included).
I don’t think the girl ever recovered from this mishap. She eventually went on to have more problems, fried her brain, and now lives in this one-bedroom shack on the outer part of town and can barely string a sentence together.”
They Absolutely Ruined Canada Day
“I went to a Canada Day 2014 celebration at the Ambassador’s residence in Vienna, Austria. I was an intern at the Canadian embassy at the time and was curious to see what it’s like celebrating your national holiday abroad. For most Canadians, Canada Day is about wearing summer clothing (preferably red/white), having a BBQ/pool party, hanging with friends and chatting about fun things like summer plans, before ultimately going to see some fireworks. Some people even celebrate Canadian culture, listening and singing along to Canadian music at their parties.
Instead, it was a couple hundred people in suits. Very little red and white apart from the random flags draped here and there. The Ambassador opened with a speech about Canada’s role in the world, which, under Stephen Harper, was only okay. There was no BBQ, there were no fireworks, and the Canadian national anthem, led by the Ambassador, was butchered. There was no casual and informal conversation – instead, it was purely networking and talking about this or that diplomatic initiative/success. One rule of mine is to NEVER bring work to a social function; here, the name of the game WAS work. Still, I was determined to talk to people I’d never met and maybe hear about their lives outside of work. The only problem was that any attempt to mingle among diplomats was met by ‘Oh, you’re an intern? How nice.’
I ended up standing in the corner among the other Canadian interns, musing about how it was the weirdest and most uncomfortable Canada Day party we’d ever been to. We ducked out when the complimentary drinks depleted, went to McDonald’s (to make up for lack of BBQ) and then to MuseumsQuartier to enjoy the evening with friends and away from work. And then we had to go to work the next day (we also had to work Canada Day).
The only saving grace of that Canada Day was free drinks, relatively okay live music, and eventually an hour or two with friends away from networking crap. I hope I never experience so lame of a Canada Day as long as I live.”
He Walked In On The Most Ridiculous “Party” He Could Imagine
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“My buddy said he was throwing a Christmas Eve party and that I should bring two chickens because everything else was covered by people bringing to share. I paid my $20 for some fine stuffed chickens and got some of the most delicious (and expensive) hot sauce in the country too, because why not go out for your closest friends around the holidays right?
I showed up early and from the driveway noticed the lights were off. I figured that I must have been the first or that my dear friends had lit candles and were caroling or playing Yule-time games.
When I let myself into the living room, I was perplexed. The house was completely bare.
From somewhere in the dark came my ‘friend’ trudging down the stairs, dressed in nothing but his boxer shorts, wiping the spittle from his chin, his cheek still lined with bed marks and his hairy stomach grumbling like a rabid mongoose.
He mumbled something to me about the lights being shut off before he began tucking into my delicious poultry, ripping great strips of meat from the birds and stuffing them into his stupid face.
Though I didn’t want to admit it, my mind was beginning to realize that the whole thing had been a ruse by this obese sloth to get a free meal.
He remembered his manners long enough to offer me a glass of water and then he was back at it, half dressed, hunched over the living room table gorging himself on MY chicken and gargling down MY special sauce.
He was lucky he was late on his electricity bill because he didn’t get to see me sitting in the dark, tepid glass of water in hand, shivering with rage.”
“It Smelled Like A Dead Body…”
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“I went to my father’s friend’s 50th party when I was 13. I wasn’t allowed to stay home alone, so I was obliged to go. It is still the worst party that I have ever attended.
The party was held at a golf club that was half an hour away from my house. The place was really nice, but there was a big problem with it: it’s bathrooms weren’t working. I was supposed to stay at a golf club for four hours and not use the bathroom. There wasn’t even a port-a-potty outside, which meant I had to hold it in. The place was packed when I arrived. There were millions of people who I didn’t know wandering around the area, greeting the hosts and fueling on the appetizers. The appetizers weren’t of the best quality, they were just your run of the mill appetizers (like guacamole, chips and salsa, potato chips, etc.).
The following 45 minutes were just banter and a 30-minute introduction by the host that felt like I was watching a monologue from a Garry Marshall rom-com. It wasn’t until an hour into the party that it went down. After a roast from the host’s daughters and wife, my father and his friends set up a skit about the host’s life, which was terrible to say. Seeing grown men act out a bike race on tricycles was terrible, but seeing my best friend’s dad in drag was even worse. This guy was probably the most macho person I have ever known, as he actually worked as a lumberjack in Canada, so seeing him in drag was a pain to my eyes. My best friend was also sharing his disbelief. After an excruciating 20 minutes, all of the guests were supposed to put on name tags while the food was being prepared in the kitchen, with the name tags being of a fictional person or a celebrity. My friend and I decided to do Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, as our irresponsible 13-year-old personalities had taken over our brains that night. We were walking around when an attendee yelled at us loudly and forced us to tear off our stickers. Dejected, my friend and I went back to our table, with my friend putting a name tag that said Bill Cosby (again, we were 13). I didn’t put on my name tag. Then I spent the following time waiting for the food to come while downing my sorrows in my third bottle of soda.
When the food came, I almost gagged at the smell. It smelled like a dead body was covered in dog food and manure before being sprayed by a skunk and locked in a French outhouse for ten years, and tasted even worse. The host, as well as almost all of the attendees, were of Indian descent, and the chefs decided to make Indian cuisine but butchered it SO badly. The palak paneer was rancid, while the naan felt like it was left in the freezer for two weeks. I couldn’t eat after one bite and had to fill myself with two extra bottles of soda. Dessert was no better. There were twenty platters of cheesecake, all of which were the same flavor. The flavor itself was stale, and the texture was thicker than flex seal on top of memory foam. I threw it away after two bites before quickly finishing three more bottles of soda.
At this point, I had downed over ten bottles and wanted to ask my dad to leave, only to see a woman walk into the room, shouting that she was stabbed while clutching a car key to her stomach. To add insult to injury, she took a bite of cheesecake, saying that it was ‘the best thing she ever had.’ It was a dinner theater. For two straight hours, I had to sit through actors pretending to be detectives, with them doing stuff like singing ‘Party In The USA’ and covering each other in tablecloths and pretending to be ghosts. The actors didn’t seem to be interested in it at all, as they sounded like they were wasted. There was an intermission after the two-hour ‘show,’ and almost everyone left. My dad was slumped in his chair, too lazy to get up, and I felt like throwing up. My best friend was chugging bottles of soda, trying not to fall asleep. When the actors came back, they were surprised that everyone had left. They haphazardly put on a show, with the ending being that one of the detective’s exes was the murderer. I was asleep by the end of the act, and was later woken up by my equally tired dad. We both left, and my dad later said in the car, ‘That was terrible.’
And to this date, that is the worst party I have ever attended.”
