Office collections for a colleague's birthday, wedding, or leaving do are a tradition, but they can raise awkward questions. How much should you give? And if you're the organizer, how do you ask without feeling like a loan shark? This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
The politics of the office whip-round are so sensitive that everyone the BBC spoke to asked not to use their real name.
For those on a tight budget, the rule is simple: only give to colleagues you've worked with directly. Lucy, a senior therapist in healthcare, says: "If we haven't worked together, my purse is staying shut." She adds: "There's a blunter unspoken truth: it also depends on if I like you. One colleague's whole demeanor annoyed me, so when she moved roles, I wanted to celebrate with my own drink - not give her money."
Former music journalist Layla is similar, only contributing if she "really likes" the person. Yet she often avoids office collections on principle, disliking how impersonal they can feel. "I'd rather buy my own gift for someone I care about. I hate having to be forced to contribute to a joint collection out of some rubbish sense of obligation," she says.
Barker has a decade's worth of experience organizing and contributing to various collections at a large multi-national company, where he works in research and production. He says it's normally the same half a dozen people that contribute generously, irrespective of the person or the occasion.
The average a worker gave to a collection was £11.65 in the first three months of the year, according to analysis of over 5,000 contributions by website GiftRound.
Junior workers can often face the biggest dilemma. Felicity, now mid-career, remembers one horror story from her first job as a teenager. Working at a car garage aged 17, she was suddenly thrust an envelope to give money for a mechanic who was retiring. The team was small and tight-knit, so everyone was expected to contribute. "Not only did I not really know anyone at that stage, but I also had no money to give - I was still living at home and being paid hardly anything. As it was after lunch, I'd used my notes. In a panic I threw in all the spare change I had left, basically a load of coppers," she says. "I thought I'd got away with it until the person collecting shouted 'who on earth put in all this change'. Everyone laughed and I couldn't ever admit it was me."
Today, Felicity usually gives between £5 and £10 but goes up to £20 for a close work friend or long-time colleague.
Barker says it tends to be rank-and-file workers who contribute most often. "Surprisingly – to me – they're not some of the best paid people in the department," he explains. "Often those in senior positions don't give."
Those on big wages not paying their way may seem stingy. But the reality from the top can look very different, as former senior civil service veteran Darren explains. In a leadership position managing over 200 people, many of them contractors, office collections were common as staff churn was frequent. Darren found the implicit expectation to give as director became overwhelming. "Eventually I found I just couldn't keep up and would be spending hundreds, often on people I didn't know at all," he says.