The division of my company just had our holiday party this last week and I was shocked how many people actually attended and the lengths they went to to attend with little to no compensation. I was hired during Covid as a remote worker but prior to Covid our main office was located in the center of a large American city. A majority of my coworkers have been with the company for 5+ years and thus lived in the city and many rent or own condos nearby. However, during Covid that main office was shutdown and the company is renting out a small office space ~40 miles outside the city for those that still choose to go in, this is located in an affluent suburb where a lot of the executives live around so no surprise why that location was chosen.
The first holiday party since I’ve been working here was announced a few months ago and it was going to be held at a restaurant near the new suburban office. So it was expected you’d come to work at the office and everyone would head over to the restaurant in the mid afternoon. Since I’m a remote worker I never bothered moving out of my parents’ and happened to live in an adjacent suburb and could borrow a relatives car so it wasn’t any issue for me to attend. But for many of coworkers, specifically almost everyone under 40, none of them own cars because they simply can’t afford them. I was very surprised to see almost all of my coworkers at the party even a few people that flew in from out of state. I asked how everyone got there and they all either rented cars, which the cheapest I could find was $150 minimum when I checked prices, or took $100+ (each way) Ubers to get there.
We get to the restaurant towards the end of the day and we’re allowed 1 drink and there’s a half dozen plates of appetizers for ~40 people to share, roughly a $20 value per person. That’s it in terms of what the company was covering, anything else had to be paid for out of pocket. This felt like such a slap in the face for my ~2 dozen coworkers who spent hundreds of dollars to attend this gathering. It was by no means required to attend and if I was in their situation I would’ve happily stayed home and not wasted my hard earned money just to see each other face to face, I don’t see any world in which I’d have so much dedication to my company to do that.