Today was the last day I was working in office before my birthday so typically it would be the day my department eats cake. We ate no cake.
2 months ago my dept head started a new policy where whoever had the last birthday buys the cake for the next persons birthday. The problem with this policy is that half the dept was never told about it. I only learned of it last Friday when a colleague asked me what kind of cake I wanted. In the 2 previous years I’ve been here there’s been a cake on my birthday bought by management. So I was like under no circumstance will I let you buy me a cake, this person is less senior than me and makes less money. So when mgmt checked in with him to make sure he was prepared for my bday he told them what I’d said. My supervisor sent out this long email about how this is to build community and celebrate each other but if you don’t want that you can opt out (implying strongly that this information was not completely unknown to me until the day before).
This is when I fucked up. I reply all and ask when was this discussed, was there consensus and what are the rules—then jumped straight to if the company buys my cake, let’s have cake but if my coworkers are required to take time out of their day and money out of their pocket opt me out.
The dept head replied all at 9pm (didn’t see til morning) basically you all need to read your emails better (there was no email) if you don’t want to participate have it your way.
Fine. Whatever, he’s an invisible do nothing that mispronounces words. But there was an effect on the vibes in office this morning. Not to toot my own horn but I’m pretty well liked, I can make people laugh, happy to help and I’m in a good mood like 80% of the time. I wore a nice shirt today, did my hair and make up because in my mind today was my birthday at work. I knew there would be no cake but surely they’d put up the bday decorations we put up for everyone and people would say “hey happy birthday” and then look back at their computer. There was nothing. Nobody said anything to me for the first 90 minutes I was there. My supervisor didn’t respond to the original email nor speak to me in person about it. And none of my coworkers brought it up.
I lost 3 years worth of charisma in a single night. I’m equal parts mad and sad. But I’d rather eat glass than buy one of these fuck faces a cake.