Gossip Boi: Parties

Another highlight from the series entitled Gossip Boy – later re-branded as Gossip Boi on ATV Today. This, the final instalment from the first run, was published on the site on November 11th 2007. Entitled ‘Parties‘ it was issue eleven. We have kept highlights from across the three Gossip Boi series on ATV Today for reference and, hopefully, your enjoyment.

Parties are meant to be fun occasions but when they are run like Boot Camp and the fun is ‘structured’ then maybe parties aren’t fun at all but a chore. Gossip Boy reveals all from The Streets of London.

Gossip Boy must be on a roll with work-related events and attending them. Last week it was a drink with work colleagues and this week Gossip Boy was tempted to attend a works party. The promise of free food, booze and disco was the bait that drew everyone else, including Gossip Boy, in but if we had read between the lines perhaps we would have chosen differently. When arriving and the party Gossip Boy and friends were instructed to sit at a table and form a group for a quiz – a quiz we weren’t warned about. Having formed a group we were then instructed to split up as the group could only be five members and we had seven. Reluctantly two members of our group departed to join another. Already people were beginning to regret attending and when the topic of the quiz was announced, the 80’s, everyone wished they had stayed at home instead.

Twenty obscure questions on the 1980s followed by several work-related questions – oh what fun. Testing our knowledge of the decade few in our group even remembered and some weren’t even born in. Gossip Boy looked out across the room and the other teams and wondered how many of them would know much about the 1980’s. Most of those in attendance were the youngsters of the company and those older ones who were there probably remember more about the 60s than the 80s. The first question was asked and we didn’t know the answer and so it went on. Everyone looked around rather bemused at the stream of bizarre questions that followed until it got onto the work questions and then everyone just gave up.

If the quiz wasn’t bad enough we had to endure several ‘party games’. Gossip Boy was just waiting for pass the parcel to come along. The first ‘game’ involved a long line of string and everyone having to stand on it. Then, without talking or using phones, everyone had to arrange themselves in birthday order. January at one end and December at the other. Everyone cheated. Everyone wanted the game to be over so they could return to their friendship groups, drink the free booze and bitch about everyone else. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife in that room. Everyone sticking to the circle of friends that they know, glancing around at everyone else, bitching about those they did not like. If the party games were meant to encourage us to work together they failed, it just encouraged us to cheat.

The next party game involved post-stick notes with names on stuck to our foreheads. We had to ask questions to the person standing opposite us about who we were and try to guess. Once again everyone cheated. How the two organising all this ‘fun’ did not realise is beyond Gossip Boy for the cheating was most obvious. No one really wanted to take apart. Well apart from the office bike who fought her way through the two lines, pushing people out her way, to stand opposite the boy she liked. It provided the most amusement of the night to see how desperate she was to stand opposite someone she so desperately likes but who doesn’t like her. Perhaps her reputation – having worked her way through several office boys – has damaged her chances.

The final game involved getting into groups of eight, linking hands, swapping, linking hands and then trying to get back into our original positions. Cheating was now standard. And once again everyone cheated. When attending work parties if games are on the agenda you expect them to be slightly more fun and less child like than the ones we had to endure. Where were the drinking games?

Gossip Boi began to wonder whether he was right to miss those parties that had gone before. Did they all end up like this? Pathetic games designed to encourage us to work together but just encouraged us to cheat? People stay firmly within their friendship groups. Bitching and backstabbing are active everywhere. It sounds similar to a night out in Soho. People staying within their own friendship groups, looking down on others, bitching about others, and the few desperate individuals who are overly keen to pull someone and will go to any lengths to do that. In fact the office party was more like a night out than you would think.

Usually, Gossip Boi stands back and watches, on these nights out, as everyone bitches and dances and makes fools of themselves. At this party, Gossip Boi was forced to take more of a part than he would usually thanks to those silly party games. But this still provided Gossip Boi a chance to see how similar different environments are to each other and how the same patterns of behaviour reoccur. It also made Gossip Boy realise he was oh so right to miss those previous office parties and will return to such ways in the future.

Gossip Boi

xxxx

This, edition eleven, is the final in the current run. Gossip Boy will be back next year on ATV Today.