03rd Dec 2007
Comparing Your Holidays at the Office
Check out the tips in the Working Mom’s Guide to Surviving Holidays at Work It. While adjusting your expectations, multi-tasking while waiting for meetings to start, and shopping on-line are helpful for most of us, I think the best tip is to avoid making too many comparisons of your holiday celebrations to those of others.
Don’t get caught up in the office comparisons. Women love to talk about who’s got the most done for Christmas. Meanwhile, you stand there loading up on coffee and hoping no one drives by your house to see the Halloween pumpkins still on the porch! This year, be the first one to admit that you haven’t put up the tree yet. Then watch how many other women relax and admit their realities, too.
In my own cautious way, I actually only advise honesty and sharing among people you trust. Sharing with a best friend at work is a great thing. Sharing with someone you don’t trust is generally not wise. However, if you can find a moment with people you trust to admit that you got the pumpkins on the porch, you’ll have created a genuine moment of connection. And that’s a wonderful thing.
Today I mentioned that when my M-I-L gives us Christmas decorations I thank her nicely and put them in a box in the bilge. Oh the reactions of horror that generated! “You don’t decorate for Christmas?” “No, because then I would have to take it all down later.”
You’d think I was talking about my annual slaughter of baby kitties or something.
Did you make the comment to women? Just curious as the author of that quote makes it clear she thinks this is a woman thing (and I’d tend to agree).