self loathing

[sanity girl]

I used to work for a literary agent. The first year I was there we held our christmas party in our tiny offices where we served industrial strength champagne cocktails and dodgy quails egg canapes. Needless to say I got wasted, towards the end realised things were taking a turn for the worse so I quietly sneaked off outside to offload in the gutter. Mid-retch I sensed a male presence asking if I was all right. With my drunken logic I assumed it was a sinister stranger with bad intentions, so I told him to f*** off. Unfortunately he was one of our top clients. Luckily he saw the funny side.

[Keef]

Okay, I've not had many office xmas parties, but the one I did have is a story to match most.

In Liverpool in a big posh hotel. The previous week I had won a large bottle of bacardi on a "spot the ball" card at work, and as I was a bit short of cash, I decided to have a couple of early drinks. So, after drinking the entire bottle, I realised it was time to go and I hadn't eaten.

Met my work friends in a bar in town, all dressed up in Dinner Jackets and bow ties. Carried on drinking...

Got to the party, and can honestly say I don't remember anything in more than strange images. First of all I was trying to dance with a female friend from work, and insisted on spinning her round and throwing her about so much her boobs ended up out of her dress and on full display! She then started drinking to avoid the embarrassment.

Shortly after the DJ announced that the buffet was open, and a queue formed around the dance floor. Now, I remember being the only couple on the dance floor dancing with the same (now very drunk) friend. It wasn't until the next day we were told the music wasn't actually playing at that point, and the entire queue was basically pointing and laughing!

I found a watch on me later that night, that my colleague told me I'd won, and he'd collected because I couldn't get up the steps to the stage.

After this, I actually "sobered up" a little bit, at least enough to join my pals in town where we ended up in an O'Neil's (I know). Whilst in here I fell backwards down a flight of 10 or so stairs, and then sat at the bottom trying to look cool whilst another female colleague stood at the top of the stairs laughing, pointing and saying "you knob'ead".

At this point I thought it was probably time to go home.

I remember being at the bus stop

I remember getting on A bus

I fell asleep

I woke up, I didn't know where I was, I was still wearing a dinner suit, I was the other side of the Mersey, I WAS IN BIRKENBLOODYHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! Did I mention I was wearing a dinner suit?

Ended up paying a cab driver everything in my wallet (a lot more than the fare would have been) to take me home. Couldn't remember my street name, but knew I lived in Wavertree, managed to direct him from there.

Worst fear ever the next day, and easily the most drunk I have ever been. I have done all nighters ever since, but have always watched myself since that night. Now I get drunk, but I make sure I can remember MOST things the next day.

That night took me a long time to piece together with hazy memories and witness statements!

I miss that job, it was rubbish, but we had such a bloody laugh!

[Jah Lush]

At my first office Christmas dinner and dance party for a Sunday newpaper I'd starting working on at the tender age of 16 I got absolutely legless on beer, wine and whiskey. A new and friendly colleague of mine said that as his grandmother's house was nearby to the venue where the do was being held I could crash out there and we could go to work together the next morning. I got the spare room where all the Christmas presents were very neatly piled up in one corner.

His grandmother was a most welcoming and lovely old lady who went to the trouble of making sure I had a full English cooked breakfast next morning before going back into the office with my appalling hangover.

What we didn't know until the next day was that during my drunken blackout I'd woken up in the middle of the night bursting for a slash and had pissed all over presents.

[citizenED]

dear hoipolloi, having just seen your post in the family section I am even more impressed: you got tanked up to memory-loss standard and had to face three year old twins in the morning. Bravo!

[Keef]

I noticed that too. Fair play!

[hoipolloi]

you are very kind

husband has just informed me that I left my handbag (not the lost one) (containing mobile phone, purse, various other items) on the doorstep all night. Lucky the other residents in my road don't get up very early and/or are an honest bunch.

[bigbadwolf]

Dear Hoipolloi, what you're or have suffered is known as a 'Tarantino hangover' where by the unknown events of the night before will present themselves in a random order but will none the less lead to a critically embaressing ending.

[TillieTrotter]

I've had a fair few red faced incidences. One that springs to mind is when I worked in a bank when I was about 19 and the bank manager (who all of us girls called Tit Talker) was being really suggestive and creepy. I went into the loos and said in a loud slur to a friend. "Mr **** is such a flipping (or something like that) creep, he's just asked to take me for dinner". Guess whose wife was putting her lippy on in the same toilet! :-$

[hoipolloi]

When I was a postgrad student living back at my mum's for a bit, after a very very drunken evening she had to open the front door to me at 3 in the morning - I was attempting to open the door with a lipstick....

[Keef]

TT, it's not you who need blush at that one, if he's going to come on to 19 year old girls (ah memories) at a party attended by his wife, he's a knob, and deserves everything he got/gets.

All flirting with other women (or men I guess) should be done when the other half is safely away in another postcode!

Not that I have EVER flirted with anyone you understand! ::o

[TillieTrotter]

You're probably right Keef but it was still a cringeable moment when my friend was trying to shut me up by indicating with her eyes that the wife was behind me.

[david_carnell]

I once was rather ill out of my bedroom window at my parents house after a rather debauched night. I hoped the rain would wash it away by morning....

....not only did it not rain, I forgot that we had a porch directly under my window. The following morning, with a stunning hangover, I was handed a mop & bucket and had to confront my own diced carrot. Not pleasant.

And following on from someone else setting their shoulder on fire....at the Reading festival when I was 16/17 and had consumed too much cider (I was a classy youth), and whilst attempting to change the gas cylinder on a calor stove to make myself a cuppa, I left the valve open which casued a high pressure stream of liquid gas to shoot across the campsite hitting the communal bonfire and causing an epic backdraft arc of flame to head back towards me. With liquid gas covering my arms I resembled Johnny Flame from the Fantastic5! Dropping the canister and kicking it away I extinguished myself with no lasting damage only to discover the still-on-fire gas canister had landed next to someones tent and was boring a hole through the side of it with a 10ft jet of flame. Cue much shouting, screaming and commotion. In an inebriated state emptying a 25ltr water cannister onto a gas fire did a big fat nothing. It eventually burnt itself out in the midst of burnt tens, hyperventilating drunken festival goers and onl-lookers doubling over with laughter.

I now rarely go to music festivals. Or drink cider. Or use calor gas.

[Vickster]

This thread has really made me giggle, nice to know I am not the only person who has made a total fool out of themselves at an office party.

At the first christmas party I went to at my old firm as a trainee solicitor I got totally wasted on free champagne(having been a student for 5 years I took full advantage!). My memories of the night are suitably vague, but I have been reliably informed that the partner I worked for had to take me home in a cab (as I was too drunk to go on my own) and then get me into the gated development I lived in at the time and put me to bed with the help of my flatmate. He then left to go home amd found himself locked out of our flat, but locked in the gated development, and had to scale the security fence to get out, injuring himself in the process and leaving him stuck in the wilds of Salford at 2am with no cab prospects in sight. I still cringe thinking about it 7 years later! Needless to say, I dcided that qualifying into that particular department might not have been my best career move.....

[citizenED]

Well bully for you bunch of drunken sops. I can catagorically state that I have never been memory-loss drunk or making-tit-of-oneself drunk, ever. Particularly, I was never drunk enough to once ascend the stairs of a girlfriend's house only to find the wrong bedroom and disrobe in front of her flatmate who was shocked to the very core of his saintly being. Fabrication I tell you.

[jollybaby]

I had a bad one last week. Went out for a few drinks with work and had a bit too much pinot grigio. Somehow missed peckham rye and ended up at Sydenham station. Got a taxi home but then couldn't find my doorkeys. Mobile out of charge. Flat doorbell not working. Burst into tears and ended up hammering on communal door until the poor woman in the ground floor flat came to let me in. God knows what she must had thought at the sight of me wailing, mascara down my cheeks, contents of my bag all over the doorstep. I think boyfriend was equally as bemused - particularly when he opened my bag and my keys were lying on the top! Oh dear.

[MadWorld74]

Reminds me of the time my husband found my handbag in the flower beds the next morning after one of our work parties....I apparantly wanted to 'do some gardening' at 3am....shoe in the recycling box? God that made me laugh!

[VeryBerryCherry]

Oh my lord,

I have tears of joy at some of your misfortunes and tears of empathy at others! This thread has sent me into an asthmatic fit with the amount of laughter, nearly got CPR from Mr VBC.

So where's the strangest place you've all ended up after falling asleep on some public transport?

Or any other random places of drunken sleepiness?

After getting back last night from a shift in the city, I get a 3am phonecall from Mr VBC saying he "was on the bus, but going in the wrong direction" He rang me with his beer logic that it would eventually turn around and go the right direction back to East D. He then asked if I could ring him in 30 mins (after I had been doing a 14hour waitressing stint in a bar) so that he doesn't fall asleep and end up in PENGE like last time. I told him ever so politely to, "set your f***ing alarm you idiot".

He didn't.

He fell asleep.

He wasn't even on the 176 but the 12 and it went all the way up and back down to the depot in Peckham, from where he drunkenly stumbled home and graced me with the mother of all Sambuca breathe and slurrs of "I love you sooooooo muuuuch"

Oh the joy! I am a luck girl!