I know some people love Halloween, but can we keep it out of the office? This is not to say that you can’t go out and have all the drunken, slutty, costumed fun you want with your friends after hours— I just don’t want to deal with it at work. Remember, we’re not friends— I’m just barely tolerating you for 8-9 hours a day, and if I win the lottery, I’ll be flipping you off on my way out the door. I don’t want to be the killjoy, but it’s just that I think there’s no joy in this to start with. Consider:

#1 Let’s not bring sexy back to the office

Every year there’s an office Halloween party, and of course there’s inappropriate costumes. Susie from accounting always has something that elicits:

• “Did you see what that slut is wearing?!” from the jealous, gossippy, control freaks who look for something to be outraged by in everything.
• A litany of sexual acts that they would like to perform with Susie from accounting, and of course which they are sure she is up for. From the boss and a few other neanderthals who somehow think I want to hear this.

I don’t want to hear about how that costume makes Susie look like a slut. And I sure as hell don’t want to hear the boss discuss what he’d like to do to Susie, but you know, stupid HR rules.

And let’s just stop at how the boss is sure “she’s up for it”: Dude, she’s

• half your age,
• doesn’t even pay you the courtesy of laughing at your lame jokes,
• and seems pretty slow about putting our department’s expense reports through.

I think it’s safe to say she is immune to what little charm you might have. There is no universe where she gets drunk at the office Halloween party and looks your way.

So how do I get my coworkers to be not wear inappropriate costumes to work on Halloween?  @Gsouder over at Your Stupid Answers thinks he has the answer— don’t complain about the revealing costume, but embrace it. It’s the approach Colbert takes— he doesn’t complain about what people say, instead he agrees with them, but too much, and takes it too far until everyone is ashamed. I’m not sure that’s right for me. I’m a complainer, not a performer, and I’m not sure I could wear the costume he suggests. At least not without getting a wax.

This leads me to a new rule for the office I’d like to get your support on: No sexy before 7:00 (PM). Even on Halloween I don’t think I should have to know what color thong or bra someone is wearing just because I work in the same office. And as @anjeanettec points out in her rant about the sluttification of Halloween, none of you gals are too excited about this anyway. And do we all want to sit through a sexual harassment workshop next week just because we had to have a Halloween party? I know I don’t.

#2 I wish I could forget

But of course Susie from accounting isn’t the only one who dresses up on Halloween in the office. There’s plenty of others who insist on getting in the spirit of things, and there are consequences. Namely, we remember, or more accurately— we can’t forget. Seriously I wish people would think these things through:

• When the 300 lb. nerd comes in a skin-tight Superman costume, there’s just no unremembering that. That was two years ago, and yet every time he sends out an email, I still think of the comment “I guess Doritos are his Kryptonite.”
• “Even when I’m looking you in the eye all I can see is your junk in spandex.”
• Clowns. There is nothing in America more polarizing than clowns. Some people love them, some people hate and fear them. Do you really want to take the chance that your boss or your boss’s boss is a clown-hater, and that you’ll be condemned to dead-end work for the rest of you time at the company?

And it’s not just coworkers you need to consider before coming in looking like a fool. Last year we were desperately trying to hire a someone, and no one thought that calling them into interview on the costume day was a problem. Two of the people interviewing were in full, ridiculous costume. The person never returned our calls after. When I pointed this out, I was told the costumes let them know “what a fun office we are”, which is problematic because:

• We were going to expect that person to work very hard initially to catch up, so we needed a serious, motivated person.
• We’re not a fun office. We’re the opposite of fun— we’re overly political, nitpicking, backbiting, gossiping jerks, and that’s just my boss. And one day of costumes doesn’t make us any less awful.

@TheChrisAngel over at Your Stupid Advice thinks he has the answer: Hire actors! Read his full solution.

Finally, a meeting on Halloween is half straight, and half scary, so it looks like when the Addams family visits their neighbors.

#3 The Enthusiasm Gap

There’s always an enthusiasm and creativity gap at the office Halloween party. Some people go way over the top, and others phone it in. Two years ago one of the managers criticized people who didn’t put much effort into costumes. Really. Where in our job descriptions does it say we have to have good costumes? “Oh, I see here that you have an engineering degree from MIT, but what was your costume last year?”

My biggest concern is that our job performance should not be judged by our costumes. My friend @Kathy_L over at Your Stupid Advice thinks she has the answer for me with the ultimate MeetingBoy Halloween costume.

Any attempt to correlate effort in costume to success at work is ridiculous and insulting. The boss who criticizes someone for not being in the spirit ends up sounding like the restaurant manager in Office Space complaining that she has only the minimum pieces of flair. We have enough lazy, stupid people not pulling their weight, so it’s a bad idea to encourage them to divert what little effort they actually put into the job into picking out a costume.

And don’t get me started on when they give out a prize like getting a paid day off FOR THE BEST COSTUME. How about a paid day off for working all weekend on the presentation that won a new client? Or for working late for two weeks to launch a project that had to meet a ridiculous deadline, especially considering none of us get overtime?

But the thing that always makes my case about how ridiculous things have gotten is the voting for Best Costume. Because that’s when it all goes horribly wrong. When the shy girl wears the same costume as the popular girl, but the popular girl puts almost no effort in and still gets more votes. It always happens. Priceless.

And then there’s the cruelty. One year a few people voted for an annoying coworker who wasn’t in costume and he won for his “douche costume”. It may have been deserved, but it was mean. And the people who put on earnest costumes and made an effort were mad because the prize didn’t go to them, which it should have. I almost regret what I did.

So in conclusion…

Halloween in the office is great if you want to see your coworkers dressed as prostitutes, hear them gossip and badmouth each other, spend way too much time competing for something that won’t help us go home on time, and which creates new opportunities for favoritism and hurt feelings. So let’s just skip it and save all our resentment and hatred for the work that pays the bills.


NOTE: Thanks to tjduff08, devongeorge,  and several others who chimed in with their comments on what they hated about Halloween in the office which helped to shape this post.