Tree!
“Join in“, they say.
“Be happy“, they say.
“Put some decorations up“, they say.
Well, OK, normally I’d just shake my head and mutter quietly about the idiocy of putting bits of shiny foil on a soon to be dead fir tree but it turns out Christmas decorations can make me smile. The effort we have in our office, for example, makes me piss myself with laughter every time I walk past it. The girls tried hard to make it look festive, but the tree they were given is just so sad that no amount of decoration is going to help.
So we’ve lost a bit of money recently [yes, and the sun is a bit warm], but we’re still a tier 1 investment bank (we must be, only the big boys could loose the amount we did 
) so you’d think they could have given us better. At least the ones in full view of the public actually look like Christmas tress should.
Oh, and the cutout bit where the tree is normally where a minion would sit, but we’ve got a few free desks these days after our last round of involuntary separations from payroll.
Well what do you expect for 5 minutes work and £5 worth of decorations, done at 5.25 on a Friday night - Times Square?
OR
Perhaps the tree within the department reflects the size of bonus and general staff morale - see what other departments have? Are you losing out?
OR
As the tree is occupying a desk, it may be cheaper to employ than a real person. Check if it’s actually doing your job. If it is, be very afraid.
The tree has been up for a week or so, and I think the presents were a recent addition. I don’t expect time square, but they’ve got some nice ones downstairs, you’d think they’d want to maintain some consistency.
Most other departments don’t seem to have a tree. But then most other departments didn’t loose oodles of money (’Whats that? You’ve had a record year? We’ll see about that!’). Perhaps it’s meant to torture us, or perhaps that is the bonus pool and it was the only way they thought they could distribute it fairly.
The tree does sod sod all in the way of work, but does make people laugh, hence it’s actually doing a better job than me. I’d welcome redundancy, it would mean a stonking great big payout for me and a large holiday