Recognising Birthday Milestones

The Agony of Cakes

The tradition of ‘cake on someone’s birthday’ is as long-standing as ‘drinks on Friday evening’ is.  But the sincerity of this ‘ritual’ may not be enough to build culture and could even be counter productive.

Seagulls

Do you have people turning up saying like a flock of seagulls at cake time.  They check “whose birthday is it today?”, grabbing a piece of cake, providing the perfunctory “happy birthday” before heading straight to their desk.  Here they’ll use the sugar content of the cake to pass through the afternoon lull.

Store Bought

Do you celebrate everyone’s birthday in the office with a cake?  If so, is this store bought?  Do you find there’s a law of diminishing returns once you’ve had the same tiramisu cake for the 20th time this year?

Bring Your Own Cake

Perhaps your office doesn’t do store bought.  That’s cool.  Maybe you are a ‘homely’ workplace that doesn’t believe in the virtues of commercial cakes.

Or perhaps you belong to a healthy workplace where cakes need to be gluten, egg, nut and taste free that commercial bakeries can’t supply.

Please don’t tell us your work “encourages cakes”, but makes the birthday boy or girl make their own cake and bring it in.  This is ridiculous as an incentive.  Not to mention the potential host to dysfunctional human behaviours – Have you seen “Bake Off”?

Missing Out

What happens to people that have a birthday on the weekend.  Or are on holidays when they reach that special milestone.  Or the other people who didn’t get their own slice of cake? They miss out.  We all move on and say “it’s no big deal”.

And that is the point.

Using the cake as a substitute for actual culture isn’t fair, isn’t easy, isn’t appreciated and has no meaning.

Better Birthday Celebrations

If you would like to see another option added to the menu for culture building, then perhaps you can ask for massages in exchange of cake every now and again.

This is what one of our clients did just this week.

If you feel the need for a new way to wish someone in the office happy birthday then they probably feel the need too.  Get In Touch (pardon the pun) and let us help you feel divine on your next workplace birthday – 1300 66 20 22.