The Invisible Labour of Office Celebrations
There’s something quietly devastating about watching someone leave a workplace after 15 years with nothing more than a perfunctory goodbye. Recently, I came across a discussion from someone who’d just witnessed exactly that – a colleague retiring after a decade and a half of service, and not a single morning tea or farewell gift materialised. Just… nothing.
It got me thinking about who actually does this work in our offices, and more importantly, why it so often doesn’t happen at all.
The responses to this person’s question were telling, and frankly, a bit depressing. The pattern that emerged was one I’ve seen play out throughout my entire career in IT: this kind of emotional labour – and make no mistake, that’s exactly what it is – inevitably falls to women, particularly middle-aged women or admin staff. One person put it perfectly: “It’s usually the EA or the nearest middle-aged female.”
What really struck a chord was the story from someone who was the only woman on a team of men with identical job titles. Despite being peers, she was the only one expected to organise celebrations and farewell events. But the story that really made my blood boil was about an Executive Assistant – one of only two women in an office of two dozen men – who had to organise the chocolates for International Women’s Day. The company then posted photos on LinkedIn of all the men eating those chocolates in celebration of “women and diversity.” The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
This isn’t just about whose job it is to buy a cake. It’s about what work is valued and what work is invisible. Throughout my career in DevOps and IT, I’ve watched this pattern repeat itself endlessly. The technical work gets recognised, measured, and rewarded. The work of maintaining team cohesion, remembering birthdays, organising farewells, checking in on people – that work just… happens. Or it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t happen, we end up with situations like that 15-year veteran leaving to crickets.
The most honest response I saw was: “It tends to fall to the people like you who feel bad about nothing being organised! The managers don’t even notice.” There’s a particular type of person who can’t stand seeing someone leave unacknowledged, and workplaces have learned to exploit that discomfort. These people become the unofficial keepers of workplace culture, usually without any recognition or budget for it.
What happens when people wise up to this dynamic is equally telling. Someone mentioned they used to organise everything, but stopped when they realised not a single person had ever acknowledged their own birthday. Another person flat-out refused to take on that role, so now nothing gets organised at all. There’s a term for what happens when you’re good at this kind of thing: “performance punishment.” Do it well once, and congratulations, it’s now your job forever.
The solution some workplaces have found is to make it official. One person described their office having a monthly catch-all birthday celebration after town hall, with team managers organising farewells. This seems like the bare minimum of decent workplace practice – if we value these rituals (and I think we should), then they need to be part of someone’s actual job description, with time and budget allocated accordingly.
The alternative is what we have now: a system that relies on guilt, gendered expectations, and unpaid emotional labour. And when that system breaks down – when the person who usually does it leaves, or finally says “enough” – we get 15-year veterans retiring without so much as a card.
My daughter’s only a teenager, but I hope by the time she enters the workforce, we’ve figured this out. The expectation that women will simply absorb all the social and emotional maintenance work of an office shouldn’t still be the default in 2025. If workplace celebrations and acknowledgments matter – and they do, because people matter – then they should be resourced and organised properly, not left to whoever feels guilty enough to pick up the slack.
Maybe that colleague who retired after 15 years didn’t want a fuss. Maybe she was perfectly happy to slip away quietly. But she should have been given the choice. That’s what proper workplace culture looks like – not assuming someone else will take care of it, and definitely not defaulting to the nearest woman to sort it out.