Man calls out HR manager he's dating for thinking people want office parties over better pay

Office pizza parties have become a common distraction created by the management in the hopes that they will dissuade employees from asking for more substantial benefits at work and pay raises. But lately, this tactic hasn't been fooling employees anymore and many individuals are raising their voices against this practice. u/catacats shared a similar incident with the Reddit community that occurred in the office of a person he was dating at the time and he could not help but speak up against it. 

The post was titled, "I called out an HR manager for thinking people want office parties and not just better pay." The post started with the person making a note that he has seen several commenters on Reddit complaining about worthless office pizza parties that hardly do anything to boost the morale of the workers. "People just want better pay and a reasonable workload," he wrote at the beginning. "For 2 months, I have been dating the head of HR at a medium-sized company. The company has a mix of white-collar and manual labor workers."

Then he mentioned how the HR brings up topics like how well his company treats their employees by supplying them snacks, water, extra rest breaks and whatnot. Although his date seemed to be under the impression that these constituted anything more than the bare minimum, u/catacats saw right through these performative "benefits."

"Over dinner, he bragged about organizing a huge holiday party complete with buses to an extravagantly decorated resort event space. There will be prizes, such as iPads. I commented that they should just pay their employees better," the man further wrote in his post.

"I told him people would prefer to have more money that they could spend as they wish. He replied raising pay would cost too much, and anyway they have great retention. It turns out that the company admin wants to have their cake and eat it too," he continued. He mentioned how the company was paying their employees a little above minimum wage and was convincing themselves that they treated their employees really well and that the workers were actually happy with the treatment.

"At least it felt good to call out an administrator for their worthless parties that don't compensate for better wages. Without risking my own job," the post concluded. Several people who had to sit through pointless office parties instead of getting any monetary benefit from their companies shared their concerns and complaints in the comment section. u/zynn333 wrote, "I'm gonna take a wild guess that his head of HR role pays better than the other people's salaries. I wonder if he'd be happy to lower it to the other people's salaries in turn for a party and an iPad contest since he doesn't see it as a big deal."

u/No_Strategy7555 commented, "I remember doing 3rd party work at a chip manufacturer in the early 00s. I came in on Friday and they had pizzas all over the place, like maybe 30 for a staff of 100 max during each shift. They told me there were lots of extra and to grab a plate. I said thanks, but I don't want to take away from your party and he replied don't worry, they give each shift $2000 every month to spend on take out/ordering in food. The last place I worked at got deli sandwiches from the grocery store for our yearly party that took place in the dirty cafeteria."

u/Kira_L_Mello_Near quipped, "Pay people better. That is the only way to keep employees happy. Pizza parties are for school children." u/BuckeyeBentley noted, "Depending on the size of the company and the size of the party he's probably right. Let's say you spend $5000 on a holiday party for a staff of 100. $50 a head. How far is that $50 going to go if you instead break it up into their salary? 50/2000 = 2.5c/hr raise for a full-time employee or a $50 bonus. Both would be seen as extremely insulting by staff and backfire."