Heading to the work Christmas party? The 10 personalities to look out for

2 hours ago 1

By Rob Crossan

December 10, 2025 — 3.00pm

You’re here at the office Christmas party. How can you be certain that the evening won’t be a five-hour immersive experience where you feel about as comfortable as a snowman in a sauna?

Dear, sweet grog is the only way to lubricate a situation where we can see that those who have spent the past 11 months talking about leveraging synergies are, in fact, capable of wielding karaoke microphones and necking sambuca shots with terrifying enthusiasm.

Here, then, are the 10 people you’re most likely to encounter at your office’s festive knees-up. Consider it a survival guide to the most potentially awkward annual social institution since the school disco.

It’s office Christmas party season. These are the personality types to look out for (and maybe avoid).

The Holier-Than-Thou Teetotaller

This kind of teetotaller would be innocuous were it not for their insistence on talking about their specific lifestyle habit until everyone else in the room is pleading for either a lobotomy or an Uber driver.

Their sanctimony cuts through any booze-fuelled bonhomie like an industrial drill through sponge cake.

There was a time when anyone clutching a glass of H²0 at a festive bash could be rebuked with the old W.C. Fields line of: “I never drink water, fish f--- in it.” But now we have to be kind. Our only consolation being that the teetotaller is bound to leave early, claiming that they have a spin class at 7.30am the following morning. They won’t be missed.

The Gen Z Party Pooper

Trying to persuade a Gen Z to down tequilas and make merry abandon on the dance floor is like trying to make Sir Keir Starmer (or Clive Palmer) sound inspiring. With a list of food allergies that make Jack Sprat look gluttonous, the big takeaways from this generation at the office Christmas party are as follows.

Firstly, they don’t want to be here. Secondly, excessive screen time has given them the conversational elan of Mr Shake Hands Man. Finally, they still live with their mother who, by the way, is going out tomorrow night for her own office Christmas party. She intends, through the consumption of two bottles of house red, to drink more in three hours than her children have done in the past four years.

The Wallflower in Bloom

For 364 days of the year, the wallflower will have quietly gone about their business on the shop floor, leaning into walls as you stride pass, muttering apologies if they hold you up at the photocopier. But come office party night, a vivid transformation will occur if the wallflower is given the crucial ingredients of four double gin and tonics and a DJ willing to play Little Red Corvette.

Suddenly, the man who you’ve probably never seen without headphones in his ears and a Grisham novel wedged under his arm in the office lift is now a fully blown disco Lothario.

By 10pm, they’re bellowing for more shots. By midnight, they’re teaching the chief executive how to moonwalk. On Monday, they’ll be back to quiet, polite normality, cheeks aflame as everyone recounts their solo performance of It’s Raining Men at the taxi rank.

The “Organised Fun” colleague is keen for everyone to participate in games, with varying degrees of success.

The ‘Organised-Fun’ Team Player

No office party can ever be called complete without a team game. The initiator of all this can always be relied on to suggest charades between courses or a group rendition of Islands in the Stream in the smoking area. They’re also responsible for the festive decor of the room which subscribes to the Mickey Rourke school of aesthetics; i.e. every penny spent has made it look worse.

Herding everyone outside at the end of the night, they will lead the charge to see who can throw a pen into a hanging basket. Everything will, of course, be documented in the form of group photos and, by the time you wake up, a video montage will have landed in yours (and everyone else’s) inbox which will conclude, to your eternal chagrin, that you really do look appalling when you’re trying to balance a mince pie on your nose in order to win a handful of Cadbury Favourites.

The Awkward Boss

Since David Brent first appeared on our screens, every authority figure in the UK (and Australia) has used The Office as a self-lacerating documentary, analysing every scene to check if there’s any resemblance between their own behaviour and that of the manager of Wernham Hogg.

Real-life managers and bosses always find at least two, meaning that, since 2001, every office Christmas party has rendered them caught in the crosshairs of wanting to be eager to please but also fearing an HR tribunal if they compliment anyone on their hair.

Early in the evening, they’ll insist on buying the first round “for the team”, feeling that they have, in one genius move, instantly overcompensated for the past 11 months of budget cuts. By dessert, they’re attempting banter about “banishing KPIs” while everyone studiously avoids eye contact. A truly sagacious boss knows that their separate corner office, higher-spec swivel chair and superior salary negate any attempt to be part of the gang.

They will leave the Christmas party early, telling nobody about their secret fear that, the moment they step into their taxi, everyone remaining at the party will burst into a chorus of L’Internationale before making crude effigies of them with a cocktail stick, two gherkins and a chicken tender.

The Lustful Lush

Of course, it’s been slim pickings for the office lush in recent years. Outright lechery is definitely a thing of the past,but that doesn’t mean that Mr (or Mrs) Tickle has disappeared – far from it. They are merely lurking in the shadows and admiring from afar, until the office Christmas party rolls around. Even in these more enlightened times, for this person, the bash is less a social event and more a speed-dating event.

Fuelled by prosecco and poor judgment, they will attempt to flirt with anyone within a three-metre radius. They will, at various points, mistake a polite chat for chemistry, a mistletoe decoration for divine sanction, and the HR manager’s mild smile for consent.

By midnight, their colleagues will have formed a human chain in order to protect the work-placement graduate from the relentless onslaught of cheesy chat-up lines. Meanwhile, the people who really do fancy each other have long since scarpered in a taxi.

The Duracell Bunny

At 11.30pm, when most of the office has been lost to taxis, puddles or existential dread, the Duracell Bunny is still going strong. They’re ordering tequila. They’re finding an after-party. They’re somehow in possession of glow sticks.

What follows is always the same; the bunny will tell the remnants about an “after-hours” place they know. You will then get a night bus to what looks like an abandoned boozer near a glue factory 10 kilometres away. Frantically pounding on the door, they will tell their now miserable and quickly sobering throng that “they’ve never not let me in for a lock-in before – I do this all the time”.

But tonight is the night when this (possibly fictional) floating craps game/subterranean bacchanal is closed. Cue everyone grumbling about the additional cost of getting home while the bunny heads back to their place alone to play the Prodigy at cochlear-splintering volume.

The office Over-Eager Eater is never too far from the buffet table.

The Over-Eager Eater

Making a noise with their mouths that sounds like a lizard orgy in a bag of granola, their mastication skills (and accompanying din) will always warn you of the proximity of the over-eager eater, who sees any circulating canape tray as a personal challenge.

Deploying finger and serviette etiquette so unhygienic that it’s a collective surprise to the rest of the office that this glutton doesn’t gnaw the curtains of infectious diseases wards in their spare time, they are capable of holding five arancini balls in one hand and will always be carrying with them a bag big enough to hold Elton John’s piano. This is for the “leftovers” from the buffet, which will be deposited into the satchel in a manner which the over-eater thinks is surreptitious but is actually being observed by the bar manager, who is now certain that peeling the yellow labels off that job lot of “close but not quite rank” mini pork pies he bought from the supermarket that afternoon was a risk worth taking.

The ‘Keep-Talking-Shop’ Irritant

By day, they are a quiet producer of pie charts and diversity stats that nobody looks at. By night, after two glasses of red and a pint of craft beer, they’re a self-declared philosopher-king.

This person will corner you between the cloakroom and the ladies’ loo to discuss IT glitches, hot-desking issues or their incredible company podcast idea. They mean well, but as they gesticulate wildly with a half-empty glass of merlot, you’ll soon have confirmation that, even at the Christmas party, they have absolutely nothing whatsoever to talk about other than what goes on within the office itself.

Your only option is a furtive escape to the dance floor where Love Shack will feel like a genuine act of mercy.

The Nostalgic Veteran

They’ve been at the company since email was a novelty and lunch involved pints, cigarettes and a trip to the bookies. The nostalgic veteran spends the night recounting parties of old, “back when we still had proper budgets”, and lamenting the loss of real Christmas spirit (and, by implication, real expense accounts).

They’ll wax lyrical about 1998, when someone photocopied their backside and it was hilarious, not a fireable offence. They’ll remind you of the day they told everyone in the office: “There’s this new search engine called Google, you must try it out.” They remember when landlines actually rang and operating the fax machine was the highlight of anyone’s day. Show any flicker of enthusiasm for the conversation, and they’ll offer to buy you a drink.

Accept this with caution; you’ve got a gratis glass of sav blanc in your hand but the payback is a 20-minute monologue about how the long-retired chief accountant could do a brilliant Fred Trueman impression. You’ve no idea who either of these people are. But that’s the beautifully eccentric spirit of the office festive party distilled; epic confusion, followed by a hangover and recurring flashbacks about (mostly) utter rubbish.

The Telegraph, London

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