Ah, December. What a beautiful time of the year. Alas, there are plenty of hazards for the uninitiated. Let’s take a crash course in navigating these perils and keeping your reputation in tact.
1. Learn to channel your happy place at the pub
Next time you go to your favourite watering hole you may be thinking, “who tf left the gate open at the shitcunt farm?” This state of mind will slowly crush you over December if you don’t learn to go to your happy place.
December is a time when non-pubgoers descend in great hordes to sponge up the bar line and combine to create a mighty pub turd that will block the bowl of your good times. So while you’re waiting for Sandra from accounts to ask shit like “what kind of beer would my husband Ron like” just imagine you’re smashing cans on a beautiful beach of your own serenity.
2. Become piss-fit
With the weather warming up you’ll be thirstier than a 3 am Linkedin request to the work experience girl. This combined with the ample boozin’ opportunities you’ll have this month can spell trouble for the inexperienced.
The sooner you accept that you’ll be a bloated sack of fermented delights this December the better. Work on building a good tolerance so when you hit your first function you aren’t recreating the exorcist on your supervisor’s shoes after telling them you’d end your marriage for them in a heartbeat. (More on piss-fitness HERE).
3. Be armed with 5 key small chat points
Never underestimate the power of good small chat. Not only will it help you glide over painful social encounters with ease but it will also keep the topic off bigger questions like what’s going on with your crypto portfolio.
Prepare 5 superficial talking points to deploy at a moment’s notice. Keep them light, keep them fresh and you may just survive the smallchatpocalpyse that the silly season brings. IF you’re struggling just bring up Cricket Australia dogging Langer. That’ll do.
4. Know when to ghost
Awareness is knowing you’re in a bit of a state, enlightenment is knowing when to just ghost it. A strategic ghosting will not only save you from being the subject of next-day group chats or office gossip but it will also make you look mysterious.
A good ghosting may also prevent some excessive booze-induced bonding with coworkers. There is no unthreading that one. Suddenly the person at work you didn’t mind in moderation is up in your shit demanding a post-piss friendship. Maybe you weren’t ready to take it to that level. If only you’d ghosted earlier.
5. ABG – always be grazin’
With the right social calendar, you may not need to buy food for most of December. Just live off the fat of the boardroom table for as long as you can. A belly full of platter fodder will also protect you in situations where a tipple turns into a full afternoon session. As tends to happen in the silly season.
You don’t want to be the pondless goose at the end of a work function wondering how things could’ve gone so differently if you anaconda-stuffed that exquisite charcuterie board several hours before. Alas, you’re sloppier than a microwaved Whopper with cheese.
6. Keep an optimum distance from the sloppy guy/girl
If you feel yourself getting over refreshed, take note of where the bigger disgraces are located at the party. You want to stay close but not too close. You want your own state to be comparable but not ASSOCIATED with theirs.
This is a very fine art. If you get it right, everyone will just remember Jim from accounts as the pondless goose. Get it wrong, then it’s Tim and Jim aka dumb & dumber getting laughed at for the remainder of the year. Tread carefully.
7. Have a smear campaign ready
OK, so the worst possible situation has occured. You were unanimously the biggest dick head at the party. It’s a rotten feeling and one that hangs heavy on your shoulders. So what can you do? Well, playing dirty is all you’ve got left.
Don’t feel too bad about this dog act, after all, your target will be the one who gets too much pleasure in bringing up your own disgraceful conduct. Something juicy like you overheard them talking shit about everyone to the office manager at the party or that they shat themselves in an Uber. Just like that, you’ve neutralised your greatest source of angst.
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Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?