birthday cards are causing mayhem in our office

by Alison Green on September 18, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m a team lead with a ridiculous problem. This January, a coworker who reports to me, Diana, said she thought it would be great if she kept a list of everyone’s birthdays and passed around a birthday card for everyone else to sign and then give to the birthday-haver. She said she has boxes and boxes of cards for all occasions at home, more than she could ever use, and it would be no problem for her to donate those.

I didn’t see it as a huge benefit, but also didn’t see it as a huge issue in terms of the time it would take, so if she wanted to do it, no big deal. I REALLY could not have been more wrong.

The first issue was getting the birthday list. HR wouldn’t just make her a list of our team’s birthdays, so she had to go around and ask people herself. Some are hybrid, some have meetings off-site, so this took longer than it seems like it should. She finally got the list completed, and by that point it was mid-February. So she missed January birthdays. There were only a couple, and one of them joked that he would feel left out, but she promised to get him next year. She then started with the next birthdays, and again getting the cards signed was more work than she or I had thought it would be, due to the same issues she had when getting the list of birth dates. She didn’t start early enough with the first few birthdays and not everyone got to sign, so a few people were upset that they didn’t get a chance to sign and thought it would look like they were snubbing the birthday person. So I suggested she start earlier with the signature-collecting.

This went on for a few months and it was fine. Then, this summer, one of my other reports came to me and said she thought her work bestie, Jill, had been left off the birthday list because her birthday was in a couple of days and Diana hadn’t been around with a card for everyone to sign. It turns out that is exactly what happened; Jill had fallen through the cracks and her birthday wasn’t on Diana’s list. So we scrambled to get a card passed around. Of course it had many less signatures than the others because we only had a couple of days, so that was awkward. Jill asked me to make sure the birthday list was complete. I told her it was Diana’s thing, but I gave Diana that feedback.

A couple of weeks ago, Diana went on vacation. This coincided with a particularly busy time, so I was taking on some of her work and assigned other elements of it to team members. The birthday card thing did not occur to me, and apparently not to her. Well, we missed one, and that coworker, Mary, got kind of upset. She was sniffling in her cubicle one day when I took her some documents and I checked to make sure she was okay. I got a very long story about how her family is across the country, she just broke up with someone, her dog died earlier this year, and her coworkers forgetting her birthday just added to it. She was laughing a bit like she knew it was silly, but I felt bad about it. I didn’t have any birthday cards and I didn’t know where Diana stored them, so when I made a coffee run later, I bought a coffee cake for Mary’s birthday. We all shared it in the break room.

Last week, my manager told me she’d gotten complaints about the uneven birthday acknowledgements and my apparent favoritism of Mary, and how apparently some team members didn’t even get cards. I guess Diana’s list STILL wasn’t complete and no one said anything on those occasions. I told her I would speak to Diana and she said, “Can we just stop this?” I pointed out we had to at least get through the rest of the year (and January!) so everyone got at least one card, or the mood would get even worse. She said some people had already missed cards and this just seemed like a waste of time and resources.

When Diana came back, I passed along this feedback. She said it’s not a waste of resources if she provides the cards, and she doesn’t mind taking the time. I told her that the list was still not complete, and people were getting upset. She sent an email later that day apologizing and asking again for everyone’s birthdays. I feel crazy. My manager wasn’t copied on the email, but I feel like she did tell me to stop the birthday stuff and Diana kept it up. But when I spoke to Diana again, she said she was doing it as a friend of everyone and would only get signatures on her breaks from now on. What can I do, anything? I can’t really police what she does on her break time. But then I am sure I will hear more complaints.

Kill the birthday cards now. Don’t wait for the year to be up. People should get it after reading Diana’s apology, but if they don’t, you can explain it.

As soon as I read your first paragraph, I knew exactly how this was going to play out because this is how it always — well, at least often — plays out unless you have a formal system that’s truly part of someone’s job duties and they’re held accountable to getting it right the way they would be with any other work duty. When someone just does it  informally on the side, it’s super common to miss people and to cause hurt feelings.

On a podcast episode a few years ago, I talked about a time when an employee came to me with the same proposal Diana made to you and I told her no because it was more involved than she realized: I would have to ensure she had a system for making sure she wasn’t leaving anyone out, and for adding new hires to the list, and there would have to be oversight to make sure we weren’t skipping anyone, and someone would need to cover it when she was out and take it over when she left. I’m quite sure she thought I was being ridiculous, but what she saw as an easy feel-good initiative was more of an expenditure of energy what she was picturing. This came up on the podcast in a discussion of times when you have to do something as a manager that might seem silly to an employee because they’re seeing it from a different vantage point, but you have to do it anyway.

So yeah, kill the cards. Explain to Diana that while she intended it as a morale-boosting effort, it’s ended up having the opposite effect on the people who were missed, and that you hadn’t accounted for how much time it would take to organize and get signatures, and that your own boss wants it stopped for those reasons. If she says she doesn’t mind spending the time on it, you should say, “I appreciate that, but given that it’s turned out be more than a few minutes here and there, it’s not something I want you spending your time on anymore.” If she continues to push: “I appreciate where you were coming from — it was a kind idea — but it’s causing too much disruption and my and Jane’s decision is to stop it.”

If Diana says again that she’ll do it on her breaks instead … well, she’s missing the point! You’d need to respond with, “People have the impression that this is an office-sponsored activity, it’s causing drama, and you cannot do it at work anymore. If you choose to give cards outside of work, this history means that it’s highly likely to still be perceived as something ‘from’ the office and lead to more hurt feelings, which would make it a work issue, so I certainly hope you will have the judgment not to continue.”

If this doesn’t settle it, you could say, “Is there something else going on that would help me understand why you feel so strongly about this?”

You can’t let birthdays cause this much drama.

You may also like:
{ 387 comments }

{ 387 comments… read them below }

  1. Nicosloanicota*

    Poor Diana, I’m sure she did have the best intentions and has a bit of a blind spot about how is going. I’ve certainly been the younger employee willing to take something on and hurt and confused when my idea is rejected for reasons that are more obvious in hindsight. OP, is there anything you can do that might boost morale a bit and create some team spirit, but at a way less personal and difficult way? My old office did a monthly bagel breakfast and people were invited to share any good news they wanted to celebrate if they chose to. The bagels were company-provided, the sharing was opt-in.

    1. Joielle*

      I really like the “share any good news” framing! Not everyone wants to acknowledge their birthday, but it’s nice to have an opportunity to celebrate whatever people have going on.

      1. Dawn*

        I actually had to fight not to have my birthday on record with my management team at my last job; I’m fine with HR having it, of course, but I didn’t want my direct supervisor and anyone with access to their files having it (they asked us to fill out a Google Survey, nothing secure.)

        I know that I got a few weird looks, but I prefer people not to know the exact day, and I’m at the age now where age discrimination kicks in, and I don’t know who might end up with access to that information in the future.

        They, of course, just wanted to do something nice, and I sympathize with that, but ultimately it wasn’t something I was comfortable sharing and it should be ok not to share your birthday at work.

        1. Rebecca*

          I too hate birthdays. There’s dozens of us!

          My daughter and I share a birthday, and it’s awesome. No one has paid any attention to my birthday in 10 years now, because my daughter gets all the attention. It’s ideal, because my daughter loves her birthday and I don’t even have to acknowledge mine. My mom just makes me my favorite dessert, and that’s it.

          1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            Co-sign 1000000000%. I last celebrated my birthday when I was 21; I’ll do so again if I hit 100. It has been a struggle in some jobs to make people ignore it, because I got a lot of “SOMEone’s protesting too much!” blather when I said I wanted to skip it. I finally got them to back off when I said “let’s all go to lunch, like we do for every birthday, but just not mention it’s a birthday!” As soon as folks got their free meal back they were good. ;-)

          2. Paulina*

            I don’t hate my birthday, but I often end up hating what people do for it. My birthday is at a time of year that is a major holiday and also very busy in my line of work, so everyone is busy and things are irregular. I get that. Those closest to me are good about recognizing my birthday, and even something small feels meaningful from them; for those not as close to me, it gets handwaved at best and it feels like it’s just a checklist item. At work, during the time when we had monthly “let’s celebrate everyone with birthdays this month” they skipped my month completely and merged us into the get-together held late the following month. It felt perfunctory and like nobody had time. This was probably accurate. Fortunately we stopped having those “celebrations”. I prefer a workplace that ignores birthdays than one that reinforces that almost everyone else’s gets attention and mine doesn’t.

            I think it’s like a lot of other things that people think doing will make their coworkers feel warm and welcome and seen: if it’s a miss, it can easily have the reverse effect, as the LW describes.

          3. Sincerely Raymond Holt*

            This is such a classic example of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

            At my workplace recently someone wanted to start a meal train for people out on medical leave. I shut that drama train down right away.

        2. Analyst*

          This is why my current job asks if you want your birthday acknowledged on an onboarding form- if you don’t, it’s cool. We do a monthly birthday/baby/anything else quick get together at the water cooler with treats for everyone. Simple, covers everyone fairly and as they want it, and hey, cookies once a month!

          1. Cathie from Canada*

            One office I worked at finally said anyone who wanted a birthday celebration was welcome to bring in their own cupcakes, and that’s it.
            Worked mostly great (even then, there was still occasional drama!)

            1. Also Mimi*

              We did this at one of my previous jobs and it was so much easier than trying to coordinate for others. If it was your day and you wanted to bring a treat you could, if you didn’t want to you didn’t have to. So easy.

        3. ferrina*

          I’m also with you! I don’t mind the generic birthday celebrations like the monthly good-news bagels (awesome idea), but I always feel weird getting a card or recognition from my coworkers. I have some really bad memories around my birthday, so I like to pick if, when and how I celebrate (and some years I just don’t really celebrate, because that’s what makes me happiest). I like it best when I can completely avoid any acknowledgement of my birthday at work.

        4. learnedthehardway*

          Indeed!! The best birthday I had (and it was several years ago) was one I totally forgot about. I wasn’t reminded of it until my husband realized he had also forgotten. I would honestly have preferred to not think about it.

        5. Anon for this One*

          I too prefer not to be made the center of attention for my birthday. This year, I had a meeting with my boss scheduled on my birthday and TPTB used that meeting to lay me off. Would it have been different if there’d been an announcement of my birthday that morning? Maybe, but probably not.

        6. Dawn*

          Honestly what I dislike most about people knowing my birthday is that I worked a couple of roles before with coworkers who, um, got way too into astrology, and insisted on telling me what my birthday said about me and how we’d get along, etc. And doubled down when I asked them to please not.

          It’s not the only thing I dislike about it, but it’s right up there. I don’t want somebody deciding we can’t work well together or doing my performance review based on my star sign, thank you.

        7. Al*

          My company just added an opt-out option for having birthdays announced and celebrated in Slack. But announcing them is still the default.

    2. Turquoisecow*

      Yeah my current and past office both do a monthly birthday celebration that basically covers everyone in that month. If you don’t want to participate you don’t have to but no one is left out, and it’s a lot easier than trying to corral hybrid workers to sign cards by end dates, and the person in charge of the cards might be out sick or really busy and lose track of time.

    3. Reluctant Mezzo*

      I’m on an email list with an Actual Birthday System, and it works pretty well. But it’s not in an office and spreadsheets are involved.

    4. Tiger Snake*

      Poor Diana had everyone expecting her to chase them instead of being proactive too!

      Instead of it being, sign up if you want, be proactive about joining in, it was Diana that had to reach out to get birthdays, follow up when people didn’t reply, and also hunt people down if they don’t sign the card.

      The amount of emotional load and lack of people being responsible for their own participation turned this from A Nice Thing to a very entitled demand, and now Diana feels like it’s her responsibility that everyone is upset and that therefore she needs to fix it.

      1. amoeba*

        Yeah, I feel like a lot of problems come from that part. I mean, if it was truly just “sign up if you want”, there would still be problems when Diana is out of office etc., but at least it would be somewhat easier! I would have proposed something like this:

        – Put a shared document somewhere on the server where people can add their names and birthdays if they wish to receive a list. Send the link around via e-mail once, maybe twice at the most. If somebody asks you why they were left out, tell them they need to actively opt in and refer them to the document. (Is it possible to set up an alert if the document is changed? If yes, do so. And/or tell people/add a big red statement on top of the list that they need to let you know they’ve signed up so you don’t miss any new entries.)

        – For signing – put the card in your cubicle a defined period before the birthday. Send around one or maybe max two mails that it’s there for signing until date X. Maybe one mail a week before and one reminder two days before. Offer to remote people to sign in their place if they cannot make it to the office during that time. Whoever forgets, forgets. It’s opt-in.

        (Possibly: let people know that if you’re out of office when it’s their birthday, they will receive the card once you’re back. Would manage expectations and circumvent the whole “somebody has to take care of that job duty” thing.)

        But yes, in this case it’s already so messed up that I’d definitely kill the initiative, like, yesterday.

  2. Bookworm*

    I used to work in an office where there was someone like Diana. The problem was that there were several people in the office who did not want their birthday celebrated at all for various reasons. The birthday card person did not take their wishes seriously and continued to get a card signed for them. It took multiple people complaining to HR to get the birthday cards stopped for the people who didn’t want them. Just silly it wasn’t stopped right away.

    1. Lisa*

      I would hate having to sign the cards. I never know what to say beyond “Happy Birthday” which the card already says anyway! But I don’t always know the person well enough to write something personal. It was the same with farewell cards for people I barely worked with. Such anxiety! One of the many benefits of being fully remote — no more having to sign cards for people I don’t know!

      2. EvilQueenRegina*

        We could always tell (if we hadn’t already known) who one particular employee didn’t like by the way he signed cards. People he knew well got a personal message, most people got “Happy birthday, Fergus”, those he didn’t like just got “Fergus”.

        1. hello*

          I would not do e-cards, for security reasons. Too easy to slip in a virus or set expectations for phishing.

    2. ChattyDelle*

      this would be a HUGE issue for a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not to mention the missed birthdays, which is reason enough to knock it off

      1. Bookworm*

        Yes, plus some people just don’t want their birthdays recognized at all. I remember one coworker in that office had a close family member die on their birthday so the birthday card was a reminder they didn’t want.

    3. ecnaseener*

      Yet another reason why Diana’s system of chasing people down individually is absurd. At my old office, you put your birthday on the shared calendar if you wanted it there. If you didn’t want your birthday acknowledged, you didn’t add it. If you did want your birthday acknowledged but forgot to add it, it’s no one’s fault but your own, add it for next year. (If the whole office doesn’t have a shared calendar, any shared document will work, but the calendar is nice because you don’t have to remember to tell new hires, they’ll see birthdays on the calendar and figure it out.)

    4. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

      Thank you! People who love celebrating your birthdays: enjoy! But please widen your horizons a bit to understand that not everyone is like you. Some people have religious restrictions. Some have childhood abuse or other back-stories that make birthdays difficult. And some, like me, just don’t like aging or attention!

      1. AnonInCanada*

        I’m definitely one who hears you, Georgia! It used to big A Big Deal to celebrate everyone’s birthday at the office. Thankfully, you-know-what-happened-in-2020 curtailed it, and was never resurrected. Good riddance! I sure don’t need to be reminded of getting another year older.

        1. allathian*

          I get it that there are lots of reasons why people don’t want their birthdays acknowledged or celebrated, but the aging thing I sure don’t get. I mean I’m old enough for age discrimination to be a real issue in hiring, but what’s the alternative? I can’t get any younger but I’d far rather be 52 than dead.

          But I also understand that not wanting any reminders of aging is an irrational, emotional, and cultural issue that can’t be explained away by logical arguments. In cultures where old people are valued and have the highest social status, aging is seen differently than in the youth-obsessed West.

          Thankfully I’m in a culture where hosting your own party is standard procedure. So at every workplace I’ve been in where birthdays were acknowledged, it’s always been fully opt-in. After 2020 we’ve only celebrated milestone birthdays, though. In practice that’s 30, 35… until retirement.

    5. Sneezy*

      We had a similar situation at my workplace. Except the card sender was our boss and then our company started an employee recognition system that automatically wished people a happy birthday and solicited comments from their coworkers. It made my colleagues who don’t celebrate their birthdays incredibly stressed out, because they were forced to disclose their reasons for not celebrating – all cultural and religious and no one’s business (and at least one person was challenged on the validity of those reasons), and they also faced some inappropriate and bizarre aggression from our manager.

      1. Presea*

        Sooo much yikes. Your manager being aggressive towards people not celebrating should really have resulted in a firing or lawsuit or something. But all of this is just awful and if you’re still there and working under this boss as your comment seems to imply, I wish you the best in your coping with the bananacrackers/job search/revelling in the drama/whatever.

    6. Makare*

      In Germany, where I am, the custom is for the birthday person to bring in some sort of goodie for the office on their birthday. It has the advantage of being totally opt-in, at least in my current office—if you don’t want to acknowledge your birthday, just don’t bring anything in. My team lead gives us a bookstore gift card on our bdays, but we’re a small team of 5, so it’s easy to keep track for her. I vastly prefer this. We only do the card thing when people are leaving the company, which is fine by me.
      My last company made way too big a deal of birthdays—collecting money from everyone for a gift, and then brainstorming what to get them, and then someone had to go buy it and wrap it, and they would decorate the person’s desk with banners and balloons—it was ridiculous, especially with the size of the team (15-20 people).

      1. UKDancer*

        Same everywhere i’ve worked in the UK and also in Belgium. If you wanted to celebrate, you brought something in. If you didn’t want to do anything to recognise your birthday you didn’t have to. You could bring doughnuts (or waffles when I was in Belgium), organise drinks or anything in between or nothing at all which I think works very well.

      2. Clisby*

        I’m in the US, and that was the practice for the company I worked the longest for (and retired from). It was common to get an email like “It’s my birthday! Come by and celebrate with me by having a cupcake!” Or something like that.

        The only time I can think of where a card was organized was if the department was sending a sympathy card for a relative who died, or a farewell card for someone retiring. Maybe if someone had a baby, but I don’t remember that, and I had 2 children while working for them.

      3. Meow*

        My last job had the rule that you brought donuts on your birthday, and that actually turned out to be a little contentious. I brought homemade cookies my first year because I don’t like donuts, and no one ate them, and kept saying “it’s supposed to be donuts!”, which was honestly a little hurtful. The next year I brought nothing and people kept hounding me about why didn’t I bring something. Then enough of the team decided they were watching their eating habits and didn’t want to eat donuts every other week, so people would bring donuts and no one would eat them, but nobody would bring anything different either, since the tradition was donuts.

        Covid basically killed all the communal food, for better or for worse, and I think there was enough turnover that everyone just forgot about it.

    8. Prof_Murph*

      Yeah, I personally hate these happy birthday wishes in the workplace. Celebrating an adult’s birthday, including my own, isn’t my thing. My boss sends out emails on each person’s birthday and then that ends up being a whole round of reply alls with everyone saying the same thing. (In true grinch fashion, I have a filter set up to send all emails with happy birthday in the subject line to trash.)

  3. Pay no attention...*

    If your office just CAN’T let birthdays go, do a once a month something… doughnuts in the break room, happy birthday acknowledgement email, whatever it is…just once a month. Make sure that people are allowed to opt OUT of the list without any push back. If your team has a meeting, just announce the birthdays, “We’d like to acknowledge Bob and Jill have birthdays this month and wish them a Happy Birthday,”

    EGADS! I hate office birthday cards.

    1. The Cosmic Avenger*

      This. And I was kind of shocked they were trying to use paper cards when some people are remote. We used virtual cards even before the pandemic because we had full-time remote people who we saw a few times a year in person, but every day or week on video. Not that I think Diana should start this up again, she’s shown that she’s not organized enough, but with virtual cards it could work. We had a very organized person doing this with virtual cards, and it went fine, but it also sounds like the LW has a MUCH larger team. Our team, it’s not like you could forget anyone on it!

      1. Paulina*

        Diana was using paper cards, despite some coworkers being remote, because Diana has a large stockpile of paper cards. My guess is that her push to do birthday cards is partly because she has a lot that she’s accumulated and wants to use them instead of just dumping them.

        1. Sloanicota*

          I’m thinking there might be a charity somewhere that lets strangers send cards to a group in particular need (shut ins? People in hospital? something). Maybe she can look into that and leave this out of the office.

      2. Smithy*

        Even with the virtual system – it honestly only truly works when a) it’s part of someone’s job duties and b) the work is proactively managed.

        Because even with virtual cards, you risk a situation where one person’s card is only signed by 1-2 people due to it being holidays/a busy time. So having a system in place where there’s essentially a more senior staff responsibility to ensure that their direct reports/immediate team at least get “an ok” amount of signatures for the size of the team.

        Doing versions of staff recognition are totally normal parts of workplaces. And deciding to do it around life events is common, but it’s certainly not the only way. One place I worked at just gave a nice but modest amount of cash (think $20 in US currency) about once a quarter. Which honestly, I’d be thrilled to have again – but I think the larger point is that it helps when it’s part of an employer’s plan to acknowledge staff, and the time and resources are allocated. Otherwise, it’s far too easy for stuff to become unfair quickly.

        1. EvilQueenRegina*

          We had one once at an old job where there was a birthday list, but one person (Philomena) somehow wasn’t on it (I think she’d been on sick leave when the list was collated and it got missed when she came back). Her 60th was on a Sunday and she casually mentioned it to one coworker (Katrina) 15 minutes before we closed. Realising there wasn’t much time, Katrina rushed out and sorted a card, flowers and wine – it happened that on the Monday, a lot of our team were out and about on offsite visits, so Katrina had ended up going to people on other teams, who didn’t really know Philomena that well, to get signatures to fill the card. (Cue lots of questions from Philomena about “Who’s Cecil?”)

          Philomena was a bit upset about it and would later tell this story as no one having done anything for her at all.

      1. desdemona*

        Honestly, I’m in a slack work group in which someone has installed ‘Birthday Bot’. When you get added to the slack, Birthday Bot messages you asking for your birthday / if you want to opt in.
        If you do it, Birthday Bot will then post a happy birthday message in the main channel on your birthday. You can also opt in/out of reminders for pending birthdays (which may be useful for a manager).
        This seems to work well enough, but we’re also not a formal office.

        1. M*

          My workplace does personalised happy birthdays from our HR person in a Slack channel – but I’m 99% certain she just sets an annual prescheduled message every time she onboards someone and has turning it off as an item on her offboarding checklist, because she’s a sane human being.

          1. Another Kristin*

            My work lists birthdays in the internal company newsletter for our division, and HR fucking asks first if you want to be included! Unless it’s a tiny company or division, this is the sort of thing that should be handled tactfully by HR, if acknowledged at all.

      2. Daughter of Ada and Grace*

        We do something similar on Slack, and it seems to work well. And I’m pretty sure no one except my manager knows I’ve opted out.

      3. Guacamole Bob*

        I do this as the manager for my team, and it seems to work pretty well. People feel acknowledged but it’s extremely low key.

      4. Baunilha*

        Same here, but on Slack and it’s HR. They program it months in advance, so even if the person responsible is out, you still get your acknowledgement. I’m not sure anyone has tried to opt out, but I don’t think it would be an issue.
        Also, everyone gets a gift card (company provided) on their birthday, which I like because it’s useful. It’s actually like a pre-paid credit card, so you can use it pretty much anywhere you want.

    3. essie*

      Came here to say this! My old company used to provide a sheet cake on the first of each month. It was very casual, they didn’t name all the birthdays or anything, but honestly it went over well. I think it would be a good move to smooth things over in OP’s case.

    4. Kayley*

      My office does this – we announce on the intranet that a certain day will be that month’s bday celebration, and then there’s something in the break room on each floor (usually a food treat or small token item) with a list of the people with birthdays that month. Each day, people’s birthdays are also put on the intranet for the day so people can individually wish them a happy birthday. It works, and it also takes the pressure off of people feeling like they needed to bring a bday treat for everyone as our office has grown in size.

    5. Larry, I'm on Duck Tales*

      We did the monthly thing for a long time, and even that caused problems. The first Tuesday of the month an office-wide email would go out listing the birthdays that month and “Join us for cake in the conference room at 3!” But some people got upset that their birthdays were early in the month and had passed before the first Tuesday. Others didn’t want to be included, and nobody was responsible for removing them from the list 12 months later. Other people were upset if they were off from work on that Tuesday and didn’t get any cake.

      Eventually it evolved into a monthly email listing everyone with service anniversaries, with no mentions of birthdays, no cake, and no cards. Some people say it’s less fun, but it’s definitely less of a distraction.

      1. Jennifer Strange*

        A) Top-notch name

        B) I enjoy being able to celebrate my birthday, but I can’t imagine being upset about the celebration being before/after my actual birthday. For the folks who were off, is it that they were always off on Tuesdays, or just that Tuesday? If it’s the former, yeah, that’s not food. If it’s the latter…well, you don’t get cake this one time.

        1. Larry, I'm on Duck Tales*

          I think the problem was that if somebody’s birthday was after the email went out, people who were friendly with the birthday person (but not friendly enough to know their birthday without the email) would mark their calendars and be sure to wish Jean a HBD on the 15th. But somebody whose birthday was on the 1st didn’t get that or else they’d just get “Happy belated birthday” messages.
          We don’t have weekend coverage or many part-time staff, so pretty much everybody regularly works on Tuesdays. If someone was out on a Tuesday afternoon, there were requests to reschedule (sometimes in a reply-all to the whole office) for the next day. Of course, somebody else was usually out that day.

      2. ferrina*

        If you gripe about the cake, there will be no cake.

        Seriously, enjoy the Monthly Cake For Generic Celebration. It’s the best way to have cake and avoid drama. If you still can’t avoid drama, there will be no cake.

        1. Mockingjay*

          Yep. One company I worked for solved the problem beautifully: once a month a sheet cake appeared in the lobby. A generic PA announcement: “Cake’s in the lobby for anyone having a birthday this month, or anyone just wanting a snack.”

          No list of names, no cards, no e-cards. Just a sweet treat if you wanted a piece.

      3. WantonSeedStitch*

        Celebrating work anniversaries is the best “we need an excuse for a celebration at work” thing, IMNSHO. First, HR should be happy to give out the info. Second, it sidesteps the personal issues that can come with celebrating a birthday. Have a little monthly party with goodies for people to enjoy, and acknowledge the people who are celebrating a work anniversary that month.

        1. allathian*

          Yes, I agree with you on this. Celebrations are good, celebrations at work for work-related reasons are better.

    6. toolegittoresign*

      yes — monthly roundup is the way to go. My company used to do this when we were all in-person with a cake once a month to celebrate all birthdays, work anniversaries and promotions that happened during the month. Now that we’re remote, there’s an announcement that goes out on the company-wide Slack channel, and you usually get a little something from your manager like a $5 gift card to your favorite coffee shop or something.

    7. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      We had a birthday cake at the end of every month for people who had a birthday in the month. There were no cards and it was two cakes in the break room. One white and one chocolate with no writing and lots of frosting roses around the border. People could come and have cake or not have cake. It was very drama free.

          1. Guacamole Bob*

            Yeah, except as we know from all the letters over the years, food also leads to drama. Maybe it’s just that I have a kid with celiac who can’t eat cake, but there’s no perfect solution. If you get the same cake every time, you risk having people who can never eat it, even on their own birthday (egg/dairy allergies, vegans, celiac…). If you vary the treats, then who picks and what if someone gets one they don’t like on their birthday or considers the option for that month less good.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              I’d say figure a set of options that work for everyone, do the same thing every month. E.g. one standard cake, one cupcake from the gluten-free bakery, and one package of fancy nuts for the person on a low-carb diet. Send a small treat to remote workers every month or only on the month of their birthday.

              Or do nothing, that works too. I’ve never felt the need to have my workplace acknowledge my birthdate.

    8. Emily of New Moon*

      My old workplace did something similar. We had birthday potluck lunches once a month for everyone who had been born that month. However, it was optional for everyone.

    9. Analyst*

      we do this, and it’s nice- yummy treats, no pressure to be acknowledged and we let anyone with something (like engagement or whatever) announce if they wish- we just ask if anyone has news they’d like to share.

    10. Everything Bagel*

      In general, I agree. However, I wouldn’t suggest anything in addition to or in place of this birthday card mess. Donuts in the break room? Who’s paying for them and picking them up? If it’s a group collection, who’s responsible for making sure the funds are collected from everybody involved? This would still be a lot of work and would now involve money.

    11. Three Owls in a Trench Coat*

      Back in the days before hybrid and remote working, I worked in an office like this. Heck, even my huge family did this until 80-90% of the cousins became adults. It works well, but only if everyone works on-site or all on-site on a specific day.

      Other ideas that work for on-site, remote, and hybrid:
      – email announcement
      – a small gesture done on BEHALF OF the larger group but orchestrated by the leader/leadership. Such as a card, a small treat delivered to the celebrated employee (we had a half dozen cookies delivered to the employee’s work site), a balloon, etc.

    12. le teacher*

      This is the way. My first job (teacher) did a giant sheet cake at the end of each quarter and our boss just read off the names of birthday people. It was great and everyone loved getting cake.

    14. desk platypus*

      My job is so awful with the birthday celebrations. Most departments wanted the distraction of giving each birthday person their own treat (cake, cupcakes, brownies, etc.) and my department goes a step further with potluck breakfast/lunch/snacks PLUS sweet treat. I don’t know how more people don’t push back based on time/cost and managers are always the ones fronting the most costs multiple times a year.

      When we got a new director it was established we would do an end of the month birthday round up in the main staff lounge. A variety of treats would be provided and all could attend. I thought that would be the end of the endless birthday treat parade. Nope. I believe other departments don’t do individual celebrations now but mine still does. And my department’s always the first to rush the monthly birthday celebration. It’s deeply embarrassing.

    15. Phony Genius*

      I was in an office that tried this, and saw it fail quickly. One problem was that we had a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The other problem was some people for either religious or superstitious reasons would not celebrate their birthday before the date itself, afraid of “jinxing it.” One of these people was born on the 30th, and that year it was a Saturday.

    16. Speak*

      The US division of the company I work for has a monthly email that includes information on things we need to know, new hires, any upcoming events, holiday calendar, company anniversary years for the month (it makes you feel good knowing there are multiple people with 15+ years each month for a company that has only been in the US for 30 years), and birthdays for the month. Neither the anniversary nor birthday list has the specific dates, just an acknowledgment they are this month. At this point, the group I am in go into the office on Tuesdays, some other groups go in Wednesdays, others are full time back in the office, while still others just come in as needed, so getting cards signed would be near impossible. Before 2020, when we were all in the office, on your birthday (or Friday before/Monday after if it was on a weekend) you brought in donuts (or some other food) to share with the office. I could see allowing Diana sending out a monthly email to the team with a list of the month’s birthdays and sending a mass Happy Birthday that way. Add to that a monthly donuts in the breakroom and you have something extra special.

    17. Grumpus*

      In my company, the person’s manager usually acknowledges their birthday with a Slack post. I think that’s completely sufficient. I can’t believe how much I was harassed to sign cards/contribute money to presents in previous jobs.

  4. Joielle*

    I agree that the best move is to stop doing this altogether, but it occurs to me that there has to be some kind of service that can do this electronically – right?? I’m picturing a website where you enter all the birthdays and it automatically sends around an email asking people to digitally sign a card. Maybe you could even send a link around and ask people to input their own birthday if they want to be part of the birthday card exchanging group. Then you’d just have to remember to send the link to new hires and they could sign up if they want to participate. I have no idea if this exists but it seems like something that might be out there.

    This is more of a thought experiment than actual advice because I agree that shutting it down is the way to go, but who knows, maybe there’s a tech solution to this problem.

    1. mlem*

      Diana has “boxes and boxes” of cards at home. She wants an excuse to use them. Electronic cards won’t fill that need.

      1. bamcheeks*

        I feel like there must be a children’s ward / long-term psychiatric ward / elderly care home she could donate them to.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          There is the solution right there. Diana is stuck on trying to do this thing, its not working, she won’t give up. And she still has all the cards. Suggest donating the cards when you tell her to stop the cards. Which needs to happen immediately.

        2. JFC*

          All of this. Our children’s hospital and nursing homes would love to have a stash of cards to lift spirits. We also have some nonprofits that work with people with developmental disabilities and I guarantee they could find some safe, happy, crafty activities to put the cards to good use.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      Mural app. Don’t love it but it’s how we’re doing is for my team. But not for birthdays (thank goodness); for farewells.

    3. Jane*

      Digital options definitely exist! I can’t remember the name of the site we used, but at my previous job, we would set up e-cards for people’s birthdays (if they wanted us celebrating them, of course), send out a link, and everyone could pop in on their own time throughout the week to sign it.

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        We had a card generator (briefly!) that accidentally sent “sorry you got fired” cards on people’s work anniversaries. It didn’t actually say that, but it was like “we heard you’re leaving us, hope our good wishes will help you through hard times!”

        I thought it was hilarious, particularly because when someone is straight-up fired here they’re walked out that day and their email is shut down — but some people were offended. Who even thinks of a “sorry you got fired” card?

    5. desdemona*

      I said this above, and it’s not a card, but I’m in a slack group that uses ‘BirthdayBot’, who asks you for your birthday when you first log in (and you can opt out!), and then posts birthday messages in the main channel.
      No cards, less personal, but still a ‘formal’ acknowledgement.

    7. RabbitRabbit*

      My office has administrative assistants that do this via Group Greeting. I know sometimes they mess up so the birthday celebrant gets included on the email that goes out.

      I tried to evade being put on the list but eventually got added on. I dutifully sign off on the cards I get notified about, but have never opened my own.

    8. Potsie*

      That doesn’t fix the issue of some birthdays not making it onto the list. Or a glitch causing it to miss some or leave some people off of the signing email, ect. Still way to much room for error with very little benefit.

    9. Resume please*

      My team has a shared outlook calendar. Usually it’s for PTO or large group meetings, but everyone’s birthdays are on there too. When it’s an employee’s birthday, their manager usually send everyone a colorful and quick “Happy Birthday (Employee)!” with images of balloons or similar. It seems to work fine

    10. Smithy*

      Anything that asks for digital signatures needs to be tracked – because birthdays that fall during traditionally busy or holiday times are inevitably at risk of receiving no signatures.

      If you use a system that automatically sends a card signed “from the team”, you can more or less set it and forget it. But if part of the task is looking for colleagues to sign (even electronically), then there still needs to be oversight.

      We do the electronic card at my job, and recently someone on my team – the notice about signing her card happened when our supervisor was on vacation. So she didn’t see the notice/didn’t sign the card/was terrified the card didn’t get sent and made a big deal to make sure my colleague was included/got something/etc. Afterwards I believe the process was changed specifically to make sure that supervisors were informed differently to not be in a situation where they didn’t sign the e-card. Knowing this colleague, while I wouldn’t say she would have been openly upset with not having our supervisor sign – but I also think she would have noticed.

  5. Nanc*

    I worked for a State that gave every State employee a paid day off for their birthday. You got Friday if your birthday fell on Saturday and Monday if your birthday fell on Sunday. If your birthday fell on a holiday you could pick the day before or after. Best office birthday system ever!
    Cards are tricky and time consuming and Alison’s right – Diana needs to let it go!

    1. Percysowner*

      Yep, that was how it worked in my county level job. You got your birthday off with pay. Thank God for unions, because I’m pretty sure the county wouldn’t have come up with it if it hadn’t been part of the contract.

        2. Pinta Bean*

          That pops into my head every now and then for no reason, and every time I get just as angry. It’s a little comical, that I am sitting around being angry out of the blue.

      5. Nanc*

        We had a leap-birthday person in our department! She could choose 2/28 or 3/1, following the weekend/holiday rules as needed.

    3. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      The only part of that system I dislike is that using my benefit tells others when my birthday is. I don’t enjoy being the centre of attention and would prefer to let the day pass as another regular day.

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        I worked one place where we had this, and talked them into letting me take the day for a Jewish holiday, for which I’d otherwise have had to take a regular vacation day. Birthday hater + less predominant religion (at least where I am) = win!

        1. Jenesis*

          I think giving everyone a single floating holiday is the way to go.

          If you want to take your birthday off, you can. If you don’t want to take your birthday off (because it falls during crunch time, because it’s too hot/cold this time of year to do anything fun, because you just don’t want anyone to know when your birthday is), you can take a different day off without losing the benefit.

  6. Baela Targaryen (on Valyrian mobile)*

    “ I’m quite sure she thought I was being ridiculous, but what she saw as an easy feel-good initiative was more of an expenditure of energy what she was picturing.”

    Best description of admin work and how other people (poorly) understand it that I’ve ever read.

    2. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      “How hard can it be track every person’s birthday AND note the people who opt out AND get signatures EVERY month AND come up with a consistent way to have the practice handle weekends, holidays, and vacations AND adroitly manage the office politics when Person A doesn’t want to sign a card for Person B (or no one does)?”

    2. ShiftyKitty*

      As someone who works in the privacy space, I thought “yay HR” at that statement. Birthdays are considered personal information and while many people don’t have a problem sharing them, there are those that do have concerns as its private information.

    3. Jennifer Strange*

      Yup. At previous job we had a birthday month celebration (so all birthdays for that month celebrated one day with cupcakes) and you had to opt-in by choosing to send your birthday to the organizer. I did (I like celebrating my birthday!) but I can understand if others don’t want to.

    5. essie*

      My current HR publishes a monthly list of birthdays. The most drama has been from people asking to be removed from it. I’ve seen staff flip out when they find out it’s a coworker’s birthday: “HOW could it be your birthday?! You’re NOT on the list!! WHY would you EVER want to be removed from a BIRTHDAY list?!? How am I supposed to know it’s your birthday?!?”

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        Yes. I thought people were being obnoxious when they spoke to me like this, but there are grown-ass adults who literally do. not. understand that other people don’t celebrate birthdays. I’ve done OK with “Thanks, but I don’t like aging, I don’t like attention and I don’t eat cake,” but people are still perplexed. Take my word, I find your “birthday month” celebrations and glittery tiaras as a 40something person JUST as incomprehensible as you find my birthday date. The difference is that I don’t call you out about it!

    7. londonedit*

      Absolutely. I’d be stunned if HR would give out personal details like that – massive breach of privacy there. Our HR won’t give out any personal details – not even to my boss when I had a big birthday and they wanted to send me a bottle of champagne. Boss had to ask me for my address, which sort of spoilt the surprise a little bit, but I’d rather that than thinking HR was just going to give my address to anyone who asked!

      1. Bast*

        Years ago I worked for a big box store that printed all birthdays (just month and day) work anniversaries, and anything else notable and made table centerpieces of them. These were created by HR. Granted there were no actual celebrations or cake or anything, but it was right there.

    8. Happily Retired*

      Think how many people – despite all the training and other education – who use mmdd of their birthday as their PIN.

      “Ooo, their birthday is March 17, hmm, 0317…”

  8. Stella70*

    I am a “Co-Worker Birthday Card Club” survivor. I was SCRUPULOUS in not forgetting anyone, collecting everyone’s signatures, etc. I even took great care to tailor the card to the recipient. (You like cats? Here is one wearing a party hat! More of a birder, are you? Here are some robins holding up a banner!)
    So what did I not take into account? Personalized cards vary in price. It took about three birthdays before people started flipping the cards over to compare the costs listed on the back.
    They bypassed complaining to me and went straight to my director, who couldn’t toss me the problem fast enough. How? Like the true idiot I am, I was paying for the cards myself, so the company had zero responsibility for hurt feelings.
    I finished out the year honoring birthdays, then spent the next year hearing complaints that I no longer honored birthdays.

    1. essie*

      Ohhh my goodness. That is crazy crazy. Not terribly surprising, but still crazy. A perfect example of how birthdays can cause way more drama than expected.

    3. Person from the Resume*

      This is ridiculous.

      I also thought “not everyone signed the card” worry is ridiculous with a hybrid remote team.

      And I do think crying over a missed card is kind of silly, but I give the Junior employee leeway for at least acknowledging it was and there were a lot of other things in her life.

      But you might be able to tell I wouldn’t care about a perfunctory card from coworkers. I generally don’t make a big deal out of my birthday, and just host exact kind of low-key party I want to have.

      1. Jennifer Strange*

        I also thought “not everyone signed the card” worry is ridiculous with a hybrid remote team.

        I’ve worked on fully in-person teams and we still didn’t get cards signed by everyone.

        1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

          Right? People are out sick, or on vacation, or offsite, or really busy and you can never catch them at their desk, or a lot of things. I’ve never seen the expectation be “literally every single person.”

          1. ferrina*

            100%
            Unless you work on a 1-person team, there is no guarantee that everyone will sign the card every single time.

    4. Observer*

      Is it sad that I really had to laugh. But it really sounds like you worked with a bunch of over-grown kindergarten students.

    5. Dodubln*

      Hi Stella70,
      Was it you who sent in the work competition story about the melting snow? It sounded so much like something you would write, and was hilarious. I only saw the post when Alison put up her favorites, so there were no names listed as to who wrote what.

      Between hosting that legendary Christmas party, and doing the birthday cards…you don’t have great luck doing nice things for your coworkers, do you? ;)

      1. Stella70*

        Yes, that’s me! (I am also that one who yelled at Karl that I hadn’t ‘pulled my pants down yet’, so not everything I do is nice…) ;)

        1. ferrina*

          Write a book!!! Your stories are hilarious!
          (I remembered your holiday party story, but I didn’t realize that you were the one that had traumatized poor Karl!)

    6. Miss Muffet*

      I liked the way this was handled at my last in-office job. Smallish team (maybe about 20), everyone in office most of the week (precovid).
      At the beginning of the year, if you wanted to participate, you’d sign up with the person managing it and provide your bday and answer some questions about things you like (hobbies, food, etc). Once she had everyone, she’d come up with a kind of budget for it, which would cover the card, some kind of treat each month + a few smallish gift cards. Then everyone would contribute that much and she’d use that for the year.
      The cards would get passed around over a couple of days in a Manila envelope with a checklist of people, and usually nearly everyone would get a shot at it unless they were out on vacation.
      The celebration would be in the break area and all were invited, regardless of participation. We’d have a cake or sometimes she’d bring in some other kind of goodie – homemade something or a really nice fruit salad or something like that. Usually kind of fit the person’s personality. The honoree(s) would get their cards, maybe we’d sing?, and everyone got to nosh and enjoy the break. And if you didn’t want your bday celebrated, you just didn’t sign up at the beginning and no one really paid any attention. It was pretty inclusive and a nice break in the day when it came around.

      1. Miss Muffet*

        (Sorry, nesting fail. Meant this to be standalone, not a response to your rude card-comparing coworkers! Talk about no good deed going unpunished…))

    7. I should really pick a name*

      people started flipping the cards over to compare the costs listed on the back

      Wow.
      Do they really have nothing better to do?

      1. Heidi*

        They would also have to remember how much everyone else’s cards cost, which seems even more pointless. These coworkers are not cool.

        1. Aggretsuko*

          I bet someone started a spreadsheet over it.

          Also no, apparently they didn’t have anything better to do.

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Given some of the other escapades we’ve heard about Stella70’s various coworkers over the years…

        No. No, they did not.

    8. Baldrick*

      Oh wow that’s awful of them!! I can’t imagine being so petty.

      I work for government, so there is no work money for cards or anything. One group had a great idea, where there was a formal group where you could join for $20 a year and with those funds they would buy you whatever you wanted for your birthday (card, donuts, cake, etc). It was opt-in, and well organized.

    9. Lisa*

      The sad thing is it was probably the same people who cause drama about everything else doing the comparing of prices. Like, I would be way more pleased to get a birthday card with a cute dog on it than care it was cheaper than some other card some other person got. Like, who cares?! Some people will use ANYTHING to make themselves feel superior/be the victim depending on the preferred poison.

      1. ferrina*

        Seriously. Some of my favorite cards are cheap ones with jokes that my friends perfectly matched to my sense of humor.

        1. Paint N Drip*

          My favorite card that I ever got (that I lost in a move, darn it!) was purchased at a thrift store – it had already been written in (by a seemingly drunk aunt? loopy grandma perhaps?) and signed before donation :) it WAS a good few years ago but I believe it was purchased with literal pocket change

    10. Bast*

      Wow. When I got a work birthday card, I appreciated that someone thought of me and thanked them. I never thought to look on the back and compare the price to the ones my coworkers received. This is the kind of behavior that ruins a nice thing for everyone.

    11. Jenesis*

      That is some incredible next level pettiness.

      Like, there’s some standing to complain about price disparity if, say… Cersei gets a gold watch for her birthday and Arya gets a scented candle with another company’s logo on it. But a gift card is what, a price difference of $10 max?

  9. A Person*

    This is much like when someone on the team wanted to sing “happy birthday” because someone’s birthday was at the same time as our team meeting. I had to explain it was a nice idea, but unless we were planning to make it consistent they can’t do it (and I wasn’t planning to ensure we were consistent).

    The only office where I ever saw a birthday thing work:
    * was small (<40 people)
    * was pre-pandemic, so we were all in the office basically day and could sign cards
    * was set up by the company on a monthly basis where each month there was a clear person responsible for buying the cake and then it was served during a regular meeting and cards were given, and we celebrated everyone at once
    * I think also had an official "opt out" if you didn't want to be celebrated

      1. bamcheeks*

        music snob moment: I like it if it’s sung by a) my children, or b) a choir who spontaneously harmonise. The octave in the third line is a killer for most non-singing people.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          My family is very musical and sometimes no one is singing the melody, lol. I like to add a dominant 7th on the last chord to make things interesting.

      2. Cyndi*

        Oh I hate it SO MUCH. I was the kid who hated being sung to in restaurants on my birthday, and it took so many years for my parents to believe me and stop asking for it.

        1. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

          I saw one guy get up and leave the table as the servers arrived with the slice of birthday cake complete with sparkler arrived. It was pretty awkward but the servers plowed through.

          2. The Formatting Queen*

            The one I always laughed at was when they came parading out of the kitchen with the tambourine and lit up cake and whatever other props they had, stopped at the table, dropped the cake in front of someone and did the whole show, and THEN the actual Birthday Boy came out of the bathroom and got back to his table…

          3. froodle*

            My BIL also hates the “wait staff bring you a sparkly dessert and the whole restaurant sings to you” bit.

            We went out for dinner on his birthday one year, and no less than Four Different Tables had birthday cake brought out to them.

            Every time that kitchen door opened and a tiny candle nesting in fondant emerged, he froze in horror until the threat passed us by.

            His family know him well enough and respect his wishes enough that I couldn’t see them ever doing it, but man, that was a stressful meal for him!

        2. A Penguin!*

          Pretty sure it took my parents one year to believe I hated it. Unfortunately it took at least 20 for them to stop doing it. Even now I’m never 100% certain it’s not coming.

        3. actual cat herder*

          i’m now in my 40s, but my family still loves to tell the story of how i hid under the table at the restaurant for my 4th birthday when everyone sang to me

          2. ferrina*

            I once ran away from a surprise birthday party. Literally turned and sprinted out of the building. My mom still swears that I secretly loved it (nope).

            1. allathian*

              I hate surprises, of any kind. I’d far rather live a predictable life where nothing unforeseen ever happens. Thankfully I’m also in a culture where surprise parties aren’t a thing and where people are responsible for hosting their own parties as soon as they’re old enough. My parents hosted my parties for family until I moved out, but the last friend party they hosted was my 13th. After that I didn’t really invite friends over for birthdays.

              1. allathian*

                We restarted doing birthday celebrations when we turned 18 and could go out to bars (most of my friends are/were my friends in high school and college, so we’re all around the same age).

      3. Sparkles McFadden*

        I got stuck going to a mandatory department dinner one birthday, and my boss requested the dreaded public singing. I was unprepared for this and almost dropped under the table when I saw waitstaff approaching the table with a cake. The waiter carrying the cake saw the horrified look on my face. He put the cake down, shooed the other staffers away, and sang Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. He was magnificent and I didn’t have a restaurant full of people staring at me.

      4. Sneaky Squirrel*

        I hate it because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in the time that people are singing it. Stand there awkwardly until everyone is done?

        1. Pennyworth*

          Stand there thinking ”Millions of people are just like me, I will stare just past the singers, think of kittens and smile, until this torture is over.”

        2. Paint N Drip*

          ever seen the ‘having Happy Birthday sung to you is like a real-life unskippable cut scene’ meme? I wish I could claw out of my skin in that moment AAAAAHH

      5. MigraineMonth*

        Zoom (and all other video calls) add a special level of hell to any group singing, because the added lag (not perceptible when taking turns, but obvious when trying to sing in unison) turns any song into a slow, drawn-out mess.

        Add to that that the “Happy Birthday” song in particular seems prone to becoming a dirge, and I have yet to hear a happy-sounding “Happy Birthday” over a multi-participant video call.

        1. allathian*

          Absolutely. I can imagine the Birthday Dirge, thankfully I haven’t experienced it.

          My worst work birthday experience was with a former boss who was also a hugger. I don’t mind hugging my work friends or friend-friends, but I don’t want a hug from my boss or most of my coworkers, and I don’t want to hug them, either.

      6. Clisby*

        Oh, no – you’re not. In the early years of our relationship, my now husband told me if I ever arranged that at a restaurant, he’d walk out. And if he was driving, I’d have to find my own way home. (There was no danger of this happening – I also cringe when I see restaurant staff serenading a customer.)

        My father always said if anyone threw him a surprise birthday party, he’d walk out.

    2. N*

      We do birthday cards and cake in my office and it works….because we have SEVEN people. I can’t imagine trying to do it with much more than that.

    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      The small nonprofit I worked at pre-pandemic was basically a pet project from a rich owner and she loved celebrating birthdays. So the office manager was in charge of planning every birthday, right down to asking the celebrant what they wanted for a cake or if they wanted savory apps instead, which we usually did late in the afternoon of the birthday. We were all in office and could sign the card but I doubt I noticed if I got a card that not everyone signed. After I’d been there a couple of years someone else started whose birthday was the day before or after mine and they asked if it would be ok for us to just do one party for both of us and we were like, heck yeah, totally fine. Because we are adults. There were about 15 employees there so naturally there was another pair of employees whose birthdays were close enough that we’d celebrate them together. And yeah, as pointed out elsewhere, this only works at very small places when organizing birthdays is part of someone’s official job duties, not on a volunteer basis.

      1. Martin Blackwood*

        honestly, the company sponsored savory apps is the best idea i’ve seen in this comment section so far. but yeah, it gets worse the bigger the company

      2. allathian*

        Yes, and where there’s a system in place to ensure that the person who organizes birthday celebrations for everyone else is also celebrated, if they want to be.

    4. But Of Course*

      Pre-pandemic I worked in an on-site office of six with an admin who had birthday cards designated as part of her job and she still forgot my birthday one year.

  10. essie*

    Oh man, yeah, birthday cards seem to be one of those weird things that cause way more drama than you’d ever expect. At my current workplace, they do publish a list of birthdays, but some people requested to be removed from it, and that caused a whole other scene… so even that doesn’t work great.
    At one of my first jobs, the company would provide cake in the breakroom on the first of each month, in celebration of all birthdays that month. It was casual, just cake available for lunch, and truly not obligatory to attend. It is definitely a little cost, but honestly, a sheet cake from Walmart isn’t too terribly expensive if it makes staff feel appreciated. Maybe this is something OP could institute in place of cards.

    1. Kyrielle*

      Except OP’s team has a mix of remote and in-person people. That will open up a whole other, and bigger, can of worms because now the remote people are not getting cake…ever…even when it’s in honor of their birthdays. (Is not getting random break room treats part of working remotely? It is! Is that line going to work well when it’s about a monthly celebration of birthdays, and it’s someone remote’s birthday? No. Even before the history of the card issues, but especially after it.)

    2. Sparkles McFadden*

      My company used to do this too until some people started working remotely. Then the cakes quietly disappeared because there’s nothing you can do to make things equitable at that point.

  11. Jane*

    Stuff like this is exactly why I told Current Job that I prefer not to do anything at work for my birthday; there’s just way too much potential for unwittingly getting involved in drama.

    1. Frieda*

      I refused to participate in the birthday roster in large part because I’m not a child and don’t need someone to get me a card and sweets for my birthday (except maybe my family and even then I’m not deeply invested).

      One excellent co-worker knows when my birthday is and typically emails me to wish me a happy birthday and commend me for refusing to be part of the formal monthly recognition. It’s perfect.

      1. Jenesis*

        I would also likely opt-out.

        Even as an adult, I find birthdays meaningful, and I love to eat cake. Which is why I’d prefer to celebrate with my own friends and family, and a cake flavor of my choosing, rather than bug coworkers into procuring a generic sheet cake and signing a card when the majority of them don’t know me well enough to write anything other than “Happy birthday, I guess!”

  12. PABJ*

    I think all this drama is suggesting larger issues that the birthday card forgetting is just adding to. Otherwise I can’t see how the reactions have been so intense to the situation.

    1. Dancing Otter*

      The more petty the issue, the more drama. My thought was the opposite: don’t these people have anything better to worry about?

    2. Catherine*

      Whenever I’ve worked somewhere with birthday drama, the birthday drama was actually a symptom of people feeling generally underappreciated and unrecognized, and birthdays were the socially-safest way to raise the issue.

    3. ferrina*

      I’ve found no correlation between importance and the ruckus raised.
      There doesn’t need to be an underlying issue- some people just get weird about birthdays.

  13. londonedit*

    It works where I work because it’s very low-key, especially since 2020 when it’s all been e-cards. The birthday person’s manager (or a close colleague if it’s the manager’s birthday) just sends a link round to the immediate team (usually with a ‘if I’ve left anyone off the list, please forward’), people sign, then the e-card is automatically sent at the time chosen by the person who set it up. It’s far, far easier than trying to physically walk a card round the office. And it’s not like trying to get a whole office to sign – it just goes to the people who work directly with the birthday person. If we’re in the office on their actual birthday, we’ll have tea and cake (British tradition is a Marks & Spencer Colin the Caterpillar cake) but that’s it. No one complains about not getting a Colin if they/we aren’t in the office on their birthday!

    1. londonedit*

      Also, if someone didn’t want a birthday card, or didn’t want people knowing when their birthday was, that’s also fine and we just wouldn’t do one for them. Obviously!

    2. Not a trope, just exhausted*

      I admit that I would be miffed missing the Colin the Caterpillar cake. Petty but I understand from several friends in the UK that Colin is truly awesome.

  14. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

    The best laid plans….

    I’m in charge of ours- that I instigated- but I’m the one who has admin access in our HRMS, so I can see everyone’s birthdays. Not only do I have it set to email me when people’s birthdays are, I also have them on my personal Outlook calendar (add them when they’re new hires, plus set up a recurring event for each year). I also have the calendar notify me 2 weeks in advance of the birthdays. I do this for both birthdays and work anniversaries because I feel like having *some* sort of acknowledgement is the least we can do for morale and then build from there. (Cards aren’t the only thing we do; it’s just the base level.) We also have less than 30 people and none of us work remotely, so it’s easy enough to take the card around myself and get it signed. But yeah, it can be a lot of work, especially out the outset. Though, I try to get everyone’s signature, I also don’t sweat it if someone isn’t in to sign a card- if they aren’t in and I don’t get to them, too bad so sad.

    There have been two instances of hurt feelings: 1) an employee had a literal psychotic break and forgot he had gotten a birthday card and 2) me: no remembers my birthday. It fell on a major holiday last year and will be on a weekend this year, so while it’d be nice if someone would remember, I can’t fault anyone for not knowing or, even if they knew the approximate date, not taking care of it. (I’ve thought about just taking the card around for myself and having a good laugh about it with everyone, but I’m not that desperate.)

      1. Elle*

        What I am learning from the comments today is that birthday recognition is a lot more important to people than I realized. And that many consider caring about birthdays to be within the scope of their jobs.

      2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        This seems like an exaggeration. The system that we use automatically emails the managers their reports’ birthdays (the date, say, September 18 and not the exact day and year) and announces it on the “Community” (along with anniversaries and new hires) board, which we only use in a rudimentary way. It isn’t like I’m sharing their exact birth date and their social.

        1. Glisse*

          You did get people’s permission for this, right? You aren’t publishing their birthdays without their consent, surely?

      4. A Book about Metals*

        “legitimate work” is a pretty broad phrase. That could mean many different things including morale boosters like birthdays, team outings etc

    2. allathian*

      I work for the government in Finland, and at least in my agency, at the end of the year the manager will get a message reminding them if any of their employees have a milestone birthday, in this case 50 or 60, that year. That’s because we get an extra paid day off on those days, and the employer pays for a gift of up to 100 euros. We have a list you can choose from on the intranet. The selection is quite varied but for tax reasons it can’t be something like a gift card you can use to buy whatever you want, which would be taxed as income.

      People can and do opt out of the celebrations, although very few turn down the extra PTO, in practice it’s only those who don’t celebrate their birthdays for religious reasons who do that.

  15. bamcheeks*

    GOOD HEAVENS. You can do annual birthday cards in a team of 5-12 people who all work on site in the same place most of the time. More people / more complicated locations than that, absolutely NOT.

    1. RandomNameAllocated*

      Yes! I’m the card instigator in my department but there are 12 of us, we work hybridly (?sp) so its quite easy to catch people to sign and also, recipients understand that others maybe away for work, holiday, ill and just haven’t had a chance to sign – its not personal!

    2. Not Australian*

      Yup. I worked in a department which had precisely eight female staff, and we did a ‘birthday club’ sort of thing: the recipient in month A organised the card etc. for the next person on the list, and so on, with one overall person co-ordinating everything and arranging alternatives when someone was ill or otherwise away on their birthday. IIRC we all put a small sum in the kitty every year to cover expenses, and only really went to town for 21st birthdays, weddings, and the arrival of babies.

    3. Myrin*

      Heck, we only do cards for when someone turns 30, 40, 50, 60 and for events like weddings or deaths and only for my department and even that is a lot, somehow. It feels like someone has a milestone birthday every other week or something. Factually, that’s of course not the case, but while my workplace is generally very chill about stuff like this, I always feel like there’s potential for a lot of drama and I’m waiting for the day where it all explodes.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Yeah, we’ve done that in slightly larger groups/departments (15-30), and it works MOST of the time. But it still depends on people being reasonably chill and realising that if it didn’t happen it’s probably because nobody knew you turned 50 in July, not because everyone secretly hates you.

  16. Dewey*

    My director sends out weekly announcements, and the last line always mentions upcoming birthdays. It’s a nice little acknowledgement without *waves hand* all this.

  17. Kristen*

    We celebrate everyone’s birthday in my office, but it works because we only have 9 full-time staff and 2 part-time. No one’s birthday could possibly be overlooked, and one person who didn’t want their celebrated just took it off the staff calendar and everyone left them alone about it. The celebrated person gets to pick a food or dessert that everyone shares- commonly a local pizza place, or an ice cream cake, and we all take a break together and enjoy it and them.

  19. White Squirrel*

    My favorite was the company that gave each employee their birthday off or the nearest workday to their birthday.

      1. White Squirrel*

        OMG, that letter is the one that sticks in my mind…and the way the letter writer doubled down on it.

    2. Merry*

      I worked as a tech for an optometry group and our union contract gave us our birthday as a holiday, we could take a day off anytime within a week of the day.

      1. Clisby*

        I once worked for a newspaper that gave employees a holiday for their birthdays; we could also take off a different day between then and the next recognized holiday. So, for example, if your birthday was August 20, you could take off that day or any other day up until Labor Day.

  20. polly*

    I was assigned birthday cards at one job. Why? Probably because I was the only woman in her 20s in the office and this was supposed to be “fun” (aka young) as well as teetering on the secretary side of responsibilities (aka woman).

    I told my manager I wasn’t going to do it anymore when my birthday came and went with no recognition. Birthday cards are always drama.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      Yeah, in that kind of workplace you know you’re also going to get stuck booking the office Christmas party because “you girls love to plan parties”. So much fun, that you don’t expect promotions or pay rises!

    2. calico*

      You’ve hit on one of my problems with this office birthday thing. For some reason, it always seems to fall on the women of the office…

  21. Observer*

    Be very explicit with Diana.

    The real issue is not the cost of the cards. And not even her time. But it’s causing problems morale problems and it needs to stop. And you most *definitely* can “police” what she does in her break time if it causes problems. If she spent her break time standing by someone’s desk and say “Nya, nya, nya, You look like hedge hog”, would you say that you can’t “police” her behavior because it’s her break? Obviously not. Now the cards are clearly not that level of absurdity, but the point is that when you see a clear problem you have the right to stop it.

    Accept that reality. *Own the decision*. Do not just “pass along” feedback from your manager. And stop discussing this with her. *Tell* her that this is what needs to happen. You can explain – but only once. Further discussion is off the table. Although you should deploy Alison’s question. Not that anything she says should convince you to change your mind, but to have some insight into her thinking.

    PS Please get rid of the idea that you “cannot” police what people do on their break time. Sure, reasonable employers don’t get into people’s private lives. And they don’t micromanage people’s relationships with colleagues. But they most definitely *can* act when there are repercussions to the organization and staff. And often they not only can, they NEED to.

    The idea that you “can’t” deal with stuff that happens off the clock can very quickly get you into legal hot water.

    1. bamcheeks*

      If she spent her break time standing by someone’s desk and say “Nya, nya, nya, You look like hedge hog”

      Bwahahah, I’m hoping this is just a random bananapants example you made up, but heaven knows I wouldn’t be ENTIRELY shocked if it turned out you’re referencing a real incident from a previous AAM letter or comment thread…

  22. Excel-sior*

    if you have a shared drive, drop an excel file in there and tell everyone that if they wish (and only if they wish) to write their DoB themselves. That way, it’s down to individual people rather than 1 person to do the whole office.

    1. Observer*

      No. Just do not do it.

      Because even with the information, there are too many other pieces involved. It just needs to stop.

      1. Excel-sior*

        yeah, i should have said, IF they insist on doing it, thats the way to do it, but honestly not worth the hassle.

      2. Antilles*

        Yeah, the shared document only solves a tiny part of this issue. There’s still all the time wasted getting the cards signed, needing a backup when Diana is out, keeping the list up to date, someone inevitably missing the email about the shared file, etc, etc.

    2. EvilQueenRegina*

      That would also have saved the time taken by Diana going round and physically asking for everyone’s birthdays, doing it this way, or sending round an email to the whole team, would have been so much quicker!

    3. Strive to Excel*

      My thoughts exactly. Link on the company Intranet or something. “Sign up here with your name and birthday if you want a card”. Opt-in system only.

    4. Tio*

      That still doesn’t solve all the signing logistics, and who’s notifying the new hires, and oversight on not missing anything if Diana’s out (or if she just forgets!)

  23. Jennifer Strange*

    As an aside, I know the LW was reacting to a bad situation and trying to cheer someone up, but I do think buying a coffee cake for Mary was a bad choice (especially as the boss). I would have just gotten a card, had folks sign it as able, and then get it to her as quickly as possible.

    1. Elle*

      I wouldn’t have thought of this, but this is a really good point. The coffee cake screams “afterthought.”

      1. londonedit*

        Not only that – it screams ‘afterthought’ to Mary, but it also apparently screamed ‘favouritism’ to everyone else. And that’s where the problems start – you forget Mary’s card so she gets a cake, then the next person is annoyed because Mary got a cake and all they got was a card, etc etc.

  24. Seashell*

    When I was starting with in-boarding at my current location after a transfer, the person who was helping me asked if I wanted to have my birthday on the list to be acknowledged. I said, “No, thanks” because I really don’t care if people outside my family mention it. I haven’t seen any sign of birthdays being acknowledged (no one has asked me to sign a card, no mention on emails, no cake in the breakroom), so I’m not sure if they actually do it. Guess that’s for the best!

    My previous workplace didn’t do birthdays, but when cards were sent around to be signed for things like condolences, get well, wedding, or new baby, they put the card in a folder with a list of all employees. When you signed it, you checked your name off and brought the folder to someone who hadn’t signed it yet. It was usually efficient, because it spread the work around. Sometimes, I was one of the last people to sign and couldn’t find the remaining people in the office, but otherwise it was fine. I think LW should kill the birthday thing, but if not, this is a good way to do the card signing.

  25. Coffee Please*

    Ugh, I work in an office of about 50 people in-person. Many managers get birthday cards for their employees and then pass them around to be signed. I ALWAYS tell my team to please skip mine. I appreciate the gesture and I know everyone wishes me well but I don’t need them to bother passing a card around the entire office. Birthday celebrations in the office have become another big thing in the last few years, which is great! But I oversee 5 staff and buying pizza/cake/ice cream/whatever they want really adds up on my nonprofit salary since it is strictly out of pocket and not a work expense. I had to be a curmudgeon but wah.

  27. pally*

    If Diana persists, I gotta believe that her true intent is to get rid of all those cards.
    Suggest she donate them instead.

    The birthday stuff is too much drama for me. So I don’t have birthdays anymore. At least, not at work.

    1. WellRed*

      Diana attempted to do birthdays for her entire family and social circle and got shot down, hence the card surplus. Or,
      Diana’s kid had a fundraiser selling cards.

      1. pally*

        Exactly! And now the office must bear the brunt of the surplus.
        No one thought to have a bonfire with all those cards?

    2. H.Regalis*

      Charity shops would probably take these. I’m not a big card person, but I’d rather get one at a charity shop for 25¢ than a new one for $7 at the grocery store.

  28. Dancing Otter*

    And don’t forget the leap year baby!

    Seriously, once a monthly group birthday is the way to go.

    Some places leave it up to the individual having the birthday: bring in donuts for the group, get “Happy Birthday” and thanks; want to ignore the occasion, just don’t do anything. Seems to work well, but wouldn’t satisfy the Dianas of the world.

    1. RandomNameAllocated*

      I have never forgotten the leap year baby – if she’s still there, she should have got her day off and cake this year at least

    2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      We have a leap day birthday! I made sure he got a card and some good-natured ribbing about “only” being 18! But he had heard it all his life, so no hard feelings. (Also, he told me in his church SEVEN people are born on leap day and that surely has to be a record?)

    3. Ellis Bell*

      Honestly the day off initiatives are the only office sponsored worth birthdays worth doing (that poor leap year employee!). Employees will happily take the responsibility of signing up for that, and booking off their birthday perk. Otherwise do the birthday-person brings the cakes in tradition. I’m a fan of this because I’m celiac and if you buy my birthday cake, it isn’t going to go well.

  29. Cyndi*

    We had a birthday card club at my old job that worked fine, with a little spreadsheet set up that listed everyone’s birthday and favorite snacks, and when someone had a birthday coming up the rest of us tossed the woman in charge a few bucks to pick up a card and cake and a bag of the person’s favorite snacks.

    The thing is, this only worked because we were a team of like eight people and fully in-office. I can absolutely see how with more than, like, a dozen people involved, it would U-turn into a nightmare very quickly.

    1. Cyndi*

      Oh, and a few jobs before that I was on a much bigger team–maybe a few dozen people?–with a woman who was a chronic stress baker, and she’d make brownies for EVERYONE’S birthday. This also worked because it didn’t need work from anyone else, except for the birthday person to let her know what candy/fruit/nuts they wanted in their brownies ahead of time. But that’s not something you can just decide to enact in a workplace; it happened organically because she was going to do a ton of baking no matter what and this gave her a way to get rid of some of it.

      I really miss her brownies, though. I used to ask for mine with chopped up Reese’s cups in them.

      1. Pennyworth*

        I am in a hobby group where we put in a few dollars for cookies and coffee each term. One year a keen baker enrolled, so we gave her the cookie money to use for ingredients and she happily cooked through whole book of recipes.

  30. Brioche for me*

    I was once on a team of ~10 people that had a Big Birthday Culture — the nearest convenient workday to your birthday, you got a cake to share at lunchtime.

    My first day of work on that team happened to be my birthday, so I obvs didn’t get a cake that year…and then literally *two days* before my birthday the following year, the person in charge of organising the cakes announced that she wasn’t doing it any more.

    On the one hand, fair enough, but on the other hand, it’s been 6 years and I’m still a lil’ salty about this. Moral of the story: people are irrational about birthdays. :p

    1. House On The Rock*

      I’m a Woman Of A Certain Age who generally has a quiet birthday with my spouse and cats. But when I started in my current job 2.5 years ago the admin asked me if I wanted my birthday included in the monthly newsletter I said “sure!”, because I was new and this seemed like a place where birthdays were a big deal. My birthday has not appeared in the newsletter the three times it could have! I am embarrassed to say that this makes me irrationally irked! I even inquired once under the guise of “oh hey, it looks like maybe not everyone is included????” and gave them my birthday again to no avail.

      Weirdly my birthday is only a few days before that of my grandboss and people like to make a big deal about hers and she, in turn, likes to acknowledge others born around the same time…but I’ve never gotten that. Rationally I know that this is not a big deal and still it stings. So if even my jaded, aging Gen-X heart can feel the pang, I can only imagine what it’s like for those who care deeply!

      1. Podenco Flamenco*

        This almost exact situation very recently happened to me. My office has about 18 people, generally the person’s supervisor would be charged with getting a card and passing it around for signatures. My birthday is 5 days before my grandboss, so my birthday is always a bit of an afterthought. This year my birthday passed with zero notice, it was completely forgotten by my boss and even though it was noted on the department-wide shared calendar, no one else realized it was my birthday.

        In the few days between my birthday and the grandbosses birthday, my boss sent out a department-wide email announcing that we would be having a celebratory potluck lunch for the grandboss for her birthday. I was so upset that I called out that day so I wouldn’t have to pretend I wasn’t hurt. Later that week I changed my name on the shared calendar from my name to a celebrity that shares my birthday, no one has noticed.

  31. CorgiDoc*

    My office does birthday cards for everyone. There are only 9 of us and we are all full time in the office (due to job duties that require that – we’re just not in an industry that can be done from home) so we don’t usually have these issues, but I still think it’s more work than it’s worth. I don’t really need a card that says “Happy Birthday, Have a great day!” Written in it nine times. We do also do birthday treats of the birthday person’s choosing which I do really like and appreciate. Usually a week or so before the birthday, the person in charge asks the birthday person what they’d like (usually cookies, cupcakes, donuts, something like that from a local bakery or grocery store) and they’re just laid out for people to help themselves on the day. Even that might be hard to manage for remote/hybrid staff though.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      Ding ding ding, we have a winner.

      Your boss made it clear that she’s tired of the agita and the wasted time. Besides, Diana’s time spent playing Card Fairy is taking away from doing her actual work.

      Just send a message to everyone on your team that it was a nice idea in theory, but it just wasn’t workable in practice. People who haven’t gotten cards yet might whine, but I personally would heave a sigh of relief becase the drama, and being nagged to sign cards for people I don’t really know that well, would end.

  33. CR*

    When I worked at a place that did birthday cards, they were e-cards. A link was emailed to everyone. They signed (or not). The card was automatically emailed to the recipient on their birthday. The end. It was painless.

  34. Sindirella*

    Aaaaaand, this is why I don’t tell my coworkers my birthday. I just don’t want to get caught up in this kind of crap.

  35. EvilQueenRegina*

    We used to have a list of birthdays and everyone would buy the card for whoever’s birthday was the next after their own (we did have one pair of birthday twins, but handled that with whoever was before them buying for the older of the two, the older bought for the younger, and then the younger bought for whoever was next).

    That mostly worked, although we did have a situation where “Dawn” was on a secondment to a different team in a different building and very rarely came back to work with us. “Cordelia”, who would have normally bought for Dawn, assumed that she would then be buying for “Spike” who was next in line (but she still had a bit of time before his birthday, so hadn’t done anything about it at that point). Except a couple of days before Dawn’s birthday, her particular friend in the team “Willow” realised that no one had passed around a card for Dawn, objected to the idea of skipping over her, and started panicking. Cordelia did then buy for Dawn, but Dawn then assumed that because she was on secondment, she no longer had to take part in the rota, and someone else had to buy for Spike at the last minute.

      1. EvilQueenRegina*

        I suspect it was a case of no one even thinking about it until the last minute. If I remember correctly (this was about 15 years ago) Dawn started the secondment about 6 months before her birthday so it wasn’t an immediate issue at that point and no one thought of it then, and then no one realised until about 2 days before her birthday. But asking her a bit closer to the time would have been the most sensible way!

    2. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

      What would happen if Alice bought a card for Barbara, and Barbara was supposed to buy a card for Carol, but Barbara left the company before Carol’s birthday? Who would buy a card for Carol?

      1. EvilQueenRegina*

        To be honest I can’t ever remember that one coming up, I suspect if it ever had it would have been like what happened with Spike in this example and it would have ended up being whoever picked up on it!

  36. CentralLuna*

    I have had a Diana who wanted to organize office birthdays in an old job and even just for our team of 8 it was too much work and was killed pretty quickly.

    My current company just has a slack channel for birthdays and other celebrations that people can opt into if they want their birthday shared and acknowledged and the company sends out a food delivery gift card by email. This is the best birthday system I’ve seen at a workplace and it’s fully handled by HR as part of their role.

  37. Ms. Whatsit*

    We do something for every birthday but it is treated as part of the job of someone (maybe not the best use of their time given that we’re arguably under-staffed, but it’s seen as a priority so no one is missed and a card is always circulated). But I see how it can be tricky, especially with a hybrid workforce.

    I know Alison is wisely suggesting to cut it off, but if it feels impossible to have no recognition of birthdays, then I would suggest either just signing the card from “the team” and/or having a small treat. This could also be done on a monthly basis, where all the birthdays that month are observed on one day when everyone’s in, but maybe that’s harder if not every birthday person will be in on the same day. A friend of mine resolved birthday inequities as a new exec director by setting a policy of her grabbing some cookies, for example, that day and it seemed to work pretty well, although I think she has a small team.

    1. Person from the Resume*

      … but both the LW and her boss think it needs to stop (the exact opposite of it’s impossible to stop).

      Diana needs to be instructed by her boss to stop because both the LW and her supervisor want it stopped.

      If Diana can’t stop she needs to stick to a card signed ONLY BY HER and not delivered at work making it clear this is personal birthday card

    2. Ellis Bell*

      I’ve never had cake or cards bought for me at my workplace – it’s honestly not a big deal! If I mention my birthday a few days in advance someone will wish me a happy birthday on the day, which is exactly the same sentiment a card is supposed to express. When I’ve worked in workplaces were it was celebrated, we brought cakes in on our own birthday if we wanted to; if we didn’t, we didn’t.

  38. Decima Dewey*

    I’m the birthday card person at my library. We’re a small branch, less than a dozen people total on staff. Birthdays are listed in circulation records, so I can find out quickly. And I only check if I’m sure that the person wants their birthday celebrated and have made sure they don’t belong to a religious sect that doesn’t celebrate birthdays. Jehovah Witnesses don’t, other sects may have the same prohibition.

    The only headache is getting everyone to sign without the birthday person knowing. Again, I don’t ask people who don’t celebrate birthdays to sign. I do warn them that there may be a random cake in the workroom.

  39. Not The Earliest Bird*

    This is a non-issue that has become an issue and is a true waste of time. We had a similar situation starting in my office, where every single birthday and company anniversary was getting acknowledged, leading to an absurd number of days with treats. We decided in March of this year that once a month, we would bring in cookies or some other treat, and have a group acknowledgement. No cards.

  40. I should really pick a name*

    her coworkers forgetting her birthday just added to it

    I get that Mary was having a rough time and perhaps not thinking clearly, but I would have assumed everyone realized that their coworkers were not remembering their birthday. A single person was remembering, and everyone else was just signing cards when they were put in front of them.

    1. Cyndi*

      I don’t think that really helps–personally when I’m having a really rough time and a little thing like that is just the last straw for me I’m just like “Damn, people couldn’t even pretend to care for a minute, huh.” Of course this isn’t Factually Accurate but it doesn’t make it any less bothersome.

      1. Elle*

        I have to be real, I don’t understand caring about this. Being interested in my birthday is not in my teammates’ job description. I did not grow up with birthdays (though I LOVE them, and all holidays, now), so this may be a cultural thing.

        1. Cyndi*

          I’m not saying it’s a genuinely big deal! Just that in an environment where the expectation is that everyone’s birthday will be recognized, which is where LW’s workplace is at–if someone’s in a place in love where a bunch of actual big deal things are going wrong, a little deal thing like “everyone got a card but me” can really hit disproportionately.

          I think both Mary and the LW overreacted, but I don’t think there’s a lot of use trying to hairsplit over whether it was rational for her to be upset by it at all.

        2. Spencer Hastings*

          Probably not many people care about it for its own sake. But if we’re in an environment where something is generally done for most people, and then it isn’t done for you…it’s hard not to feel like an outsider.

          1. I went to school with only 1 Jennifer*

            This. And this happened to me once, so ever since I have declined to be put in the situation. I know myself well enough to know that I would care, and I don’t want to go thru that (tiny unimportant) emotional reaction, so nobody in my work life gets my birthdate except HR.

            1. froodle*

              Samesies.

              I’ve had my birthday forgotten twice, at workplaces where the culture was very much into marking the occasion.

              It’s fair to say there were other issues with those jobs, but even so I was surprised by how much it stung.

              Now I opt out of any and all birthday related activity in the workplace.

              I’ll sign a card that’s put in front of me and pass it to the next person, but I’m not giving money, I’m not going for drinks, I’m not participating in cake, and I’m keeping my own birthdate under wraps.

              Luckily there’s a couple of JW at my new place, so I think my lack of engagement around birthdays just gets lumped in with them and doesn’t raise any eyebrows.

              Plus we get a half-day for our birthdays, so I just take it of and celebrate exactly how I want, with exactly the people I choose.

              Honesty I think paid leave is the best employee appreciation a workplace can give when it comes to birthdays.

  41. Media Monkey*

    this is what digital cards were made for. pay for the card, go to your all staff email list, delete the birthday person, send the link for signing. or a monthly treat for all the birthdays that month.

  42. ijustworkhere*

    It is true that the road to h*** is paved with good intentions. Sorry to hear that something intended to be a nice gesture has created this problem.

    Where I worked before we had an office birthday cake once a month. the office paid for the cake and it said “happy birthday” on it. Nobody had to come, nobody had to admit they had a birthday, but if you wanted to tell us you could. We just had cake, hung out and talked for a while, and occasionally sang Happy Birthday if someone shared it was their birthday.

    If you wanted something more than that, you could bring your own cake and treat us to your birthday. Only rule was everyone was invited.

  43. Anonymouse617*

    I’ve worked at a company that was BIG on birthdays and it would always be so. much. drama.

    Another place had four admins share the responsibility of sending an email once a month with that month’s birthdays. It worked well as a reminder for those who wanted to extend well wishes, and no one felt slighted since it was the same treatment as everyone else.

    If you do want to do something, like another user said, do service anniversaries. Less exciting? Yes. Less feelings? Absolutely. Information you can actually get from HR? Ding-ding-ding. You don’t even have to acknowledge the years, just a “We want to extend a special shout out to those celebrating service anniversaries this month. Alvin, Simon and Theodore, thank you for another year of dedication to this company. Now on to the fourth quarter numbers…”

  44. Lacey*

    Birthday stuff can be fine when it’s small and manageable, but this was to unwieldy from the jump.

    I’ve worked for a small company that recognized everyone’s birthday with cake. Eventually we had too many people for that and they switched to having regular (monthly?) birthday parties that acknowledged all the birthdays in that time frame.

    Another company just had each department handle birthdays. The company was large, but no department was more than 10 people, so this was fine.

    My current company just posts something on the internal chat. There’s someone officially in charge of doing this every day.

  45. noidtoday*

    Same reason why I stopped bringing birthday cakes in. If I’m sick, or on vacation, or just don’t feel up to making one on a day that happens to be someone’s birthday, feelings get hurt.

  46. Juicebox Hero*

    Urgh, there were 7 in our office who used to do birthday cards and gifts. We’re all physically in the office at least part of the day. Even with that few people in the same space it was an unmitigated PITA collecting the money, signing cards, getting everyone together to present the gift…

    Starting this year we decided to just get together twice a year (to cover January-June birthdays and July-December birthdays) and celebrate en masse. It’s the middle of September and no one’s brought it up at all, which is just fine with me.

  47. Public Servants are weird*

    HAH, I worked at an office where birthday cards got everyone a first class ticket into sensitivity training! It was before my time but boy howdy did it still reverberate for years after, which is why I know about it.

    It was a woman’s birthday and one of the men in the office wrote “happy birthday xox” which is, a definite misjudgement but I think he just wrote it without thinking (I will now refer to him as XOX). But naturally, it was interpreted in the most negative way possible – not by the woman whose birthday it was – but by the man she was having an affair (AP) with (they were both married to other people).

    XOX was a tiny, slow man who I think by today’s standards would probably be diagnosed on the spectrum. He considered the recipient a good work friend even though it was possibly just because she treated him nicely when a lot of people did not. AP was not happy that XOX had written that, he was strangely jealous for someone who was already married, so he went straight to HR and accused XOX of sexual harassment. The woman had no issue with it herself and so when HR contacted her she tried to sweep it under the rug and minimize the damage that AP had caused. This naturally made things worse and HR told her that they would have to do a full investigation and made her turn over the card.

    HR came back and said two things: 1 – no more birthday cards in the office; 2 – mandatory training on sexual harassment for everyone (about 20 people). As is the way with all office drama, by now word had gotten around that revealed who had made the original complaint, which then exposed the affair to the entire office. People were furious that they were hauled into this training over something so innocuous that a manager could have just nipped in the bud with a conversation with XOX – had AP gone to a manager and not to HR (this was a huge department so HR was quite disconnected from everyone on the team). It was an odd choice and it certainly made AP look awful and XOX felt super ashamed that what he perceived as just a kind greeting was misinterpreted as sexual harassment.

    Of course, no one should write XOX in a colleague’s birthday card! But the response was so whackadoodle to what clearly was just an error in misjudgment that even when I arrived on the scene, people were still upset at AP about the entire thing.

    1. Media Monkey*

      omg that office should never have seen some of the cards that have been sent around where i have worked. today in fact i put an X on one birthday and one engagement card.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      You would think that married people having an affair would know better than to attract attention to their batshitness, but no, they never do. I would not even blink at xoxo on a birthday card; here’s nothing quite like a straight man speaking on behalf of a woman and telling everyone what sexual harassment is and what it isn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single workplace card that isn’t covered with xxxx, and no one has ever cared. Good gravy what were your HR thinking?

      1. allathian*

        Indeed. I pity the coworkers who had to deal with the drama, but as far as I’m concerned, people who break their marital commitments are scum and deserve everything bad that happens to them.

        I also don’t think that the XOX crosses the boundary of harassment, the recipient wasn’t offended by it so nobody else had any reason to be, certainly not AP. Harassment rules are there for a reason and it’s a good thing that even bystanders can notify managers/HR of harassment by proxy even when the direct victim doesn’t want to do so, but I don’t think this one counts.

      2. UKDancer*

        Yeah looking at the leaving card currently being circulated for one of my colleagues, it’s covered in xx and xo after names and I’m pretty sure most of the people who signed it aren’t being inappropriate. I think that’s fairly normal at the moment for cards and HR would look very bemused at anyone who complained.

        I mean it’s different if you wrote something offensive on a card, but putting hugs and kisses is fairly normal and doesn’t generally mean a lot beyond the fact you think well of the person.

  48. Sillysaurus*

    Birthday cards for each person sounds like a logistical nightmare.

    My office provides monthly birthday treats the first Tuesday of the month to celebrate everyone who has a birthday that month. Easy to do, easy to remember, and no one gets left out. Plus treats.

  49. Reba*

    OP is the team lead. Where is the manager in this?

    It sounds like Diana is taking OP’s direction as like, suggestions for improvement. Even OP says she is “passing along feedback” not ordering her to stop (which makes sense with team lead relationship I suppose). Diana is perhaps deliberately hearing “fix the issues with the cards” not a clear “stop with the cards.”

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      OP is saying she’ll pass along the manager’s feedback to Diana. Only the boss saying “can we just stop this?” isn’t feedback; it’s an order to stop the time and resources suck this has become.

    2. I should really pick a name*

      The manager is the one who said “Can we just stop this?” which is very much the correct thing (though I might have phrased it “FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING YOU HOLD DEAR, STOP THIS NOW”)

      I don’t think the manager has any reason to believe this is continuing at this point.

      1. Reba*

        My point was that from the letter it doesn’t sound like the manager has spoken to Diana about it and it’s unclear if OP has or feels she has the authority to say stop it.

        1. Observer*

          Eh. The LW’s manager made it clear that it needs to stop, and that LW needs to be the one to make it stop. Which means that the LW probably has the authority. And if they do not have the authority, they most definitely *can* – and SHOULD – say “Well, Manager said that it needs to stop. Immediately.”

  50. HailRobonia*

    A, the beloved office card situation. One time I was JUST about to write “Have a fantastic day!” or something in what I thought was a birthday card, and noticed just in time it was a condolence card for a colleague who lost a parent.

    Even now I shudder to think what would have happened if I didn’t notice.

    Luckily COVID has put an end to these cards because of all the WFH so now we just say happy birthday in our monthly staff meetings for all the bdays that month.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      Someone in my old job once wrote happy birthday in one that wasn’t a birthday card – this one was a goodbye and good luck card for a temp who got a permanent job somewhere else, so not quite as bad as that would have been. I think she just thought it was funny.

    2. bamcheeks*

      I still remember realising I had a migraine and aphasia when I tried to write “have a great day” in a birthday card just before I ran to catch my train, and then looking at it and realising I’d written something like, “have train going great good” At that point my brain totally stopped being able to do words and I couldn’t work out what was wrong with it or how to sign my name. I have no idea what the card recipient thought!

    3. L. Ron's Cupboard*

      We had a card circulating in our office for someone who was in the hospital after a heart attack. Someone in another department wasn’t paying any attention and wrote, ‘congratulations and good luck on your next adventures!’ assuming it was a retirement. We knew the recipient would think it funny so we let it go, but imagine being the clueless writer. I’d have been mortified.

  51. MakingBiscuits*

    This should be required reading for all new managers. Not just birthday cards, but EVERYTHING that involves manual processes. Almost always, the intent is fantastic, but the execution is ALWAYS more convoluted than expected.

    I work in compliance, and while this (birthday cards) are a fairly trivial example (but still painful), this applies to EVERY process that is largely manual. Want to add that new “easy” QC procedure because of a problem in the past? Great!

    How are you going to ensure that every job hits this step? How are you going to ensure that the QC audit steps are applied correctly by different people? How are you going to ensure that when one of those steps changes, it is going to be reflected in the documentation? Speaking of documentation, who is going to OWN the documentation? Oh….now we can’t release because the QC hasn’t been completed? Yeah, Jenny is sick this week. The customer is angry because we can’t release when we promised?

    I can’t count the number of times I have seen this happen across the board.

  52. Enn Pee*

    I worked in a place where someone was REALLY into birthdays. She had access to HR data (unfortunately) and there was no way to opt out of her emails, cards, etc.
    On “big” birthdays (the ones that end in zero), she’d go all out with a celebration complete with cake. For those turning 40 or over (…which would be all of us), there were also black balloons, because we should be sad about getting older.
    A manager (not her own) finally told her that her advertising that someone was 60 could be considered a privacy violation. Unfortunately, nothing was done and the best we could do was grin and bear it.

    1. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      Black balloons? I am guessing every not-secretly hates this person?

    2. Caragh*

      Ooh, I’d have taken great pleasure in dramatically and publicly popping each of those balloons with the biggest pin I could find, while maintaining the most stonefaced expression possible. If she was present, I’d hold eye contact while doing it.

  53. Mieki*

    My department admin does an email once a month, calling out special team events, birthdays and work anniversaries at the beginning of each month. That is it. Some people wish you happy bday. or anniversary and that is it. Easy, and no drama…

    1. OlympiasEpiriot*

      This.

      Same in my department.

      People who want to wish someone HP usually send a Teams message if in remote or just say Happy Birthday when they see each other at the pantry.

      Yup, OP, another voice for just doing what your manager wants. Also, a bit of sympathy for Diana, even if all she wanted to do was use up the cards!

  54. So Tired*

    When I started my job I kind of figured there would be birthday acknowledgement, since that seemed like a common thing. but there wasn’t and five years later my birthday has never been acknowledged at work, and honestly I’ve realized that I prefer it that way. We’re not even a big office and I can tell that it would be more trouble than I had originally thought it would be. So yeah, unless it’s an official thing that someone is explicitly assigned to, bad idea over all imo.

  55. UpstateDownstate*

    This has probably been suggested already but….if she insists on finishing it out and that’s her ‘hill to die on’ then make them virtual birthday cards.

    Honestly, just a quick shout out in the daily email blast is fine too, no one should care this much about it. It’s like the coffee and dishes wars – there is never a win-win and it’s always a hot mess.

  56. Juicebox Hero*

    If Diana protests that she spent good money on all these cards and doesn’t just want to toss them, there are places where you can donate unused greeting cards. I’ll link to a site in a reply.

    2. allathian*

      My guess is that Diana bought a stack of cards from a child’s charity drive. It could be her kid, her neighbor’s, her best friend’s or whoever’s, but now she has a stack of birthday cards she has no idea what to do with if she can’t continue doing what she’s been doing.

      She needs to think outside the box and donate them.

      The LW, or preferably the manager who has hiring and firing authority needs to step on this firmly and tell Diana to stop. I wouldn’t want to fire someone for birthday cards, but if she refuses to stop after being told firmly that she has to stop, it’s insubordination and warrants at least a warning.

  57. Fluffy Orange Menace*

    Ugh. Something similar happened to me. I was the “Sunshine Fund” as we called it, coordinator. I had an excel sheet of everyone’s Bday and everyone paid $2 per month and I got a cake for all of the bdays for that month. So many people, as soon as their month was celebrated said, “I’m opting out now” until eventually the only person paying for the cakes was ME. I finally sent an email that the SF was dismantled due to lack of interest. The OUTRAGE. They WERE interested they insisted. They looked forward to the cake–just not in paying for it blah blah. I’ll never do it again. It always works out poorly.

      1. Fluffy Orange Menace*

        Yeah and the worst was that since I bought the cake for the month, I didn’t get one for mine cuz… nobody thought about it and mine was the only one that month LOL

  58. Michigander*

    This reminds me of the episode of The Office where Jim tries to change the birthday parties to be communal instead of individual and it ends in hurt feelings and going back to the way things were. If the birthday celebration or non-celebration process is working, don’t risk changing it!

  59. L. Ron's Cupboard*

    I got tired just reading this post. I feel for you, OP. The amount of time expended on this sounds frankly exhausting.

  60. Tammy 2*

    I really love the way my current department does birthdays, which is if you feel like celebrating your birthday, YOU bring in treats. Does it lack the element of surprise, or a special feeling of having someone else do something for you? Maybe, but none of us care.

    I always take my birthday off.

    1. allathian*

      Kids often like surprises, and when they’re too young to understand dates, their birthday celebration will be a surprise by definition.

      I guess I’m biased because I hate surprises in general, but I find adults who are disappointed if they don’t get any “happy” surprises to be a bit… immature, I guess. The only exception is if they’re disappointed because they didn’t get the surprise birthday party when everyone else who wanted one did. I find it entirely reasonable to be disappointed to learn that people apparently don’t value you as much as they value your coworkers.

      Granted, in my case this is also cultural, because in my culture people generally host their own parties. The only exceptions I’ve seen are stag and hen nights, and large weddings for young 20-somethings who are moving from their parents’ homes. If the couple’s lived together before the wedding, as most couples in my culture do, they generally host the wedding themselves because to do otherwise would be seen as pretentious. Sure, sometimes the MOH and best man are responsible for coordinating the logistics of the wedding and are listed as the people to RSVP instead of the bride and groom, but in my experience that’s only happened when it’s a large wedding with at least 200 guests.

  61. Les*

    My department celebrates birthdays and work anniversaries on a monthly basis with cupcakes or something like that. They announce everyone’s birthdays and anniversaries so even if the person isn’t there, they are acknowledged.

  62. Falling Diphthong*

    I really hope the Leverage writers are looking for a way to turn this into the cover for an elaborate heist.

  63. Elle*

    Maybe it’s because I was not raised with birthdays*, but this seems absurd. Letting conflict like this develop in the workplace over something so unnecessary seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Maybe this is a cultural misstep on my part, but I’ve always thought that the workplace should be kind of… neutral.

    *Ex-JWs represent. I imagine any JWs getting birthday cards would just see it as faith-strengthening, eg, further evidence that The World is against them and that they’re fighting the good fight against sin and paganism. I would want to make sure they’re not being included both to avoid that reinforcement and out of basic respect.

  64. Successful Birthday Rememberer*

    I started the birthday card stuff on my team.
    1. Ask everyone their birthday; tell them it’s completely optional. Let the ones who hate attention know that it’s just a card. No pressure for the folks who do not celebrate their birthday.
    2. Buy a 40-pack of cards of 10 different designs. No favoritism.
    3. Enter a birthday reminder in my calendar for the actual day, and another reminder for the week before to get the card going.
    4. write the names / create a checklist of everyone who needs to sign the card and when you sign, cross your name off.
    5. For remote employees, do an e-card for $5.
    That. Is. It.

    1. Observer*

      That’s actually a fair bit of work. And it doesn’t always work out, as the LW’s letter makes clear.

      I mean if you really are not taking up a bunch of work time, and you have *never* forgotten or missed someone who wants to be on the list, and no one has ever missed signing the card, good for you. But it’s very much the outlier.

    1. H3llifIknow*

      There was a letter about that! A company made a big deal out of bdays, gave an extra day off, etc… but this poor thing had a 29 Feb Bday so they LITERALLY said they could ONLY celebrate her once every 4 years! It was Banana Pants with full on silly string accessories.

  66. The Wizard Rincewind*

    This worked in my office prior to everyone going remote for the pandemic because a) it was the job of our admin to acquire and pass around the cards, b) she had a list of everyone paperclipped to the card, and they checked their name off the list as they signed so she could see at a glance who hadn’t, and c) my office had 17 people in it, so it was 1-2 people with birthdays per month.

    Outside of those factors, I can see how this quickly devolves into a mess that isn’t worth the time and frustration.

  67. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

    Here’s additional proof that we should normalize the Birthday Person doing the celebration — they can bring cupcakes or pizza or a face painting clown, and the coworkers can say “hey, thanks, and happy birthday” to someone who has welcomed this interaction and no one can complain that more money was spent on Sally than on Jan.

  68. HailRobonia*

    Back when we still passed cards around our Executive Director needed to be the last person to sign it and he would read what everyone wrote. He would then announce that we aren’t being “personal enough” and need to make more effort.

    Sorry I don’t know much about the new person in an entirely different team or whatever. So to avoid being criticized for my messages, I had two plans: a name pun if I could think of one (“have a FRANtastic day!” for Fran, or rhyme “Have lots of cake, birthday boy Jake.”

    Alternatively if I knew the person spoke a language other than English I would look up how to say happy birthday in that language and write that. One time with a coworker who I knew would appreciate the joke, I looked up how to say “Error: cannot connect to translation server. Try again later” in Chinese.

  69. Elsa*

    In the small organization I recently joined, birthdays are acknowledged on the work whatsapp group, and everyone chimes in to wish the person a happy birthday. Which seems harmless enough but people get missed… which I know because they missed my birthday. I didn’t say anything because I don’t like drama, but birthdays are a minefield!

  70. Tony Howard*

    I’ve worked in many offices large and small on a 40 plus year career in healthcare and finance and the only thing I ever saw that worked well – was a monthly breakfast with the CEO for all the birthday “boys and girls” in that month. No cards , no cakes, no idiotic time wasting celebrations – just a small group of people , engaging in some informal face time , enjoying a nice hot breakfast and some pleasant conversations with the “big boss”.

  71. Purple Cat*

    If Birthday acknowledgements don’t come from HR, they can’t be done.
    One company, the CEO personally signed all the cards. He’d have a stack in meetings and be signing them while listening (hopefully) to the actual content of the meeting. Then as the company grew, it evolved to signatures of the entire executive team pre-printed. The cards included $25 in “birthday bucks” so it was nice to continue.

    Current company, the office administrative assistant was tasked with sending out the cards. Which included a pre-printed mailing label “signature” of “Congratulations, Company Name”. Which that sentiment works on the anniversary cards, but not the birthday cards. And was awkward for those of us whose birthday and anniversary are in the same month, so got 2 of these in the mail on the same day.

    Now that the assistant was let go, we just have a letterboard updated monthly with the birthdays and workaversaries.

  72. childless cat lady*

    Hilarious to read this after literally just signing a passed birthday card for a member of my team (there’s 8 of us) after they decidedly did NOT do one for my birthday last month, LOL. (Our manager has nothing to do with this; there are some ~busybody types~ on my team keeping this up, who I’m cordial with but not overly friendly for that reason.)

    And honestly, I couldn’t care less about not getting a card. Our firm does a nice monthly birthday treat for everyone, and the busybody types are just going to do their thing (aka spread drama).

  73. Rock*

    Last year, there were a couple of people who would do stuff for people’s birthdays, mostly decorating cubicles and making signs and such. Sometimes I would help, and was looking forward to what they would do for mine.
    They did nothing. I was a little disappointed, and two other coworkers took note and quickly threw together a little Happy Birthday sign. I still have it pinned up.
    A week later, it was another person’s birthday. She got balloons, and an email was sent out to invite people for cake. While getting my slice, I off-handedly mentioned to a manager they forgot my birthday, then went and sat at my desk and cried. I was having a hard time at work at the time, and it felt like it was now abundantly clear where I stood on not only the seniority ladder, but the social ladder as well.
    One of the coworkers who made me the sign said something to another manager, and soon after the birthday stuff stopped. I do miss the crazy decorations, but it was very clear in hindsight they were doing it mostly for their friends.

  74. Ohio Rocks*

    Recovering Birthday Fairy here and I agree – drop it. It is WAY more trouble than it’s worth. People yelled at me when I missed their day, which was on me but didn’t merit mean remarks. The card always went missing and I had to track it down and people got mad at me when I came around to confirm their birthdays. (“What – did you think it changed since last year?”) The icing on the (birthday) cake? I paid for the cards myself. NEVER again. If there’s a birthday version of “Bah, Humbug!” – count me in.

  75. Lemonlime*

    My office had the best Birthday policy: If it’s your birthday and you want to celebrate, great, bring in your favorite treat. If not, no one would bother.
    It was nice because then there wasn’t the birthday card issue or the ‘we went to the store and bought you this dessert that you secretly hate/don’t want to eat but feel obligated to.’
    On my birthday, my spouse makes my favorite PIE—I bring it in to share, a low-key treat. Another coworker brought in cheesecake for his. Another didn’t like sweets and brought in homemade empanadas.

  76. Spicy Tuna*

    Ugh, celebrating birthdays at work falls dangerously into “we’re a family here” territory, and we all know how that ends up. Birthdays at work… it’s a DON’T!

  77. Language Lover*

    One of the things I did when I was hired as a manager at my current place of work was nix the birthday card rigamarole. The person who bought the cards, got people to sign them, and gave the cards to the birthday person was under my supervision. I knew that if they were to go on vacation or were out sick, that was not a task that I’d want to take on. It was a small department but it’d be too much time spent on an unnecessary non-work task with the potential of big hurt feelings if it didn’t go perfectly.

    The practice we did keep was that people could throw themselves a party if they wanted to. If they wanted to bring treats in and celebrate their birthday every month of the year, they could knock themselves out but nothing would be provided from our end. Thankfully, our company got a new recognition system that allows people to put in their birthday and get all the virtual recognition (a la Facebook).

  78. CommanderBanana*

    Remember what the road to hell is paved with?

    I’ve worked places that just included a generic “happy birthday to anyone celebrating a birthday this month!” at the beginning of the month in regular department emails.

  79. Beehoppy*

    My first year at a new job, my birthday was coming up and a coworker told me she made cupcakes for everyone’s birthday. I love my birthday so I was excited! The day came and no cupcakes. At lunchtime she remembered to tell me she had run out of time to make them. They offered to “take me to lunch” which meant driving me to Chipotle to buy my own burrito bowl and then coming back and eating it in the office kitchen with about 1/4 of our small team including my nemesis and her (non-employee) husband who had whole conversations I could not contribute to. It was so bad one of my IRL friends went out to get donuts to cheer me up.

  80. Coverage Associate*

    I have long been tempted to convert to one of the religions that doesn’t celebrate birthdays just to avoid the birthday drama at work.

    We have a new admin who has started birthday cards, maybe just for our team? Anyway, she only asks the few people she thinks are on the small team to sign. I didn’t realize this, so the first time I signed, I signed on the facing side, because I figured room to sign would be an issue, because we have a couple dozen people in the office. So that was awkward.

    She’s also doing these very small birthday lunches, so the birthday person has to pick one special co worker in addition to 2 bosses to invite. Of course, my birthday is next, and I have no idea what to do.

    I do feel like the way that the cards are supposed to be a secret makes this all more difficult. Clearly, certain offices expect cards. Just do an office wide announcement that the card is at reception or wherever for people to sign. Include the birthday person. The pretend covert signing is definitely one of those cultural norms that could totally be different.

  81. El l*

    So what did we learn from this saga? I say:

    We must keep clear the distinction between personal initiative and office policy. And…

    There are a few well intentioned things like birthdays that people have a way of making WAY too personal.

  82. Workaholic*

    We used to do bday cards at my job – but! that was when we all worked in office, and it was just our team of about 20 people. and the rule was the bday person was responsible for the card for the next bday person. But even then my bday was missed once. I had taken the day off, but that shouldn’t have matters other’s still got their cards when they took PTO. I actually had forgotten that bit haha. Once we switched to WFH (and now across states and countries) the bday thing is gone. So even when it’s relatively few people involved, in one location (our team all sat together) – a card was put in a file folder and passed around with a check off sheet until everyone had signed – it still took days and sometimes people were still missed.

  83. Audogs*

    At a previous big corporate HQ job this got out of control too. I finally noped out by (lying and) saying that I would send my own card to the person. That did not make the feel good person happy, but I had standing in the company.

  84. Esprit de l'escalier*

    There is something rather infantilizing about making such a fuss over coworkers’ birthdays, which might be why some of them are responding childishly to being left out. Also, it can be problematic to pay extra attention to big round-number birthdays which might be the exact ones that some colleagues don’t want extra attention for, like if turning 40 or 50 or 60 makes them feel exceptionally old compared to everyone else (especially with the teasing/hazing that often comes with these birthdays). Or they have personal reasons for not celebrating it and it’s none of their coworkers’ business what their reasons are.

    A generic monthly doughnuts-and-punch gathering is better all around as long as it’s opt-in and there’s no reference to birthdays. It’s “Happy September!” , full stop. No-one has to get their feelings hurt by being neglected when they like attention or singled out when they hate that.

  85. SusieQQ*

    I used to be Diana. So well-intentioned but… I’m older and wiser now. #neveragain

    Now as a manager I tend to shy away from public acknowledgments of anybody’s birthday (unless the person themselves brings it up, e.g. “I’m taking Friday off to go on a weekend trip for my birthday!”) because celebrating birthdays is against some people’s religion.

  86. squids for all time*

    I joined a new team within the same company this past year, and the manager does work anniversary /birthday acknowledgments at the weekly department meeting. I had never had a manager do this and really don’t care, but my work anniversary came and went and I have to admit it bothered me to be left out.

    He acknowledged it three weeks late and said he “hadn’t even thought to look because (I am) so young”, which I understand is because I am new to the team… but he knows I had been with the company for longer then he has (although I am at the better part of a decade younger then the other team members), so I feel like that comment was worse than the initial forgotten anniversary.

  87. Frosty*

    There is a concept in managerial studies (and industrial/organizational psychology studies) called “Organizational Justice”. It’s quite detailed and layered, but can boil down to: do employees feel they are being treated fairly. How an employee feels they are treated, and what their attitude/actions are in relation to that.

    I bring this up because by introducing “birthdays” into the workplace, you’re creating a totally new scenario for people to feel that “justice” is not evenly distributed – which is exactly what happened here! It’s hard enough for an organization to behave justly without this whole unnecessary addition.

    My suggestion would be to have a monthly “coffee and cake” (cake could rotate into other things – bagels, fruits etc.) that is paid for by management. People do not have to “opt in” and do not have to disclose it’s their birthday.

    I’d even say not to tie it too much to “good news” as some folks might be going through a dark time and not feel they have anything to share.

    I think even better is to have it be an “anniversary coffee” where you share the anniversaries of people’s start date with the company. “This month we’re celebrating Paul and David who both started working here as interns in 2009 and have stayed on with us the whole time! We’re also thankful for Emma who started with us 1 year ago and has helped us update our phone system so we’re finally in the 21st century!”

    I know there are a lot of comments in this page already and no one will see this haha

    2. allathian*

      Yes, work anniversaries are great. My 17th is coming up in October, but we don’t celebrate most of these, unfortunately.

      I work for the government, and I was old enough when I started that I won’t get the 40-year work anniversary pennant (yes, really!) to put on my desk. Government employees and civil servants have a mandatory retirement age at 68, most people retire earlier than that.

  88. HonorBox*

    I feel for Diana. It is such a kind thing to recognize people on their birthday. My office circulates cards, and while most of us are on-site, there are some part time staff members who just don’t get a chance to sign. And you know what? I’ve never taken note of who didn’t sign. We do have a little sheet that we initial when the cards are circulated, but our office manager is not chasing anyone down to sign if they’re unavailable.

    That said, this workplace’s setup sucks for this kind of thing. Obviously. Remote employees? Hybrid employees? It is too much to manage. That they can’t even get a complete list of birthdays from HR should have been the first sign that this is a bad idea. It is time to take this idea to the round file.

  89. Pinta Bean*

    I read the OP with a lot of sympathy. I am currently trying to kill the birthday card at my office, for all of the reasons in the OP, *plus* bonus reason that the person in my office who decided to take it upon herself to be the card-organizer is way over the top about it, she will follow people into the restroom if they haven’t yet signed the card, she will interrupt a meeting with clients to pull someone out to sign the card. My boss is hesitating on backing up my anti-birthday stance because it will definitely cause a big reaction from those who enjoy the cards.

  90. Christa*

    There is another solution to this to make sure everyone feels seen and celebrated (one which Ive used at several offices)

    Get cupcakes once a month (or some other treat)
    Dont have to list names – just have to use it as a coverall for ‘all March birthdays’

    This went over well, people felt seen and appreciated. Items can be ordered to be delivered well in advance, thus making it a few minutes a month to carry out.

  91. maw*

    Another sensitive areas around birthdays — some faith traditions don’t observe/celebrate birthdays (some subsets of Seventh Day Adventists, for example).

    But yes, recognizing people’s personal milestones in the workplaces is a great feeling idea, but the implementation REALLY can be astonishingly taxing, whether it’s baby showers, or birthdays, or weddings. Pass the hat or no? Who collects? Who is keeping an eye out to make sure celebrations are equitable for the quiet introvert in the corner as well as for the extrovert who has been swanning about sharing all their celebratory plans with everyone who will listen. What if someone says they’ll give but doesn’t? Who is in charge of the cards?

  92. 888 Pocomo*

    We used to do all of this, plus a cake for each person. As we grew bigger, it started to get ridiculous. When covid came, I stopped the cakes for obvious reasons, and then just never started them up. Now, I have our management team sign a card & it gets mailed to the employee’s home. No more complaints, no more arguing about who gets to pick this month’s cake, no more complaints on the *kind* of cake, no more passing cards around to sign (although we do still do this for congratulatory & sympathy cards). It all runs very smoothly now, and that part of my life is behind me, lol.

  93. Stella*

    Our company sends out an email at the beginning of the month listing all the month’s birthdays. It’s sent from someone on the HR team who has access to the info.

    Easy-peasy.

  94. Baunilha*

    Another example on how harmless things like that can become messy: when the pandemic hit, my birthday was the first one we had after everyone went remote. Before that, company passed around a card for everyone to sign and you got a branded balloon. Harmless, if useless, stuff.
    Then my birthday came up and my coworkers pulled their money to send me a cake. It was lovely and we kept the tradition of collecting money to send everyone a cake on their birthday, but shortly after that, the company started downsizing. So if for my birthday they split the cost of the cake between ten people, by time the last birthday of the year came around, there was only me and the birthday coworker on our team. Since she had contributed to everyone else’s cake, I thought it would be unfair for her not get anything and I paid for the cake alone.
    Later we decided we wouldn’t do anything like that anymore.

  95. NurseThis*

    Every place I ever worked had the birthday card thing and it never ever worked. People got missed, night shift people got annoyed that day shift people got a party….the list is endless. I hated the constant breaks in my day to sign and pass cards. At one place I refused to put down my birthday and an admin did a public information search to put it down over my objections.

    May the birthday card thing die a swift death.

  96. Elizabeth West*

    I don’t really think a hard-copy birthday card thing works very well in a hybrid office, or a large company with multiple offices. It’s more suited to a small, self-contained workplace as part of the job duties of a particular role like an admin.

    Diana would have done better to find a non-profit or some other organization that accepts unused cards for prisoners, soldiers, and hospital patients. They’re just a Google search away.

  97. louvella*

    I worked at a place where people made a big deal of birthdays and mine was forgotten.

    I quit that very day.

    I mean, I was already planning on quitting, but it made it easier!

    1. allathian*

      Did you tell them you quit because they forgot your birthday? That’s the level of petty I can get behind.

  98. Troubadour*

    In addition to talking to Diana, email the whole team to explain you’re stopping the cards. That way a) no-one will blame Diana, b) everyone will be clear why, and c) you make it harder for her to continue informally – or if she secretly does you’ve made it clear it’s definitely not sanctioned officially.

  99. Lusara*

    One time at work, a few people were organizing an impromptu lunch out and invited me along. We ended up with about 10 people. At the end, one of the organizers said something to the effect of “it’s A, B, and C’s birthdays so we are going to cover your lunches.” There was no warning that we were going to be treating these folks. Had I know this would be the case, I wouldn’t have gone. To their credit, the birthday people tried to decline but she insisted. Obviously I couldn’t object without looking like a jerk so I paid up.

    What really bothered me the most about it was I had been working there about 6 years and that point and never had my birthday acknowledged once. It didn’t bother me until I was told I had to buy lunch for other people.

    So ditto to Alison – don’t do any birthday celebrations unless it’s an official policy and it’s ensured that everyone will get the same recognition.

  100. Maleficent*

    As someone who has been (accidentally?) left off the office birthday card rotation at a few jobs, I despise these kinds of things. Now I take the day off on my birthday and spend the day completely free of any responsibilities.

  101. Fleur-de-Lis*

    The thing I have seen work best was at a workplace with around 50 employees. After our monthly all-hands meeting, there would be a “cake and fruit salad for this month’s birthday people” in the staff lounge and a list of names for that month’s celebrants. No specific dates mentioned, and if you really didn’t want people to know your birthday, they’d take you off the list. Since it was monthly and most people didn’t track terribly closely, the non-party-people could fly under the radar and the “it’s my birthday month!” folks could get what they needed.

  102. Raida*

    I like this “…and my and Jane’s decision is to stop it.”

    This is not about what you do or don’t mind, do or do not like personally.
    Also! You are not to get signatures *for a workplace birthday card* exclusively in breaks either – that is not saving work time, it’s forcing every single other staff member to give up break time because you are willing to volunteer *your* break time. What is unacceptable, and I will not sign off on that expectation.

    Overall: Just make a channel in whatever system you use for comms, like Teams. People can say it’s their birthday *or not* if they prefer, it’s all digital, they can chuck up a photo of a cupcake they’re enjoying at home *if they want to* and it requires such low admin to maintain – you only need to add staff to the channel when they start.

  103. Lilac*

    Honestly morale boosting efforts whether they’re done by the office formally or an employee voluntarily suck when people work varied hours and modes. Because if you’re not right in front of the people responsible for organising the thing you’re sometimes invisible.

    Case in point – I’m pretty sure that when I get into work tonight nothing nice and suitable for my dietary requirements would have been set aside for me from my work’s anniversary party yesterday, even though I worked that handover shift in the morning. Things get purchased specifically when I am working the same shift as everyone else but I was hired specifically to do overnights so that’s 0.01% of my time on the job. :(

  104. TheBunny*

    Kudoboard.

    Problem solved. People put their birthdays into the system so if they are skipped it’s because they didn’t give their own info.

    It’s digital so there’s no signature chasing.

    Ask me why we do it this way… go ahead and ask. LOL

  105. itsa me, mario*

    As an EA, I’ve been the person whose specific job duty this was. Even there, as soon as you start making it an official thing, it becomes a minefield. We had a coworker whose birthday was 12/23, and our office closed the last 2 weeks of the year. Somehow it became my problem to make sure his birthday was celebrated prior to shutting down. If I went on vacation, I had to make sure to specifically delegate the birthday task if someone’s birthday happened to fall that week. If someone took a PTO day for their birthday or happened to schedule a vacation during that time, I would end up doing a ton of work for nothing, and often having to do the birthday routine twice.

    Meanwhile, I would guess that maybe 30% of coworkers I’ve ever had have cared, at all, about celebrating their birthday at work.

  106. Pennyworth*

    I once worked in an office where a birthday list, with milestone birthdays, was posted in the break room. You were expected to provide a cake for the birthday following your own, and arrange for someone else to do it if you were away. No one was offered the chance to opt out.

    1. DJ*

      Milestone birthdays are dicey as it advertises the milestone age of the person. Not everyone wants others to know their age especially if they are considered the wrong age for their position/grade.

  107. New Jack Karyn*

    I really wanted the headline to include “and now all is Chaos,” but we don’t get everything we want in life.

  108. The Rat-Catcher*

    Ours works, but:
    It’s a small team (10 of us)
    It’s not a physical card, it’s a gift sent by someone who is responsible for that, and the rest of the team pays that person.
    That person is recognized for completing that task and the important contribution they make to team morale.
    *The system and the amount to pay was set by the team, not management!!!*
    When it’s that person’s turn, others step in to cover the responsibility.

  109. Sandi*

    I worked in an office with about 10- 12 people in my department. One of my coworkers baked cakes as a hobby and at her own time and expense baked beautiful cakes for everyone on their birthdays. The beginning of the year she even sent out a list asking what type of cakes people preferred. Everything went nicely and everyone really appreciated it until it came time for one coworker. Apparently the type of cake that she indicated she liked at the beginning of the year, was not the type of cake she received. Instead of appreciating the beautiful cake that was made for her, she complained about not being the type of cake she requested early in the year. Some people are so ungrateful.

    1. Lilac*

      Nope. Once people state a preference if they don’t get their preferences they’re not “ungrateful”. Doesn’t matter how beautiful something is if it’s not what they asked for.

  110. The Grinchess*

    Oh. Birthdays.

    One workplace had an official policy of card and the birthday person could bring in a treat if they wanted. It later morphed into card, cubicle decorating, lunch, gifts, singing, co-workers bringing in treats and flowers and all sorts of stuff… for some. Others? Barely a card or cubicle decorating.

    Mine was forgotten a few times.

    But sure. Birthdays. Yay.

  111. applesandoranges*

    In my workplace the birthday person has to bring in baked goods for the morning shift. Otherwise, they get our boss asking or texting for treats.

    If someone’s working evening or night shift and brings something in then, my boss will ask for another treat for the morning shift.

  112. DJ*

    Must be a huge office so can see why it would go pear shaped. In workplaces with smaller teams could it be done by team! Also have a spreadsheet everyone is told about and asked to enter their birthday details (excluding year) or advise don’t wish for it to be acknowledged. And have monthly celebrations!
    I worked somewhere where they got into the dangerous habit of celebrating decade birthdays. Not everyone wants their age advertised especially if they are considered the wrong age for the work they do/position/grade. Being a team of around 10-12 it was easy enough to celebrate EVERYONE’s birthday. We also had the situation where another colleague had a non-decade birthday between 2 decade birthdays which were about a week apart. Thus, it was obvious the non-decade person was being overlooked. So I made sure I got her a cake and did a small celebration. Interestingly no one offered to help out the costs of that cake (I knew I couldn’t really ask as I hadn’t flagged the idea in advance)

  113. Withheld*

    I have organized variations on this twice.
    1. Everyone else bake/bring food for birthday persons birthday celebration. Worked swimmingly until my birthday.
    2. Tell the birthday month group to bake/bring food for their birthday month. Some people just won’t (although they will eat) and some people will complain about how much they spent/effort they put in compared to others (usually not correctly).

    It’s a no.

  114. It’s my birthday and ill*

    Yeah I’ve learned that birthdays at the office should not become a thing. When I first started at my current job, there were 3 of us in the same equal position. We ended up starting to celebrate each other’s birthdays by decorating cubes and maybe a small item and a Nothing Bundt Cakes mini bundt. The first year, it worked fine for everyone. Then the others started to do something for the managers’ birthdays which I thought was icky but they didn’t tell me what they were doing or ask me for my opinion so I didn’t participate or say it was a bad idea. The next year, the other two’s birthdays were early in the year. One was on a day where I was sick but I think the other person decorated their cube. One was going to be out on the day of so *I* made sure to plan to decorate their cube early as a nice surprise. I got a bundt for both (for the birthday I missed because I was sick and for the early one) in their favorite flavors because I paid attention when they discussed it before, which I didn’t mind doing because I got myself one too while I was there (those cakes are worth it).

    About 6 months later was my birthday. Nothing happened. I was out of town for the day of and then got sick so was out for a while after. But they knew I was going to be gone and could have done something early like I did for them or do something when I got back like I did for them. But I got absolutely nothing. So *I* did nothing for their next birthdays (and they didn’t do anything for each other either) and then the birthdays completely stopped and no one has said anything about them since. No good deed, I guess.

  116. Judd43*

    I feel like there’s a much easier way to do this. Just send one email asking for people to reply with their birthdays. Anyone who replies gets added to the list. Anyone who doesn’t reply doesn’t get a card.

    Then at some regular interval, say a week before a birthday, set out the card in some communal place like a break room. Anyone who wants to sign can sign.

  117. calico*

    I honestly have never understood why people insist on workplace birthday celebrations. If your office is larger than like 10 people it just gets ridiculous. Do they not have friends or family to celebrate with?

    1. Annie*

      “Do they not have friends or family to celebrate with?”

      In a surprising number of cases, they may not.

      It’s already been mentioned in this thread that birthday drama can be a sign of more generally not feeling valued as an employee, some people think, “ooh, nice gesture!” and don’t think beyond that to how terribly wrong it can go, and some people just want any excuse they can find to have a party.

Comments are closed.