I am working as a contractor at the moment and I still do not manage to avoid the requests, just have no problem with declining them.

I have theorised in the past that large organisations will eventually grind to a poverty stricken halt due to these collections.

Working on the basis that your average collection requires a fiver and your average worker takes home about £2k per month, there would only need to be 400 collections per month for the poor employee to net £0 per month and keep his conscience in tact.

Assuming that each employee has an average tenure of 5 years during which time we can assume that they have 5 birthdays, 1 child, 1 wedding, 2 accidents and a leaving do, we can safely* assume that your average employee has 2 collections per year.

Gathering all of this very scientifically calculated data together we can therefore hypothesise that:

2000 (average monthly takehome) / 5 = 400
1 Employee = 2 collections per year
2 / 12 = 0.16666666666 (individual monthly collections per person)
400 / 0.166666666666 = 2400

I am therefore able to declare any company over 2400 people to be fundamentally unworkable assuming that the idiotic, well meaning strangers get their way.

*in accordance with my back-of-a-fag-packet calculations

Northwind – Member
That’s class.

Back in the bank, my old team was disbanded over the course of 6 months. It took weeks of leaving collections for me to realise that I was going to be the last to leave, therefore, I was going to end up putting a fiver into about 40 collections, but by the time I left there’d be nobody else there so I’d only get a fiver in mine

you worked in a bank with maths like that? with nobody else there you get no money in yours 😀

Birthdays is frigging ludicrous – I’ve only ever given to births, marriages and (career)deaths…. and then only people I know and like.

you worked in a bank with maths like that? with nobody else there you get no money in yours

Not if he put a fiver into his own collection.

Not if he put a fiver into his own collection.

“For me? You shouldn’t have!”

I donated 40p by the way

cranberry – Member

Not if he put a fiver into his own collection.

we do secret santa in our office, but leading up to this years barrage of badly wrapped, generally crap but often hilarious presents my colleagues who organize it have decided that the old limit of £5 per person is now insufficient – apparently too many ‘not serious’ and ‘cheap’ presents were bought last year which ‘weren’t in the spirit of christmas’. now they want to up it to £25 a person. not meaning to sound a scrooge but £25 – WTF?! i’ve told em to eff off or i’ll just sacrifice the shite present to save myself the bother and the cash

Some of the annoying yummy mummies at my kid’s school have got into the habit of doing whip rounds for the teacher at the end of the school year. I have no problem with a few quid for a bottle of wine and box of chocolates, but they were shooting for an iPad this year! He wasn’t leaving or anything and my boy told me he spends most of his time watching antiques roadshow on iPlayer during lessons.

I don’t know if he got it or not, not on the basis of my contribution that’s for sure

Surely the teachers can’t accept gifts, I thought there were strict rules about this.
EDIT: A quick Google says paying for preferential treatment is acceptable.

edit

now they want to up it to £25 a person.

😯

We do a tenner but this year we’ve agreed to donate £5 to charity and spend £5 on the present

I am working as a contractor at the moment and I still do not manage to avoid the requests, just have no problem with declining them.

I have theorised in the past that large organisations will eventually grind to a poverty stricken halt due to these collections.

Working on the basis that your average collection requires a fiver and your average worker takes home about £2k per month, there would only need to be 400 collections per month for the poor employee to net £0 per month and keep his conscience in tact.

Assuming that each employee has an average tenure of 5 years during which time we can assume that they have 5 birthdays, 1 child, 1 wedding, 2 accidents and a leaving do, we can safely* assume that your average employee has 2 collections per year.

Gathering all of this very scientifically calculated data together we can therefore hypothesise that:

2000 (average monthly takehome) / 5 = 400
1 Employee = 2 collections per year
2 / 12 = 0.16666666666 (individual monthly collections per person)
400 / 0.166666666666 = 2400

I am therefore able to declare any company over 2400 people to be fundamentally unworkable assuming that the idiotic, well meaning strangers get their way.

*in accordance with my back-of-a-fag-packet calculations

You fail to account for the £5 x 2400 = £12,000 gift that each employee receives on average twice per year, giving them a total gifted (and therefore untaxed) income of £24,000 per annum.