You Haven't Paid Me, But Somehow, I Should Contribute Money For Your Birthday

Something interesting is happening in my place of work and I just want to share it here, and I will sincerely love to hear your opinion on this. In the next few days, our director will be celebrating her birthday, and a dress was brought by her Personal Assistant last week for us to buy, insisting it's the colour of the day. The clothe is 14 thousand naira and less I forget, we will also contribute money to get a gift for her. Mind you we haven't been paid.

Honestly I have been wondering, when did working for someone become an automatic invitation to finance their personal celebrations? I thought birthdays are personal occasions, if I decide to celebrate my birthday, I will invite people if I wish and spend what I can afford. I don't really understand why someone should make their birthday celebrations a responsibility for other people, and this has caused some kind of fuss in my work place.

The hight of it all is that, they said if you don't have the money at hand, it will be deducted from your salary, and I had to ask if it was part of the job description that I never read..

I don't have a problem with anyone celebrating their birthday. In fact, I wish everyone the opportunity to celebrate as many birthdays as they want. But why should employees be made to feel obligated to spend their money on their employer's birthday?

The fact that I work for you doesn't mean I have automatically signed up to sponsor your personal events.

And let's not even forget that these are people whose salaries are yet to be paid. How do you comfortably ask someone who is waiting for their hard-earned money to contribute towards your celebration?

What if that person has been managing the little money left in their account? What if they have bills waiting? What if they have other important things they need to spend money on?

Must they now put those things aside because their employer has a birthday coming up?

Personally, I believe gifts should be given willingly. If I decide to buy you something, it should be because I want to, not because I am being pressured into it.

Anyway, maybe I am missing something here.

Is it now compulsory for employees to contribute towards their employer's birthday celebration simply because they work for them?

I would genuinely like to hear what other people think about this.

Image by Me