Work

How do we Celebrate Single and Childfree People in the Workplace?

When people only care about weddings and babies

Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels

There are three occasions for which my office will organise a whip-round:

• engagements
• weddings
• births.

I’m not opposed to sticking a fiver in the tin (well, transferring it to a PayPal money pool, these days) to celebrate people’s special events. But as I stood in a meeting room, eating sweets and listening to a Spotify wedding playlist to toast my colleague’s upcoming nuptials this week, I couldn’t help but think:

“what about the rest of us?”

Before someone screams ‘first-world problems’ at me, this isn’t a massively serious complaint. I’m not a fan of cake or surprises if I’m honest, so I’m probably not missing out on that front (I do like gifts though).

But doesn’t it seem strange — or at least very old-fashioned — that we only celebrate these arbitrary milestones that increasing numbers of people are eschewing these days?

I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but considering lots of people in the UK couldn’t legally wed until marriage equality passed in 2013, it seems a bit discriminatory too.