Manage Your Inner Grinch

It's after Thanksgiving. In workplaces everywhere, signs of holiday cheer appear on the walls, draped over cubicles, propped up on desks or, most alarmingly, arrive unsolicited in our email. It's that time of year again -- the holidays.

It's bad enough that our consumer nation bombards us with enough retail advertising and marketing spending during the last three months of the year to rebuild New Orleans from the waterline up or send a manned mission to Mars. But there are few workplace experiences that generate more angst and cognitive dissonance than company-sponsored holiday cheer. When the "catch the holiday spirit" email arrives from an earnest HR staffer, frankly, I wish the spamblocker would catch it instead of me.

I'm sorry if that makes me a grinch. I wasn't always this way. A while ago, when I first started working, I seized every chance to gather with my coworkers in the office or to go out and celebrate. Back then, the end-of-the-year holidays provided bountiful opportunities to socialize and schmooze with colleagues. What changed? Was it one too many punch bowls filled with eggnog of a hue not seen in nature? The dozens of times I've stood around listening to cheesy Christmas carols or, worse yet, been asked to sing along? The "who do I take and what do I wear" dilemmas at formal parties? The byzantine complexities of choosing what to put into an office Yankee swap? The acute discomfort of watching as a senior executive tries to achieve affability, humility, piety and superiority -- all at the same time -- during a speech to the team?

Maybe that doesn't make me a grinch, just less tolerant of more anxiety and stress during what is often, in the end-of-the-year rush to meet goals and achieve results at work, an already stressful time. Thank goodness Monster has some useful tips for dealing with this time of year!

• "Holiday Party Planning in the Diverse Workplace"
• "Make Your Work Life Merry During the Holidays"
• "Office Holiday Party Etiquette"

And this classic: "I Got Drunk and Asked My Boss Out."

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