Corporate Iftar.
You should know I didn’t pay a penny on this, so finally, we are talking about something that is not me, me and me focused.
The company pays right?
I think every company out there tries to make an effort in Ramadan to have iftar and in Christmas to have dinner.
When they don’t, you know what we call them? Cheap bastards.
I remember one year the company just skipped the Christmas dinner. They didn’t even mention it. They thought it will slip and no one would notice, but man did we notice.
Jonah Berger in his book Contagious mentioned a principle that gets things to catch on, which he referred to as social currency. In a nutshell, we always want to look good to others. We want to look smarter. We want to be the cool ones. We want to be exceptional. We want to be rich, or at least be perceived as such.
You might wonder how does that relate to corporate dinners. It most certainly does, at least in my humble opinion.
Usually, corporate dinners take place in fancy restaurants, where you, in theory, would have an extravagant experience. Nevermind that in Ramadan at iftar time, things go crazy. Not to mention the supposedly fancy valet parking at the 5-star hotel ends you up waiting for your car in the hot steamy weather for about half an hour if not more.
Corporates want prestige. They want to be known that they “take care of their people.” And for that, they pay for our dinner. We are there to celebrate and meet new people, network, and socialize out of work. The funny thing is though, everyone, ends up talking about work anyway.
Corporates want the corporate currency. They want to be talked about, in a good way. They want to attract the best talent and echo with their most valuable clients.
… and for that, they arrange corporate dinners, in luxurious places, of course, among other stuff.