Christmas parties... who needs them? They always end in tears. Be more creative when you thank your staff for their hard work

I wonder who came up with the idea of the office Christmas party. You probably experience a maximum of one each year—your own. Being based in a restaurant, I see loads each day for over a month and every year it's the same. Office employees troop in invariably glum, each one thinking: "I get paid to be with this lot during the day, why am I being forced to be here in my own time and pretend that we are all enjoying ourselves?"

This is how it usually goes. They sit down and have their first glass of wine and the thought bubble is clear to read: "How come I got sat next to her? I can't stand the way she's always sucking up to the boss." The second glass of wine arrives and everyone's feeling a little better. Crackers start to get pulled, someone (the office clown) puts on a hat. By the time the third glass is poured everyone has a hat on and the evening starts to feel not so bad after all.

Then, with the fourth drink, the clown tells the office flirt that everyone notices how she behaves with the boss and it's not going down too well. She goes to the loo and starts crying, a colleague goes in after her telling her to ignore that idiot—he's just drunk. The fifth glass comes and everything seems much funnier than it actually is. Most of them are not used to drinking so much but the boss thinks it important that wine continues to flow. The flirty one perks up and the bloke who spoke to her starts to share a joke, moves in closer and starts whispering funny observations about the others on the table and they start giggling in what is now their own private party.

Someone gets up and walks into the area for washing dishes thinking it's the toilet. A manager rushes in and takes the wanderer in the right direction. Ten minutes later she (it's invariably a she) comes back and aims to retake her seat, only she misses and slides under the table. Her colleagues don't bother about her so two waiters pick her up and sit her down properly.

No one has noticed that by now the flirty girl and the guy aren't present any more. The restaurant manager steps in and tells the host that he is no longer going to serve this table any more wine. The host surveys the carnage before him—someone's crying and a colleague is trying to console her but doesn't know what she is crying about. The clown has fallen asleep, head on the table. So the host calls for the bill, and when he sees the damage he complains that it's more than the capped sum he had arranged. He's then reminded that an hour previously he had said to hell with the budget and to keep pouring.

He's now remembered, pays up and calls it a day. Everyone then wanders off in different directions, not knowing where they are or where they're going. I don't get to see what happens the next morning when they return to work, but it can't be pretty.

I'll probably have my membership of the British Hospitality Association withdrawn for saying this, but how can this completely unexaggerated scenario re-enacted in restaurants and hotels up and down the country every December be staged in the name of fun or even good business practice? Every year I have this battle with my managers. I try a different tactic each year. They've included banning Christmas crackers, although in the end a compromise was created by surcharging for them and the proceeds from that going to charity.

I've proposed personally interviewing the people who wish to have their party with us (deemed impractical), to say we're fully booked for December so why not come in January? The most successful idea has been to have breakfast parties. This suits everyone; we're not always full then, so it frees up dinner tables for our regular customers and the boss knows that his team won't get drunk and misbehave, and team members get to spend less of their own time with people they may not like.

The idea of getting people drunk in order to say they are valued by their company is bizarre. If you really want to celebrate Christmas, buy everyone a joint of meat that they can roast and share with their family on Christmas Day. That way they can eat too much, drink freely, and bicker with the people they want to be with—their loved ones. And you will have done something special for them without having to witness the horrifying consequences of good intentions.