Once a setting for drunken revelry and scandalous embraces under the mistletoe, the annual holiday party at many offices has been toned down in recent years. So the Business Journal asks:

What’s your experience at the office holiday party?

Amy Owen

Graphic Designer

Stuart Karten Design

They’re always plenty entertaining. One year the company I worked for had a jazz band playing through dinner, and then the main stage entertainer was Anthony Robbins, the motivational speaker. He went on for almost an hour. People were drinking heavily just to get through it. By the end of the hour everyone was drunk. The next year the president got an Elvis impersonator, and that was even worse.

John Przybyla

Sales Manager

Marcus & Millichap

When I was working in Irvine, my company had its party at a resort. I think we had drink tickets that year, no open bar. Well, let’s just say that some things got stolen from the kitchen that night. Someone stole a two-foot-tall pepper grinder the kind you could shoot pepper across the room with and also a chef’s hat. Later on, the kitchen equipment showed up at a couple of dinner parties.

Chris Mortillaro

Disc Jockey

Let’s Jam

I used to work for a post-production company, and one time one of the girls proceeded to get really hammered. The disc jockey was playing typically bad party music, and she went up to the record player and scratched the needle straight across the turntable. She smiled really big, staggered backward, and then went and sat down. Later in the evening she got into it again and started yelling and cursing at him. On the second round the disc jockey gave her back a couple of choice words and left. It was the talk of the office for at least the next two weeks. She remembered being there, but she didn’t remember what she’d done.

Carol Olson

Chief Financial Officer

Dabney Flanigan

At a prior company we occasionally had people who drank way too much, and a couple of guys got thrown out. But most of the time people don’t get out of hand. It’s usually the clerical workers who get into fights, not the professional people. As far as people getting kicked out, there was this one situation where a woman was on strong medication because she was waiting for a liver transplant. She felt weak, so her husband accompanied her to the bathroom. Even though they weren’t drunk and had an excuse, the bouncers kicked them out.

Larry Nelson

Branch Sales Manager

Verio Inc.

For the most part they’ve been pretty par for the course. At my old company they used to have parties down at the Queen Mary in Long Beach. A couple years ago they still had the bungee jump next to the boat, and a bunch of people went on in various states of inebriation. It was pretty funny to see, say, the guy from operations bouncing upside down after about five beers. But I’ve seen more of a trend in advance planning. People have been pretty responsible about arranging to get rooms at the hotel or get limo service, just in case people get too drunk to drive home.