At the time my office’s holiday party was supposed to begin tonight, Chris and I departed JFK for the first leg of our flight to Melbourne. We arrived at LAX just after the party ended, and as I turned my Airplane Mode off on my phone, my phone buzzed with text message alerts from multiple colleagues, all telling me that I missed the most ridiculous drama at the sit-down dinner that evening. They both ended up calling me to recount the horrors of the evening while our plane was still on the tarmac, waiting for our gate to open up (which ended up taking nearly two hours).

One colleague became so drunk that she couldn’t even walk properly and had to have the restaurant call her a cab to get back to her hotel. A colleague’s husband, apparently jealous of all the men she works with in our office, punched one of my male colleagues upon meeting him, and then interrupted another colleague’s mini speech to yell out that he wanted another male colleague to stop calling his wife at 7:30am on weekdays. This same husband hit on multiple female colleagues, including one new hire who started just this week, and attempted to kiss one of my female teammates on her lips before she backed away.

I am not sure whether I would have wanted to be there or not. I originally felt a bit sad that I’d be missing our office holiday party since last year’s was pretty enjoyable. I like the fact that our office is relatively small, less than 25 people, which means that when you add the plus ones in, it’s a nice, intimate crowd where you can actually talk to the people you want to talk to over the course of five-plus hours. But after hearing about all this tense and awkward nonsense that compelled colleagues who live in a day and age where texting reins, yet they still felt compelled to call me, I think it was actually better I was on a flight headed west watching Crazy Rich Asians. It was fake drama instead of real-life drama I could watch.