Holidays at work can be land mines, and Halloween is no exception. Some of the normal rules don’t apply, but you’re still expected to remain professional — even while doing things you’d never do on any other day, such as wearing a costume or wrapping your desk in giant cobwebs. That can make the holiday tricky to navigate.
Here are four rules to remember in order to ensure that your Halloween week at work remains fright-free.
1. Tread carefully if you wear a costume to work. If your office is one that welcomes costumes, be sure that you keep yours work-appropriate. That means no costumes that are revealing or sexually provocative (like a naughty nurse costume, which should be saved for your off-work time), and no costumes with racist undertones (like caricatures of another ethnic group or of a group that has been systemically oppressed). Most people these days know that blackface is offensive, but there are still plenty of American Indian or “gypsy” costumes out there. Be thoughtful and sensitive about using someone else’s ethnicity as a costume. Offending co-workers is not a fun way to celebrate the holiday.
In fact, employers who encourage costume-wearing would do well to give employees some guidance ahead of time. Yes, you can send someone home if his or her costume is too over the top, but doing that is likely to cause drama and hurt feelings; it’s better to just ward off issues before they happen. And the larger the office, the greater the chance that someone is going to show up in something inappropriately sexy or outright offensive if you don’t set expectations ahead of time.
2. Don’t wear a costume to a job interview. If you’re interviewing this week, you might wonder if wearing a Halloween costume is a way to demonstrate your personality and come across as fun, but resist that impulse. While there are no doubt a small number of interviewers out there who would appreciate a candidate showing up in a costume, the majority of interviewers are likely to find it off-key and inappropriate for a formal business meeting (which is what an interview is). Moreover, you want to be taken seriously, which means that you want your interviewer’s focus to be on your qualifications — not on your costume.
3. Pranks should be opt-in. If you’re thinking about bringing the “trick” part of trick-or-treat into your office, make sure that you know your audience before executing a prank. Not everyone likes being pranked, and some people outright hate it and will feel upset or alienated. In fact, I recently heard from someone whose co-worker had put a fake spider on their boss’s shoulder — and the boss flipped out, screamed at her and took the issue to human resources. It’s safest to confine pranks to people who you know — with certainty — enjoy them. And steer clear of pranks based on common phobias, like spiders.
4. Go ahead and decorate — but remember how you’ll need to use your office. Some offices go all-out when it comes to Halloween decorations and have an enormous amount of fun with them. But no matter how encouraging your office might be of decorations, make sure that you keep in mind what your role is and what you might need to use your office for while the decorations are up. For example, if you’re a manager, you probably don’t want to find yourself having to let someone go or having to give a client bad news from an office that’s covered from floor to ceiling in spider webs, while a recording of spooky sounds and screams plays in the background.
And, speaking of sounds, if you decorate your office or cubicle with anything sound-producing — like dolls that make creepy noises when people walk by or a recording of screams, howls and other haunted house noises — make sure to keep the volume low enough that it’s not going to provide the background soundtrack for your co-workers’ conference calls and meetings.
Beyond that, though, go forth and enjoy! Giving out the good types of candy to your co-workers might be just what you need to right your relationships; no one can resist mini candy bars.
Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She’s the author of “How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager,” co-author of “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager’s Guide to Getting Results” and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.
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4 Tips for a Fright-Free Halloween at Work originally appeared on usnews.com
