Employee is reprimanded for refusing to join coworker's 'mandatory' €25 birthday pool: 'There are 22 people in the group. That's potentially hundreds every few months'

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Oct 14, 2025 10:00 PM EDT

What would you do if your company demanded money from you every time a coworker had a birthday?

It's nice to celebrate someone's birthday. It only happens once a year, and everyone deserves to feel special. You would hate for nobody to acknowledge your birthday, so you do your best to celebrate others. And this might even extend to your coworkers. Maybe you're close enough with them to know when their birthday is coming up, so you can bring them a cupcake or send them a nice message. Or maybe, if you're especially close, you get them a gift. But odds are, nobody is expecting you to do that. You know each other in a professional setting, so you probably have some boundaries up. One of them is, most likely, spending money on them.

This would be especially egregious if you were forced to spend money on your coworkers. You come to your job to make money, not to spend it. And you certainly don't want a mandatory birthday tax immediately deducted from your salary. But that's what happened in this story.

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via Igal Ness

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When an employee showed up at a new company, they were careful not to make any waves. But when they found out about one of their senior coworkers' birthday pool, they had some second thoughts about joining in. And when they tried to raise their concerns about it, they were immediately shut down. Read on for the story and see what you think about it.
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AITA for refusing to join my coworker's "mandatory" birthday gift pool?

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Commenters agreed that this was a breach of conduct.

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