White House Aides Complain They’re Not Being Invited to Holiday Parties: ‘Beyond Demoralizing’
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Morale is reportedly cratering among low-level White House staffers who, among other gripes, are complaining to the press that they are not being invited to exclusive West Wing parties for the holidays.
Some of them have even expressed a desire to leave their jobs, Politico reported Wednesday, noting that low-spirited aides could bolt from their jobs at higher rates than usual in the near future. Executive branch staffers told Politico’s West Wing Playbook that some of the turbulence is because President Joe Biden’s top allies have left them feeling ostracized.
Writing for the West Wing Playbook, Alex Thompson, Tina Sfondeles and Max Tani reported:
In the first year of the Biden White House, [camaraderie] has been fleeting and many teams are suffering from low morale, according to several White House officials.
The result: many White House aides are feeling gloomy this holiday season, so much so that they anonymously fumed to West Wing Playbook in the hope it may alert senior leaders to the problem. Many are also currently eyeing the exits, creating the potential for higher-than-usual turnover at the beginning of the year, when aides feel they’ve been in the job long enough that it won’t look odd to depart.
[…]
Some staffers say it’s the result of an insular, top-heavy White House of longtime Biden aides who are distant from much of the staff — “no new friends in Biden world,” goes the refrain. And others say it’s just poor management. The small perks of working in the White House, like the chance to take part in holiday parties and ceremonies, have also been in short supply. For the White House’s Independence Day party, most White House staff could only attend if they worked as unpaid volunteers staffing the event, per an email from White House operations sent at the time and shared with us. For the Thanksgiving turkey pardoning and the Christmas tree lighting, attendance was doled out via a lottery system, leaving out many White House aides.
The sources reportedly hope to change their White House standing without making a fuss directly to their superiors. But an immediate concern for at least one person who spoke to Politico is that being left out of the Christmas festivities stings — badly.
“No one expects business as usual during the pandemic, but it’s beyond demoralizing, it’s insulting — especially when you see DNC and Hill staff and other D.C. types get invited,” the anonymous staffer vented to Politico. “Many colleagues have brought this up to me unprompted. And I’ve had D.C. friends ask me if I wanted to grab coffee after they attended. Meanwhile, we work here, and most of us haven’t worked here before or stepped foot into the White House.”
