Christmas party 5km taxi trip that took an unexpected turn

The long ride home was made even longer after an Auckland passenger insisted on giving directions rather than rely on GPS. Photo / Google Maps

It was meant to be a quick cross-town 5km trip home from the work Christmas Party.

But somehow a short ride between neighbouring central Auckland suburbs ended up a 26km excursion heading in the opposite direction.

Environment and engineering company Tonkin + Taylor today posted on social media - and then took down - a salutary warning after an employee who "might work" in the human resources department decided to over-ride the satellite navigation system in favour of giving directions to the taxi driver after a recent end-of-year function.

The journey, which was meant to go from Ellerslie to nearby Onehunga - a mere 5km fare - ended up being a far longer cross country journey detouring through East Auckland, adding nearly 20km to the trip home.

The now deleted tweet, which did not reveal the identity of the unfortunate passenger but left a strong hint, said taking a taxi home after a work Christmas Party was perhaps not the right time to rely on being able to accurately direct a taxi driver.

In those circumstances it was best to defer to GPS, read the post.

Last year Christmas was cancelled at nearly a third of Kiwi businesses.

According to a Seek workplace survey 32 per cent of businesses said they would not be holding a staff Christmas party with experts citing health and safety laws, which came into force last April.

A recent University of Otago survey of 1000 New Zealand employers and employees examined the incidence of damaging behaviour at work-related events.

While most people experienced no significant problems from drinking alcohol at work events 20 per cent of employee respondents had seen festivities fall foul when staff over-indulged and 25 per cent of employer respondents reported dealing with inappropriate behaviour at work functions.