Fyfe Goldring was a very efficient firm. A very efficient firm indeed. Revenue was revered and cost abhorred. Christmas was an awkward and uncomfortable time at the firm.

The heating was turned down (supposedly for environmental reasons) and the billing and collection pressure turned up (clients do not need the cash as much as we do).
In fact, doing superficially good things for fake reasons had become something of a way of life at FG.

Junior associates and trainees who volunteered for pro bono park maintenance work, including pond weeding and marsh clearance, were unsurprised later to find that the beneficiaries of their labours, far from having taken place in the garden of retirement homes that they had been promised, were actually on the Senior Partners estate. The nutritional, bio friendly food in healthily small portions served in the canteen, turned out to be sourced from exactly the same place.

On the fifth day of Christmas, two associates, Thelma and Louise, met to decide what to do about it. They rapidly came to the conclusion that, given that the firm's largest budget item was employees, the way that they could save the firm most money would be if all the employees resigned en masse. Once the plan was hatched, it was agreed that the Christmas party (which obviously doubled with the firm's weekly meeting, to save costs) would be the ideal occasion on which to announce this important development to the partners.

The day of the Christmas party came along but instead of turning up to the dull affair, Thelma and Louise had orchestrated that, on the stroke of 6pm (such events only ever took place outside business hours), resignation emails would come flooding in, which they duly did.

The startled partners didn’t know what to do, but by mid-morning the next day, as they realised what they were dealing with, two words that had never been heard of the firm before were in common parlance: Christmas Bonus. Thelma and Louise decided to take a festive road trip. Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.