This is not my first job but after 8 months in my relatively new job I'm finally about to leave next week and move on with my career.
I'm working for a French corporate investment bank as a code monkey on a eggshell legacy code with no incentive whatsoever to provide good quality code, a lot of office politics (but AFAIK banks are notorious in that regard) I feel I'm learning almost nothing, I waited for 5 months before giving my resignation just to make sure that well nothing is about to be improved.
I don't like my coworkers nor my job (nothing personal though but professionally-speaking not a big fan either due to some bully attitude that I just cannot stand, borderline teasing which tends to be a sort of raw making fun of others).
In France, once you have passed the 3 months probation period you have to wait for another 3 months notice period before actually leaving the company. However, it seems common to throw a farewell party when leaving. I have attended a couple of them, mostly because someone in my team pushed me to be his wing man in order to let him feel better to just go there for free drinks and food...
I don't particularly enjoy them, giving a speech that nobody cares about, wasting your time eating junk-food with quality wine or champagne, just not my thing.
They are pushing me to throw my own farewell party while I am leaving mostly because of the environment and my work-colleagues and I am seeking for answers about how to address this issue.
I have a couple of options:
I tell them what I really think, cause quite frankly I do have a lot of resentment but it would leave an unnecessary bad memory to them, but at the same time I don't see any of them moving somewhere else after 10 years in the same company. Also it might help them to realize (even though I strongly doubt about it) that some way of doing can be perceived as rude by others
I fake a lot and I refrain myself even more in order to throw a party and thanks everybody for... ending up frustrated
I just tell them, I am sorry I don't feel like it would be honest for me to do that, I don't like it, and then I would be the one being rude, but honest at least
I make up a cheap excuse but I don't really like this option, cause it's too much like a "little" white lie
I'm thinking about option no. 3 but honestly I don't know.
I might sound bitter or really pissed but in my previous company I never had such a feeling of bigotry, my ex-boss was maybe not the best but at least there was a certain sense of unity among the employees without faking and we were all getting along with each other (smaller structure though), no one was judging you because you like or not soccer for tiny little things unlike the company I'm working for here. Also it seems a pretty common trait of the French corporate culture.
[EDIT]
How did it actually turn out?
I said no to a farewell party mostly leveraging the fact that I haven't the time (which was more than true back then), I just brought some food (quite a lot) in the morn the day before my last day at work cause some people were actually off on my last day.
I drafted 4 different farewell emails and hence wasted quite some time on that for actually ending up sending nothing and I didn't event leave my contact information (not really proud of that though).
The last moments with my manager were sort of weird, I feel it was still really so insincere and fake, anyway he was already really sarcastic towards me for a couple of months, his borderline jokes were barely funny, at best and humiliating most of the time.
Sometimes, he even got fun stealing my access pass and other things while I was listening others talking during the stand-up /scrums in the morn before giving them back to other teammates (it was just like a bully back in primary school and it was completely normal to them).
The overall thing is just so weird I'd say resulted in a toxic environment in comparison to what I have experienced in other companies. It may be good some for some people but it's not really what I would say "open".