Treatflation: The invisible ‘ghost’ in office culture

There is a hungry ‘ghost’ ‘haunting’ your office. It neither rattles chains, bangs on doors, roams dark corridors, nor lives in deserted, dilapidated buildings. It silently lurks in WhatsApp groups, emails or phone calls. Its ambush is never a one-time affair. It strikes again and again, often when least expected.

This invisible ghost rarely asks for a feast and never compels; a small bite usually suffices. It does not care whether you are carrying a mountain of debt, whether it’s month-end, budget is already stretched, or if your wallet can withstand another hit.

Most employees feed this ghost: a pocket-friendly contribution for a birthday cake, a party for promotion, a wedding or a team lunch. The strangest thing is that this ghost never feeds on fear but on goodwill. Nobody is forced to offer a bite, yet, this ghost is somehow fed. I call this ghost Treatflation, a portmanteau of ‘treat’ and ‘inflation’ that captures the rising cost of recurring workplace celebrations.

It is the accumulation of countless small contributions in the name of treats. Each request seems modest in isolation. Yet, over time, these small acts of participation can quietly become a drain on personal finances. It’s an invisible financial burden wherein workplace camaraderie slowly begins to resemble a subscription fee for a ‘utility’ you never subscribed to.

Treatflation is not created by greedy bosses or demanding colleagues. It is sustained by decent people doing decent things. Every contribution is usually voluntary; every occasion is genuine; every amount is modest. Yet, over the course of a career, when thousands of such gestures accumulate, they raise an uncomfortable question: can even goodwill become so expensive?

Treatflation is powered by a force that social psychologists call ‘Normative social influence.’ It is our tendency to change our behaviour in order to fit in with a group and maintain good relationships with the people around us.

Put simply, it is the urge to conform to group expectations. Most employees do not contribute because they are forced by their bosses or colleagues, but because they want to fit in, maintain good relationships and avoid being the only person who declines. As a result, money leaves the wallet not out of necessity, but out of social expectation and peer pressure. In the 1950s, psychologist Solomon Asch demonstrated this tendency in a series of conformity experiments. He found that people often aligned their behaviour with a group even when their own judgement suggested otherwise. The lesson was simple: the desire to fit in and avoid standing out proved stronger. The behaviour underlying Treatflation is a simple human need: the desire to belong. Most people would rather contribute a few hundred bucks than risk appearing indifferent to the group.

The consequences of this desire are not merely social; they are financial as well. Left unchecked, this desire expresses itself through a steady stream of small contributions.

What makes Treatflation different from most expenses is not its size, but its frequency. A ₹500 contribution rarely attracts attention, but if it occurs just twice a month, it adds up to ₹12,000 a year. Over a 30-year career, the cumulative cost can exceed ₹3.6 lakh. The result is a financial leak that many employees may feel the pinch of, but rarely plug. Viewed differently, the same ₹1,000 invested every month at a 10% annual return could potentially grow to nearly ₹20 lakh over 30 years. When millions of employees across the country repeatedly make thousands of small contributions year after year just to maintain relationships with friends, colleagues and relatives, then culture itself becomes an economic force. Treatflation is simply one of its many manifestations. Economists devote considerable attention to studying how people spend money on consumption, investment and savings. Treatflation reminds us that people also spend money on something less visible: social acceptance and belonging.

In a relationship-oriented society such as India, the cumulative value of such spending may be far greater than we realise. So, the next time a contribution request pops up, perhaps the question should be if the price of belonging is worth the wealth you give up in return. Also, if declining the contribution leaves you feeling left out, the wealth you give up may well be worth the sense of belonging you receive in return. After all, relationships have value too, even if they cannot be measured in monetary terms. The key is to maintain balance and make that trade-off consciously rather than contributing unknowingly.

(The writer is an NISM & CRISIL-certified Wealth Manager and certified in NISM’s Research Analyst module)