This is really relevant to me right now so I want to share my experience. My company does a monthly celebration for all birthdays during that month. We also get a card that everyone signs (passed around the office with a list of everyone’s names. If you don’t sign you will be asked to). I think this approach is fine because it allows those who aren’t birthday people to lay low, but we also have our own individual teams at my company, and my team just happens to love birthdays. For the last 3 weeks I have been pestered about how I want my team to celebrate my birthday to which I have responded “please don’t do anything”. They offered to take me out to lunch or bring in balloons to have at my desk and I told them that getting attention for my birthday makes me uncomfortable. My own manager told me it was weird that I don’t even want a free lunch. Finally after being cornered by 1/2 of my team members, I gave in to a lunch that is the day after my birthday and I’ve asked that it simply be a team bonding lunch and that no birthdays are mentioned. My advice to a company is to have a casual monthly celebration because everyone benefits from free goodies and it’s fun for those that want to partake and people should not be forced to attend. I’m on mobile so I can’t credit this person but someone In this thread said to have birthday celebration preferences be asked during the onboarding process and I totally agree with that. I think it could potentially save a lot of awkward conversations when the birthday is coming up.