office holiday gift-giving stories: worst gifts and weirdest gifts

by Alison Green on December 12, 2024

In the spirit of the season, let’s hear about workplace gift debacles. Did a game of Secret Santa end in tears? Did a coworker throw a tantrum when she didn’t win a raffle? Did your boss try to give you Hanukkah balls? Were you given a jar of mold as a gift? These are all real stories that we’ve heard here in the past. Now you must top them.

Share your weirdest or funniest story related to gifts in the office in the comments.

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  1. Tess McGill*

    Not so much worst gifts, but poor behaviour. We had a generic gift exchange /stealing game at work with a $20 max. One of our senior managers would audibly comment on the quality of each gift that was opened. His most frequent criticism is that the gift “looked cheap”. Yeah, it’s a $20 maximum. People were embarrassed about the gifts they brought and feelings were hurt. No one said anything to the guy because “that’s just Wakeen”.

      1. Dasein9 (he/him)*

        I share your hope, but also that he doesn’t have a cat and it’s just a neighbor cat who shows up to do due diligence every time he buys shoes, then escapes.

    3. Ally McBeal*

      I hate that for you & your coworkers. I will never ascend to management ranks because I have no issue with saying things like “I mean, we’re all working with a $20 maximum here” and letting the moment hang awkwardly. Especially if he made those comments every year and people were always upset by it.

    5. Perihelion*

      I was considering sharing a story of a former grandboss doing exactly that, particularly in response to my gift of an expensive spice that he didn’t recognize. It was white elephant anyway so he simply traded it away. And his gifts were typically gag gifts like a book about pooping or a giant mug (not making those up).

    1. kiri*

      It’s just so SWEET and THOUGHTFUL! Like, she went to all the trouble of saving her favorite foods and letting them go bad.

      Misguided, yes, but the intention was just so pure.

    3. House On The Rock*

      Yes, it reads like a really adorable story of a well intentioned alien or fae creature attempting to fit in with Human Holiday Norms.

        1. Curious*

          I’m not sure that accepting a gift from a fae is a good idea — I’ve read that gifts from the fae are far from free.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            Don’t steal from them, either, even if it’s unintentional (the premise of the titular story in my collection).

  3. StartupWitch*

    My work always does a White Elephant exchange, and it gets *wacky*. Last year went into “legendary” status.

    One employee always brings a blade/weapon of some kind — thing small knife, machete, etc. Within the culture here, it’s fine. Last year, he brought a crossbow. An honest-to-god, deer-hunting crossbow. It was, of course, immediately stolen twice.

    The person it was stolen from went to open a different gift and got… a ping-pong shooting crossbow. The entire room lost their minds. (Apparently there was a third person who planned to bring a crossbow, but ended up having to miss the party for childcare reasons. None of these were coordinated. Three separate people just decided it was “The year of the crossbow”.)

    Same year, another employee’s gift was “I will tattoo you right here at the party.” That gift, as well, was a popular steal, and ended up with a +1 at the party. Apparently the tattooist is a non-drinker, and decided to start doing (simple linework) tattoos to be fun at parties. It turned out lovely!

    This year’s party isn’t for a few more weeks, and I’m curious if we’ll get some “guidelines” from HR in the lead-up.

    Other memorable gifts (across multiple years, not all last year) include:
    1. A butts-themed gift box (poo-pouri, wipes, a butt-themed mixtape, a sheet mask for your butt, etc)
    2. A giant paint-by-numbers Last Supper
    3. A velvet clown painting

    1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      “I will tattoo you right here at the party.”

      This has the potential to go sideways SO QUICKLY I’m surprised it wasn’t vetoed immediately.

      1. froodle*

        I had mental images of the HR person doing a slow motion “noooooooooo” as they dive between the recipient and the tattoo gun ala Homer Simpson trying to save his kids from being baptized by the Flanders…

        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          I mean, I’m defacto HR and if this happened at my place of business, I’d be out of my chair so quick it’d make heads spin. Oddly enough, I wasn’t thinking of the safety (diseases, infections, etc) because I’d assume that it could be done safely with minimal prep. But the potential for shenanigans? Conflict between employees? Off the charts. Plus, who knows what sort of liability the company would have if something would go wrong?

        2. Phony Genius*

          I had a similar mental image, but the tattoo was like Bart’s partially complete MOTHER tattoo, which read MOTH when they stopped it.

          1. froodle*

            in my n head th r HR person ends up with a line just tatted across their face, like if you walked past someone with a Sharpie and drive-by squiggled them*

            *it’s possible I have a bad grasp of don’t know how tattoos work

      2. Santa drives an Astrovan*

        ‘Never get a free tattoo’ is a life rule. I’ve met several people who have recieved free tattos for a variety of reasons (I’m including people who had a friend offer to pay for one at a party) and none of them like those tattoos. These are people with other tattoo work, so i’t snot that they regret tattoos in general. But, I’ve never considered getting tattooed myself; I can’t imagine liking anything enough to want it permanently inked on.

            1. ICodeForFood*

              This made me laugh out loud… and now my cat is looking at me with that “What the heck was that noise?” look…

            3. Caffeine Monkey*

              But always accept free Taytos. (Southern ones. Northern ones aren’t as good. Yeah, I said it.)

          1. PhyllisB*

            My daughter and her best friend went to a tattoo artist to get matching tattoos of crossed arrows labeled N. S, E, &WEST. You know signifying no matter where life takes us we’ll always be connected. Problem is, artist labeled them backwards. On both of them. I think he was looking in a mirror to get it right. Directionally challenged me didn’t even realize, but my daughter did and my elderly mother caught it right away. Of course daughter didn’t notice until she had left the palor.

            1. Cats Ate My Croissant*

              Possibly drew it right-side round on that transfer paper tattoo artists use then just flipped it over to apply to the skin.

        4. Goldenrod*

          “I can’t imagine liking anything enough to want it permanently inked on.”

          I agree, and it astonishes me how casual some people are about it!

        5. Marillenbaum*

          I do have a free tattoo I don’t regret, but it’s the exception that proves the rule: it was a tattoo I had planned as a paid piece, brought the money, and at the end the artist told me it was a gift.

      3. Don’t make me come over there*

        Oh my gosh, a friend was just telling me that night that her son (a professional tattoo artist) was hired by a company to be part of the entertainment at a big company holiday party. He was only able to complete tattoos for TEN of the THIRTY-FOUR people who signed up!

    2. bamcheeks*

      the tattooist is a non-drinker, and decided to start doing (simple linework) tattoos to be fun at parties

      What? WHAT?! Where do you work that MULTIPLE PEOPLE wanted to be randomly non-professionally tattooed with the bare minimum hygiene? My gabber is flasted.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        Now I know how Hep C became such a problem. I thought it was the wild times of the 1960s and 70s. Turns out, it’s amateur tattoos at Christmas parties?

          1. AnotherOne*

            that’s what i was thinking.

            wtf. this isn’t safe.

            there was a line? what kind of workplace was this?

            wow, clearly i’m no fun.

              1. Dog momma*

                Ikr! Retired nurse here. this is why I never got a tattoo. Hepatitis, & then AIDS during my work career. I was exposed to more than my share of blood/ body fluids working in the CT ICU.

      2. Worldwalker*

        Could be that the co-worker is actually a pro, and has worked as a tattoist in a prior job or on the side.

        I think what he started doing was tattoos at parties, not at all!

      3. StartupWitch*

        It seems to be a thing amongst Gen Z folks? I know multiple people in that age bracket that have picked up tattoo guns and do amateur line tattoos and everyone seems fine with it. The tattooist was careful about hygiene, and talked through it. The person who ended up receiving the tattoo had multiple already, and was very happy with it.

        1. Pomegranates*

          As a GenZ’er I will say that I think getting tattoos at a higher rate and with less ‘meaning’ is definitely something we do.

          – but I will also say that when I see people take it up without an apprenticeship, it’s almost always stick-and-poke tattoos. I would (and have) gotten stick-and-pokes done by an amateur, but I wouldn’t let anyone but a professional near me with a tattoo machine.

        2. Tea Monk*

          Ive seen kids at work do that, but like… they’re 16 and we told them to stop? I’m just assuming the people in this story are at least 25…

        3. ferrina*

          I’m a 90s kid, and as a teenager several of my friends got tattooed with needles. One of them used gel pens for their tattoo ink.
          Bad idea tattoos have existed as long as tattoos have.

              1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

                One day, a coworker who had clearly never touched a vegetable in his life claimed to have eaten at least one and myself and another coworker whipped around and exclaimed, at the exact same time, “WHAT VEGETABLE HAVE YOU EATEN?!” He and I were about a year apart in age and apparently channeled the Ur Mother because it was uncanny that no only did we say the exact same words, but in the same tone, inflection, and volume.

          2. Pomegranates*

            These also existed in the 2010s when I was a teenager, I suspect teenagers, needles, ink, and bad ideas are timeless

          3. Elizabeth West*

            We used to draw something on a piece of notebook paper in pencil, lick the back of the paper, and stamp it on our arms and hands.

            Y’all are hard-core these days, lol.

          4. Galadriel's Garden*

            I graduated high school in the mid-2000s, and myself and a couple of my friends had self-done piercings – and not just the classic “ice cube + potato ear piercing,” I’m talking facial piercings. I’ll confess that my nose piercing (which I still have 20 years later!) was done at age 16 with a sewing needle, some rubbing alcohol, and a lighter…

            All that to say I don’t think this is a new phenomenon, teenagers have been idiots with needles in varying forms for a very long time.

          5. iglwif*

            When I was like 16, at all-province choir camp, the “thing” that year was cartilage piercings. As in, freeze your ear with a couple of (wrapped) popsicles, heat up a needle with a cigarette lighter, stick needle through ear cartilage.

            I did not indulge but I did run to the store for popsicles once or twice.

            The year before that apparently it was dyeing everyone’s hair various shades of red, which seems less fraught with peril! I forget what it was the following year but stick-and-poke tattoos would not particularly surprise me. The early 90s were a wacky time.

            1. PhyllisB*

              If this posts twice, please delete, but my grandson in prison has a couple of stick and poke tattoos he got after going to prison. I don’t know how it was done or why the guards allowed such a thing. (Some things a grandmother doesn’t need to know!!) But I have to admit they were well done.

        4. LaurCha*

          When I was teaching college a lot of my Gen Z art students were doing “stick and poke” tattoos on themselves and each other. It gave me the heebie jeebies, germ-wise.

      4. Ally McBeal*

        Creative fields, maybe. Some folks collect tattoos (including those of dubious quality) like others collect kitschy magnets. I think all the time about how James Corden did a segment of his talk show with the 1 Direction boys that was essentially Russian Roulette for who would get a tattoo right there on stage – it made sense because most of them have the most random tats littered haphazardly all over their bodies.

      5. UKDancer*

        Yeah I can’t believe it. In my last company I had a colleague who was a pretty decent amateur henna artist. Once at a Christmas party she did henna tattoos for people for charity. You paid what you could afford and it went to Shelter. I quite liked her style so usually had a butterfly on my hand.

        I thought it was quite fun but there is no way I’d have a permanent tattoo done by a colleague. I mean I’m also flabbergasted.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          I have a friend who does Henna this way. (She learned from a pro at one point but basically did it for fun.) I must admit, she did once do a leg henna on me that I came THIS close to asking a professional to trace over and fill in with colour, because it was gorgeous.

          1. UKDancer*

            Yes I think there are some pretty good henna artists out there. My colleague learnt from her mother who was a professional. I often used to pay her to do some henna for me after work on a Thursday evening when I was going to a tango party on a Saturday and wanted something decorative on my arm.

            I was pretty confident she kept everything clean and used good quality natural henna.

      6. The Formatting Queen*

        We don’t know at all that it’s the bare minimum hygiene level. A friend who was an apprentice tattooed me in her own house and I wasn’t concerned at all. She had a tray with a disposable pad like you might see at a dentist or doctor’s office to lay out her tools; there was an autoclaved packet of tools and single-use ink containers that were opened right in front of me. I don’t think it would be difficult to carry this stuff around in a kit for any party-tattooing opportunities. Now… if after talking to this coworker they couldn’t demonstrate at least all of the above things.. I would also decline.

        1. JSPA*

          Yes, by now the default is single-use for ink and needles, and sterilization for the tools and working from sterile surfaces and with gloves and pre-cleaning skin seems to be covered early, late, and at multiple points in-between.

          I mean…yes, there is a sheen of surface blood during the tattoo process, especially for large areas of carefully graded colors. But for line art, that’s minimal. And if it is dripping, running, or getting on anything or anyone, you’re doing it wrong.

      7. PhyllisB*

        Prisons are great for this. My grandson has a couple he’s gotten since he was incarcerated. I don’t want any details about how they were done, and why the guards allow it. (Some things a grandmother doesn’t need to know!!) But I have to admit they were pretty well done.

      1. MsSolo (UK)*

        One part of my brain wants to guess Hunting Supplies company, but experience suggests it’s going to be something like a chain restaurant (though it’d be less likely people could afford to hand out crossbows on those salaries).

          1. RLC*

            My first thought was “some place where hipster and hunting culture collide”. I’m in the NW US and can easily picture this dynamic at a party.

      2. StartupWitch*

        Small software company, not in an area where that’s a major industry. It’s a unique culture, where a significant portion of the employees have been here 10+ years (the “startup” in my handle is a misnomer, b/c it’s been around 20+ years).

        1. Pomegranates*

          I’m gonna be honest, software company was not on my mental list of likely options! But I guess if you’ve all been there a while and it’s a bit insular because of the location I can see how it’s become like this.

          1. darsynia*

            My husband works at a small design firm and this feels like it would totally happen there if the workforce were about 15 years younger, hah.

            1. MotherofaPickle*

              My brother works for an app/game developer and I could definitely see this happening before they all got married and had kids.

          2. Strive to Excel*

            Tech was 1000% on my list. I live in a very tech-heavy area and something about the groupthink in the small tech company leads people to very weird and wild places.

        2. MassMatt*

          Well I assumed the “startup” modifies “witch”, for all we know you took up witchcraft much more recently.

      1. Nomic*

        google says ping-pong ball shooter is $40. I may go with that next year for one of my small fundraising clubs.

    8. Emily of New Moon*

      It really is remarkable how many songs there are about butts, especially rap songs from the 1990’s.

      1. Gumby*

        Then there is the NPS social media post about how they like big buttes. Some of the comments on that one were AMAZING. (I mean, the NPS Insta account is wonderful most of the time anyway but on occasion the responses are the best part.)

    9. Trixie the Great and Pedantic*

      Why did my brain immediately decide to do an AAM mashup and come up with “I will tattoo you by Wednesday of next week”?

    10. bay scamp*

      I am so confused by all of the extreme responses to the tattoo part of this one. Where I live, tattoo artists do “pop-ups” at stores, markets, craft fairs, sporting events, etc. very often. I’ve never gotten a tattoo at one of these events but have strongly considered it before (I have tattoos but all of them are the results of appointments at tattoo shops… and at one of my recent appointments the artist was talking about being hired for a wedding). I don’t see how getting a tattoo at a clothing boutique’s anniversary party, or at your friend’s wedding, is any different/any more sanitary than getting a tattoo at a work holiday party.

  4. Charlotte Lucas*

    Not exactly the worst, but problematic. About 15 years ago, my manager (a woman) gave all the women costume jewelry from one of those MLM companies (another manager had a side business as a sales rep for the MLM). The men got multi tools. (My manager did honestly think the jewelry was nice, and I believe her heart was in the right place.)

    It was very clear from how people reacted that a lot of the women would have also liked a multi tool. (There was a lot of passing around and trying out the features.)

    1. Dust Bunny*

      I am a woman and, yes, I would like a multi-tool. Hmm. I’ll have to remember that the next time one of my siblings asks what I want for Christmas.

      1. Worldwalker*

        I recommend the Gerber Multi-Plier. One model (sadly, now discontinued) is my EDC multi-tool. My particular model has fold-out tripod legs and a camera mounting screw, with a little suction cup to convert it for cell phone use. I tracked down a spare on eBay, just in case I lose this one.

      2. Nanc*

        Many, many years ago my brother gave me a Micra Leatherman as a stocking stuffer – which is a keychain size version and it’s awesome! Most recent use: clearing that pesky bit of torn paper out of the printer after an epic paper jam!

        1. bamcheeks*

          Someone had one of these at a conference and I used it to replace the screw that had just popped out of my glasses. Incredibly useful!

        2. Proofin' Amy*

          I had a Juice Leatherman for years, and really liked it. Now I have a Swiss Army Card; fits in my credit card case, has many useful little gadgets, and doesn’t trip TSA.

        3. LaurCha*

          I lost my Micra Leatherman in my last move and I’m still salty about it. That thing had been through the wars with me.

    2. AnneCordelia*

      (Love your username, btw, and I wish you much better than Mr Collins!) This totally reminds me of when I would pick my daughters up after they’d attended a birthday party and they’d be sad because they got a princess-themed gift bag, and they wanted the dinosaur-themed bag that the boys got.

      1. LadyAmalthea*

        My sister and I are still annoyed about 30 years later that our paternal grandparents gave the boys a computer and the girls a small diamond ring (and mine was ugly) for B’nai Mitzvot.

        1. Artemesia*

          I got stuff like this too and a ‘hope chest’ when I had been asking for a microscope forever. Never did get one. And then when my son was about 12, my parents got HIM a microscope. He had never expressed any particular desire to have one. The guy gifts are almost always better — the men get money, the women get cookies; the boys get dinosaurs, the girls get tiaras; the women get jewelry, the guys get leathermen tools. EEEEEEEeeeeeeeee.

          1. AnotherOne*

            i’m the one over telling everyone to start kids early and get their 2 year old a toddler microscope.

            i was at work one day and mentioned something like ‘oh wouldn’t that be fun’ when my nieces were really young. and a coworker who was in the know was just like- toddler microscopes exist. it was immediately ordered and beloved by my nieces. it would get pulled out to look at all sorts of stuff (toys, rocks, dead bugs).

            1. JustaTech*

              Excuse me I need to go buy this for my just-yesterday 2 year old for Christmas right this very second!

              (We have a microscope but it’s my husband’s grandfather’s from med school and I’m terrified to have it out because it’s so delicate.)

            2. callmeheavenly*

              yes! we did in the 1980s as girl children have a Fisher Price microscope with little plastic slides. dead bugs, cat vomit, etc. I’m sure there must be a modern equivalent.

              1. Jaydee*

                I totally had the same microscope and loved it. I kept a bunch of my baby teeth in one of the containers with a magnifying lid that came with it.

            3. Artemesia*

              There are these things you can attach to a computer to view things blown up on the screen — skin, fur, bugs etc — really fun for kids.

            4. stratospherica*

              Oh my god words cannot describe how much I wish I had the knowledge that toddler microscopes exist like, two weeks ago. I already got my niece and nephew gifts (a little play-doh-eque kit for the niece, some baby noisemaking rings for the nephew, and a small inflatable globe for both since our family lives all over the world), but frankly a toddler microscope would’ve blown what I got out of the water.

              Well, thank you for next year’s gift idea!!

          2. kt*

            I’m working on getting my girl the robot dog she requested. The kid knows how to do it right: astronaut princess gets every variety of cool stuff.

            1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

              Girls can be girly and geeky too- at 44, I ordered myself a cake that had a T-Rex wearing a tiara, waving a wand, and wearing a tutu.

              When I was a girl, my dad took me hardcore down the science/geek road. I didn’t end up in science, but I love it- and pink and glitter too.

              1. MigraineMonth*

                I was shopping with my sister and my niece who, at the time, was at that stage where she was very chatty but mostly incomprehensible. As we passed a Valentine’s display of stuffed animals, she grabbed one and squealed, clear as a bell, “Parasaurolophus!” It was indeed an adorable duck-billed dinosaur holding a heart.

                I told my sister she was definitely doing something right with this whole child-raising thing.

                1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

                  It was an amazing cake. The next year, I asked for the same thing, but with an octopus instead of a T-Rex. Apparently this sparked a conversation about how exactly an octopus would wear a tutu. (Spoiler: my geek loving, hippie awesome bakery nailed it hardcore.)

              3. goddessoftransitory*

                Yes! There’s nothing inherently inferior in tiaras or pink–only in the attitude that it’s “only” for girls, or all they’re “supposed” to like.

              4. Azure Jane Lunatic*

                I once brought a pink Nerf bolt-launcher of some kind (I think it may have been a crossbow, but it was also more than 10 years ago) for the team White Elephant, thinking it would be a good gag gift, because I was fresh out of ideas for a good gift.

                That thing was stolen more times than I could count. The ultimate winner was someone whose code name in my LJ was “Sparkles”.

              5. MissMaple*

                Oh man, is there any chance you live in the DC area and could recommend your bakery, because I need a 40th birthday cake for myself, very much in this vein :-D

          4. Not That Jane*

            Ooooh yeah. My mom was annoyed to the end of her life about the Christmas when her brother got a chemistry set, and she got a doll. The kicker was, they both requested the chemistry set (-_-)

        2. Proofin' Amy*

          Oh, I spent all the Bat Mitzvah money on an Apple II+ with a color monitor; the price was going down a bit because the Apple IIe had just come out. I used it all the way through high school, I think.

      2. Csethiro Ceredin*

        I still fondly remember the one grandparent (paternal grandfather) who genuinely listened to what I wanted and got it, even if it wasn’t girlie. One year it was a yellow rubber dinghy. Another it was a giant Tonka firetruck.

        I now need to re-read Hogfather where he gives the little girl a sword.

        1. Raechem*

          Why not? Sir Pterry himself did–he forged his OWN sword, and his daughter now has it. Knows how to use it, too, I am told. Your grandfather ROCKED!!

        2. froodle*

          Remember Boglins? my godmother got me Boglins. two big lads in the cage and a whole bag of smaller ones. RIP G’ma Jean, your boglin legacy lives on.

    3. Worldwalker*

      I rarely wear jewelry, and I do carry a multi-tool every day. So there’s that.

      But you have to wonder how good a multi-tool chosen by someone who thinks it’s a good idea to give women overpriced jewelry from a MLM would be.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Probably from the book sale they used to have every year. (I had bought one from them for my SO before. Not Leatherman quality, but nice little tool to have handy.)

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Also, nearly any non-tie gift traditionally given to men is more useful than MLM costume jewelry chosen by someone with no idea of your taste.

          1. Anon for this*

            As someone who likes sewing projects, I would accept a tie, depending on how interesting the fabric it’s made of is.

      3. UKDancer*

        Whereas I wear a lot of jewelry and don’t use a multitool regularly enough to carry one. I would however prefer the tool as a gift because I’m fussy about jewelry and only like certain things. So I don’t usually like other people who don’t know me giving me it.

        The multitool would definitely be my preference because they are a lot more likely to be something I’d find useful and want to use again whereas the jewelry would probably wind up at the charity shop.

    4. LifebeforeCorona*

      We had someone who was into a Christian MLM, I didn’t know that such a thing existed. The women all got huge hoop earrings which were butt ugly. A few women that she knew to be Christian got tasteful small cross earrings. The men got nothing at all which probably made them happy after seeing the bracelets pretending to be earrings that the women received.

      1. Fluffy Fish*

        A LOT of MLM’s are Christian or Christian adjacent. MLMs are particularly big with Mormons. Not entirely sure why but at least in part because they prey on the SAHM factor. Your belief system says have to be a homemaker but you can still support your family. It’s unfortunate they are allowed to exist. It does seem more and more they are on their way out though.
        (Obligatory I know it’s not all Christians or all Mormons – just the subset that heavily believes in the patriarchal family structure and traditional roles, so please dont come at me with its’ not all….)

        1. Ally McBeal*

          They’re not on their way out, they’re just switching platforms and rebranding as tradwife influencers. You know, romanticizing domestic labor but conveniently leaving out that domestic labor is only gratifying if it’s appropriately compensated – the influencer can make money with corporate partnerships and affiliate links, but the women consuming her content are unlikely to see the same level of success even if they attempt to become influencers too, because that first influencer is already months or years ahead of them in terms of building an audience to click on those links and garner interest from businesses.

          (This is to say nothing of the elephant in the room – those influencers publishing content featuring their minor children.)

          1. Missa Brevis*

            I think Fluffy Fish meant that MLMs seem to be on the way out, which does match what I’m seeing online. You’re right that the culture they feed on is unfortunately thriving.

            1. Fluffy Fish*

              Yes that is what I meant!

              The culture is another story – that def is showing up in the crunch to alt-right pipeline as well as tradwife romanticism. That said I’d be interested in actual numbers. Social media isn’t what it appears and often makes things seem bigger than they are.

          2. Fluffy Fish*

            By on their way out I mean some very long-term are either going under or switching to non-mlm structure and even new ones are struggling. People aren’t buying from MLM’s anymore. Interestingly I think social media makes them seem like they’re more prolific/doing better than they actually are.

          3. StarTrek Nutcase*

            Disagree that domestic labor (assuming by spouse) is “only” gratifying if it’s appropriately compensated – assuming you mean monetarily compensated. (If you mean provided by employee than I do agree.) Also, I also don’t find it unusual that domestic labor can easily be financially undervalued by those who never have done it or would do it. That’s no different than say teachers – many give mouth service to low teacher pay but still expect “more” from teachers.

            Throughout my long life, I’ve met woman of various generations (boomers through Gen z) who find domestic labor rewarding in that it contributes enormously & personally to the family and some also enjoy the various components. A woman doesn’t have to be the social media “tradwife” to be happy filling the domestic role.

    5. WeirdChemist*

      When I was defending my PhD in grad school, the professor I worked for gifted me a monogrammed apron as a graduation gift. I was, at the time, the only woman working in the lab… All the men had been gifted things like nice pens, leather-bound notebooks, cuff links, etc.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Starting with, but not limited to, the apron.

          Monogrammed? But whatever would you do when you got married and changed your name? /s

          1. WeirdChemist*

            Hey now, it did say “Dr Lastname”, so at least there’s that lol

            At that point of my PhD I was so Tired and Over It that I just gave a bland “k” and moved on with my day lol

      2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        You just reminded me that my son asked for an apron once recently when he got tomato sauce on his T-shirt while cooking. Just ordered a funny one, in organic cotton, will get here in time for Christmas, I’m a happy bunny so thank you.

    6. Tired Librarian*

      This reminds me of a family conversation a few years ago where we discovered our grandfather had wanted to buy my male cousin a pocketknife for his 5th birthday (this was vetoed by my aunt). The response to hearing this was the two older female cousins immediately demanding why he hadn’t planned to give US pocketknives for OUR 5th birthdays?! He seemed genuinely shocked at the question!

      1. ICodeForFood*

        I (female) was 21 when my mom died. Of course, she had always handled gift-buying for my brother and me. The first time my dad had to buy a gift for me without mom’s help, he gave me one of those little tiny Swiss army pocketknives that have a knife, a file, a tiny scissors, a tweezers, and a toothpick as part of it. Forty-six years later it’s still in my purse (and is useful) all the time (except when I have to fly somewhere; TSA would confiscate it).
        When my dad died a few years ago, the one thing I wanted was his full-size pocketknife, which he always carried… I have it in my drawer to remind me of him.

      2. Nina*

        My dad got baby’s first swiss army knives (the ones with like three fairly blunt attachments and a round-tipped knife blade) for all of his kids when we turned 8. Perfect. No notes. I now have six.

    7. cleo*

      My grandparents did something similar when I was a teen. 40+ years later, I’m still a little annoyed about the year they gave all the men/teen boys in the family a multi-tool and all the women/teen girls a silk scarf.

      1. Scootscootlaroute*

        This thread has taught me that the best gift for all occasions, for any age, gender, and occupation, is a multi-tool.

        2. Lily C*

          They really are! I was so happy when I turned 16 and my dad finally agreed to buy me my own Swiss Army Knife. Took me down to the hardware store and let me pick out which one I wanted from the display, after lots of discussion about which tools were useful and which ones were filler. Partly he wanted me to stop “borrowing” his, but he also encouraged me to be handy and always had me helping him fix stuff around the house, just as much as my mom had me learning how to cook and clean. Decades later and I still carry that knife, attached to a mini Maglite, in my purse. And then when I turned 18 one of my uncles covered all bases by giving me a Leatherman and a pearl jewelry suite (earnings and necklace), which I also still have and cherish.

        3. MigraineMonth*

          Although if it contains a knife and the recipient travels a lot, there is a high chance it will eventually be confiscated by the TSA.

          Then you’ll be able to give them another one!

          1. Artemesia*

            I have had MLM types actually get angry and say I must not support the Lord and be a good Christian if I don’t support ‘their business.’ They are really brainwashed. Similarly have had teen boys shout that if we don’t buy their MLM stuff then we don’t ‘ support the youth’. I dropped out of a rather promising book club when I retired to a big midwestern city and was looking for friends when they started letting members do pampered chef and similar presentations and started talking about ‘friends support friends’ businesses’ — which is pure MLM training hogwash. Friends don’t grift off friends.

        4. Anonymous Industry Scientist*

          I specifically asked for a multi-tool for Christmas several years ago because I am an Anonymous Industry Scientist and also sometimes a Conference Representative. Do you know how useful a multi-tool is when you’re setting up a stand that’s anything more complicated than a tablecloth and two chairs?

          Very, very useful.

          1. On Fire*

            For a birthday a few years ago, I asked my husband for two specific shovel types. We had just bought a house, and I was rehabilitating the long-neglected yard. (Yard work is my self-care.) He got me exactly what I wanted, and I use them ALL the time. Tools for the win!

        5. RLC*

          My husband received a Leatherman as a departure gift from his office when he changed jobs, still delights in using it 30 years later.
          Only exceeded by the 8 ft industrial grade step ladder my colleagues gave me as a departure gift when I changed jobs (they knew I needed it and provided a Home Depot gift card to cover the cost).
          We both worked in natural resources with colleagues who were also farmers and ranchers, who tend to be very practical gift givers.

        6. On Fire*

          +1. I bought all the women in the family nice pieces of leather — bag, wallet, etc. — for Christmas this year, but now I’m thinking I need to unwrap all the gifts, insert a multitool, and rewrap.

        7. Pucci*

          Or a solar powered flashlight or radio or this like. My brother would happily get a new one for every gift

    8. Aggretsuko*

      I like multitools, but I leave mine at home in case I end up running into a security search. Carrying a multitool always sounded cool, but these days…

    9. Ama*

      I am a firm believer that at work the moment someone decides X group gets one present at Y group gets another you are in shaky territory (whether that’s a gender divide or all of one type of role getting one thing and a different role getting something else). But jewelry as a group gift is almost always a bad idea because jewelry tastes are so personal.

    10. Mr. Peabody*

      Reminds me of a very fancy dinner party a woman I know gave years ago. There were several dozen tables of guests. All the women got chicken for dinner, and all the men got steak. Aaaaargh!

      And yes, give me a steak and multi-tool any day, woman though I am!

      1. Artemesia*

        could have been worse; they could have given all the women salads. But yowza. Who thinks men eat steak and women chicken? I can’t even . .

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          When my sister was in high school, her boyfriend was a wrestler. She was a very thin girl with a high metabolism. When they went out to eat, he usually got chicken, and she usually got beef.

          They were usually served each other’s food.

      2. Anon for this*

        I was at a fancy awards banquet with coworkers, and apparently the people who arranged it decided dinner would consist of one piece of steak, and one crab cake. The only person at our table who liked crab was our VP, so he ended up being the only person who had a good dinner because we all transferred our crab cakes to him, and while he let us split his steak, one piece of steak split seven ways does not go very far.

    11. Parcae*

      Sounds familiar. I had a (female) manager once who gave earrings to all the women (including me) and pocketknives to all the men. To be fair, in this case, both the earrings and the knives were objectively nice. What I found baffling was that my manager handed me my wrapped gift while assuring me that she’d picked it out especially for me and it was “just [my] style.”

      I do not have pierced ears, and I have never worn earrings in my life. To the best of my knowledge, I’d never worn jewelry of any kind in her presence. I guess she thought the colors suited me?

    12. But what to call me?*

      Not at work, but we always used to do a gift exchange game at my grandparents’ house for Christmas and they usually marked the otherwise unlabeled gifts ‘man’ and ‘woman’. The men’s gifts usually included a lot of useful things like multi-tools while the women’s gifts were things like those bath sets with cheap lotions and loofahs or random cheap knickknacks that were unlikely to be the recipient’s style (or at least were definitely not my style). One year they didn’t mark them by gender and I got a multi-tool and have always felt vaguely and inexplicably guilty about keeping it, despite the fact that every man there already owned a multi-tool and I did not.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        This would not work in my family. My dad loves bubble baths. Neither my mother nor my stepmother do.

        And he would have been vocal about the unfairness, as he also believes women should own and know how to use tools.

    13. MaryLoo*

      Similar situation years ago in a software company that got a new CEO with a sales (but no software) background. The gifts at the holiday dinner were very cool multitool knives for the men. Women got a scented candle in a velvet bag. After dinner there was a mad scramble among the women to get the extra multi tools, and many stinky candles were left behind. The CEO was totally clueless as to why the women were offended by the “girlie gift”.

    14. iglwif*

      I (a woman) would definitely like a multi-tool!

      I still regularly use the fairly basic Swiss army knife I received as a gift in high school.

  5. KC*

    In my early 20s I worked as an executive assistant in the entertainment industry, which is notoriously full of people very concerned with physical looks and fashion – and people who are judgmental about those things. For Christmas one year, my boss gifted me an acne treatment product :(

    1. froodle*

      I hate your boss. May every beverage they consume by lukewarm and decaffeinated for the first of eternity.

          1. Zinnia*

            I winced at this because I did end up breaking my pinky toe. It found the corner of the cabinet when I was running around barefoot. I knew I had hurt myself very badly and needed to have my foot checked outbut Dad was in an angry mood and screamed that I was going to go to work.

            At the time, I worked in a grocery store as a cashier and was forced to stand for the entirety of the shift. When I came back from work, in a lot of pain, and took my sock off, my entire foot was a gorgeous shade of bruise.

            Didn’t go to the doctor’s until the next day, when I begged to be taken to the urgent care and they did x-rays and found oh hey, my toe WAS broken! I made sure to announce it loudly in the waiting room as I clomp clomped out in my shiny walking boot and repeated it to him for the next few weeks that he was a fucking dick for not taking me to the doctor’s sooner.

            1. Dog momma*

              Oh my goodness, I’ve done that multiple times. a friend told me to just tape it to the next toe..no need for a boot. Doc doesn’t do anything anyway. I wore a looser shoe for several weeks so at least I’d be able to get a better shoe on that foot to show my dog. It bled under my foot and turned a myriad of colors,deep purple, black, red ,green,yellow and blue.

      2. MassMatt*

        “May the lowest stone in the ocean be on top of his head”

        (Irish curse from the excellent but very much not-safe-for-work movie “Kneecap”)

        1. Irish Teacher.*

          Google the lyrics of “Nell Flaherty’s Drake” if you want a whole load of other curses from…well, an Irish song. There’s too many for me to list and they are funny.

    2. Academia*

      In my office, I had an abrupt change of bosses in September. The new one had barely spoken to me by the time December came around, when she gave me a tube of anti-aging cream. Thanks!

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        May she be left with only the last square of toilet paper that you can’t pull off the roll without ripping it to shreds every time she goes to the bathroom.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          May she develop a case of boils on her ass that itch all the time, but even more so during important meetings.

    3. ferrina*

      If it makes you feel better, when I was a teenager my parents put deodorant and face cleanser in my Christmas stocking.

      1. I edit everything*

        My mom gave my brother a manicure kit in his one year. And I did soap for my kid last year. But our stockings are always a mix of cool and pranky, and the soap was something “manly,” so it fit.

    4. Vimes*

      I would take that. Good acne treatment stuff is expensive.

      Note: my sister once regifted me a goodie bag she got at a conference. I had to call her and ask her if she wanted it back because “um, sis, this is $400 worth of Creme de la Mer. Are you sure you meant to give this to me?”

      She had no idea what it was or how much it was worth. Which also left me wondering what the $&$& kind of architecture conference gives out $400 of skincare supplies ?!

      1. KC*

        It was indeed an expensive brand, so I actually did use it – and then had an allergic reaction to it that made my eyes swell up!! My boss asked me to give it back to her so she could return it and get her money back. Lol. Not the best person.

      2. Goldenrod*

        Even as someone who has struggled with acne, I would be mortally offended to receive that as a gift- especially from my boss!

        Creme de la Mer, though….YES PLEASE. I probably would have kept it. ;D

        1. Artemesia*

          Again I am reminded how out of touch with all things ‘high end’ I am. I shop for skin care by ingredient and you get the same ingredients in $30 drug store products as in $250 boutique products.

    5. Goldenrod*

      “For Christmas one year, my boss gifted me an acne treatment product”

      Wow, that is hard-core mean! You should have given her a dog turd, wrapped up in pretty paper with a bow.

        1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

          And once the next bus arrives, may the person in front of them be the last one on before the bus driver declares the bus too full.

  6. still gobsmacked*

    During the 50-50 raffle, the owner’s wife won the BIG gift and just went up and grabbed it. You could hear a pin drop, because it was intended for any one of the lower-paid staff.

      1. Phony Genius*

        It wasn’t, I bet. Whoever did the drawing may have been instructed to announce her as the winner.

        1. still gobsmacked*

          There were no names, just 50-50 tickets with numbers. I drew the tickets and when she started walking up, I just froze. I ALMOST said, ‘haha, no we’re gonna draw again”, but she stomped right up and just took it. I left that job immediately after the holidays.

          1. Phony Genius*

            In that case, oof. And I see your comment below about the owner’s face. If I was him, I would have come up and announced a duplicate prize would be offered for later delivery, and drawn another winner. (The discussion at home was probably quite interesting.)

            Your drawing was legitimate, since you ran it. But I do know enough sleight of hand to be able to manipulate and switch out numbered tickets in that type of drawing, hence my cynical comment.

      2. still gobsmacked*

        They were tickets draw for prizes. She could have and should have “taken a pass” on the big prize.

        2. LifebeforeCorona*

          I’ve worked in offices with the management above a certain level are not allowed to win high value prizes. They can win the candle set or the coffee mug but nothing else.

        3. iglwif*

          I used to work at a place that had (often very nice) door prizes at the company Xmas party. Nobody above manager level was given a door-prize ticket — their envelope contained their stick-on name tag and their 2 drink tickets and nothing else.

      3. Brian*

        My father, who was the big boss, once won the big prize (a flat screen TV, when they were a new thing). I still have the small clock he took instead.

      1. still gobsmacked*

        It was fine for the $10 DD gift cards and such. But yeah, the owner looked like he swallowed a lemon but didn’t stop her.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I dunno, I don’t think the owner’s wife should have been allowed the DD GCs either. And what’s the point in that anyway, given that it’s basically like giving herself 10 bucks?

          Glad to know you left after that, though. Blech.

    3. Sunflower*

      I remember back in the day that every year, a manager or higher always seem to mysteriously win that year’s big prize of the new fangled CD player, DVD player, Ipod, etc. I don’t work there anymore but wonder if it’s still happening.

  7. MausTrappe*

    I had a unique neurodivergent Secret Santa experience when I worked for a call center. We did the typical you fill out a card with your name along with suggestions of what things you might enjoy. I think there was a $20 limit. I put in sensible things like what type of tea or cocoa or candy I might enjoy. I got my person something what was in line with what they put on their card. I was very disappointed when I opened my gift to see a USB powered air purifier there. It was the typical type of cheap electronic gimic gift you see this time of year. I was at my desk and said aloud how confused I was that I had gotten this somewhat offensive(do I smell?) gift. The woman sitting next to me got very emotional and over the top. Apparently she was the one who bought it and was accusing me of being ungrateful. BC she made a scene on the floor, we were both taken into a meeting with HR. I was disciplined for my reaction to the gift. I stated that the gift was offensive and had nothing to do with the suggestion card we filled out. In did in fact feel like a regift. Coworker was icy to me forever after that and I vowed aside from toy drives for kids that I am over gifts at work. My autistic self was mad that she didn’t follow the assignment. I should mention that i didn’t realty know any of these people.

    1. CommanderBanana*

      I would also be somewhat disappointed to get something like a mini air purifier, but how was this offensive?

      1. HonorBox*

        Sounds like perhaps @MausTrappe believed it was more like an air freshener and there was a message behind it.

      2. ferrina*

        Yeah, I was a little confused by the offended reaction. Unless it was something explicitly for cleanliness, I would assume that they thought I would like the scent/purified air it produced (not that they don’t currently like the way I smell)

        1. CommanderBanana*

          Same, also the assertion that it felt like a regift and was cheap (a $20 Secret Santa gift is by definition going to be cheap).

          Secret Santa seems to cause so many issues in so many offices that I feel like it’s probably best done away with completely.

          1. The Prettiest Curse*

            Yeah, there’s so much room for people do stupid stuff with Secret Santas. They should definitely never be mandatory. But also, if you’re the type of person who’s going to get Very Offended if you don’t get the type of gift you requested, it’s best not to participate. I don’t think this was a “you smell” gift (that would be the extra strength antiperspirant mentioned elsewhere in these comments, or a lot of heavily scented bath products) or deliberately offensive, but it wasn’t a great gift either.

            1. CommanderBanana*

              Yes, and I can see being irked that you didn’t get what was on your suggestion card – or something similar – but it’s not like that’s a guarantee that you’ll get what you put on there.

      2. LifebeforeCorona*

        Unless you get a gift card to a high end spa. The cheapest treatment was $50 and the cards were worth $25 or less. So not a great gift.

    3. Bast*

      I think a lot of times when people are so far off the mark it’s either because they are regifting something that they don’t want, or buy something that they personally would like to receive.

      1. AnotherOne*

        I did one of these in a retail job once where I trapsed half way across to the city to pick up something for the person on my list. I don’t remember what was on my list but it was all stuff you could get near our job- the guy who got me picked up hand lotion at the store next to us.

        It was (1) not on my list and (2) the one brand i’ve had an allergic reaction to. (could he know that? no, but i literally had a cookbook on the list and we worked in a bookstore.)

        i eventually foisted it off on someone.

        1. Bast*

          To me, this would normally scream, “Oh crap I totally forgot about this until I was walking out of the door this morning– let me go next door and pick up the first thing I see.” The part that makes this really strange to me and doesn’t quite fit is that the cookbook would have been an easy buy since you worked in a bookstore. Unless they were out of stock, the individual wouldn’t have had to go out of their way at all.

    4. Wallaby, Well I'll Be*

      I actually think you were in the wrong here, sorry. Making a fuss about a christmas gift at work is petty at best, and unprofessional at worst. This is the perfect moment for a “smile and nod” reaction, and then you can throw it away or give it away when you get home. You shouldn’t expect to receive thoughtful, personalized gifts from coworkers. They’re not your friends.

    5. RagingADHD*

      I think somewhere you missed the basic politeness lesson that you never, ever complain about a gift within the hearing (or potential hearing) of the giver.

      If it is clothing that doesn’t fit, you can ask whether it could be exchanged for a different size, since that is objective and doesn’t make any comment on the giver’s taste or intentions.

      If the giver is someone with whom you are in a very, very close relationship, you can ask questions like “what, do I smell?” or suggest that something else might be more useful. But not with coworkers, distant relatives, or most friends.

    6. Goldenrod*

      “It did in fact feel like a regift.”

      That was my first thought – regift.

      While I don’t think it completely sinks to the level of offensive, it still seems like a pretty thoughtless choice to me, especially since everyone had listed their preferences.

    7. Ellis Bell*

      Yeah, I can see how this tripped you up because you thought they didn’t keep to the deal, but the suggestions you give your Santa are not ironclad rules, they’re just there to help the Secret Santa in case they don’t have any ideas at all and draw someone who stumps them. I actually think a purifier is a very nice gift! I don’t think it carries any message at all that you smell, because it’s only useful in the workplace to people on the receiving end of unwanted or random smells, which happens a lot in offices! The actual (unwritten) rules of Secret Santa are that you run a risk not getting what you want, you politely have to hide any disappointment if that happens, and the surprise/gamble of Secret Santa is part of the fun. Interesting to think about workplaces making that more explicit, maybe?

    8. Coverage Associate*

      Something worse happened to a friend in college. He was secret Santa upperclassman to a freshman woman giftee. He knew she liked Latin, so he gave her some copies of Latin lyric poetry. He looked at the English translation in choosing the texts. (Secret Santa in college was week long and included funny things with no value. This was not the main gift.)

      As we learned is common with the oldest translations from Latin, the translation my friend reviewed just omitted the racy lines. The recipient got very upset. A dean was brought in, who got the upperclassmen in charge of the secret Santa to un secret my friend, who had to talk to the dean. He apologized to the recipient, and everyone moved on. I think the recipient is a religious sister now.

      (This was a bit more scandalous because it was a religious school and all students took Latin, so theoretically my friend could have read or skimmed the full Latin text himself before giving it. The incomplete translation issue came up in class with Augustine of Hippo and Lucretius, for anyone familiar with those authors’ full texts.)

      2. Alice in Hinterland*

        Sure hope it wasn’t Catullus! I had to blush and stammer my way through my first upper division Latin class due to his poems. My teacher was later horrified to find out I started college early and was only 15 for that class. It was quite an education!

        1. Insufficient Sausage Explainer*

          Our Latin teacher, by contrast, was more than happy to tell us (15/16yos) that Catullus’s reference to Lesbia’s sparrow was a sexual euphemism!

  8. LifebeforeCorona*

    This is a very old story. It took place in grade 6 and the class did a Secret Santa. My gift was a pair of pantyhose. I hadn’t started wearing them yet, but OK. At the end of the day, the teacher explained them to me. My secret Santa was a boy and he didn’t know how to buy for girls so he didn’t buy anything. His mother found out the morning of the exchange and the only girl thing she could find was the pantyhose. She called the teacher to let her know because she didn’t want her son to get in trouble if the gift was inappropriate.

    1. Juicebox Hero*

      I kind of love this. I can picture his mom beetling around the house in a panic looking for anything girly, when, AH-HA! A spare pair of No Nonsense! I just hope they were a new pair in an unopened package.

      1. Pro Bonobo*

        Somehow your comment gave me a fit of chuckling, I think due to the image of “beetling around” the house. Thanks, it was welcome! :-)

      2. LifebeforeCorona*

        They were unopened and nicely wrapped. I can understand how an 11 yr old boy wouldn’t have a clue and also not tell his mother until the morning of with a “I forgot but I need a present for today.”

    2. Account*

      This has me cracking up because I’ve also been met with “BTW mom, I need something for school” as we are basically getting in the car to go there.

      1. LifebeforeCorona*

        One of my friends is a teacher and received a box of crackers from a student. The parents had recently separated and the dad was left to pick up the pieces. The little kid was very happy that they had something to give and she made sure that they knew the gift was appreciated.

        3. AnneCordelia*

          That’s really sweet. A co-teacher and I once received a Barbie doll from a student. One Barbie for the two of us, because we live together in our classroom so we can share the doll, right?

    3. dee*

      That’s kind of adorable and hilarious. I’m glad your teacher had the wisdom to explain so you weren’t left wondering about the odd gift. I really hated secret santa at my school. We weren’t a wealthy district and it was tough for most of the kids to scrounge money to buy something decent. The classmate i gave my gift to (a plastic hairbrush and mirror set my mom found) made a face. My gift was a colorful ceramic angel my classmate had handpainted herself. She apologized for the gift and I told her I loved it, because I did. Shannon Ferguson, if you’re reading this, I still have your beautiful handpainted ornament and hang it on my tree every year, forty-five years later, and think of you.

      1. LifebeforeCorona*

        That’s really sweet. I always liked the handmade gifts from kids because it showed that they went to some effort. This was the first year that we did Secret Santa at school. I think our teacher decided that we were old enough to participate. But you could tell which parent bought gifts from the ones the kids chose themselves. So most of the gifts were very different in cost and quality.

      2. Not my first Christmas, but...*

        I don’t remember if we drew names or if it was a random gift. When we were kids, a little girl gave me a “Baby’s first Christmas” ornament. She had some mental and physical problems and was very poor, and she always said I was her best friend because I was nice to her.
        She died a few years ago, and I still cry every year when I hang that ornament on the tree.

    4. KateM*

      Oh, my story is decades old, too. High school, a month before I turned 18 (which is legal age for drinking here), I got from my Secret Santa a box of vodka-filled fancy chocolates. My Secret Santa classmate had turned 18 a couple months before (now I wonder if that counts as an adult buying alcohol for a minor). I tried to hold back my tears at the party (I had never drank alcohol except for that time when I thankfully tried myself a grape juice before giving it to my baby brother) and my parents ate the chocolates.

    5. Texas Teacher*

      Aww. I had the kid in 7th grade tell me, day of, he wanted to bring a gift for a girl. “What’s her name?” I asked. He…. was not entirely sure. “Bianca?”
      *sigh* Totally on brand for that kid, though.

      1. Tinkerbell*

        My high school show choir did the “draw names and give something to each other” thing. Our director couldn’t remember who he’d been assigned but was pretty sure it was a girl. Turns out he wasn’t included in the exchange, so his present was left over.

        One of the boys: Cool, can I have it?
        Our director: If you promise you’ll wear it, you can have it.
        Literally everyone else: OOOOOH!

        It was a dainty little music note necklace. He did, indeed, wear it to school the next day.

    6. Quinalla*

      I am so glad you got the explanation! I too have been a parent who’s kid is telling me they need X for school as we are walking out the door, oof!

    7. Tinkerbell*

      On the subject of inappropriate:

      My local chapter of romance writers (so semi-professional, I guess?) always did a “dirty Santa” gift exchange at our Christmas meeting. One writer was new and apparently hadn’t heard the term “dirty Santa” before, so she brought… I’ll just say a particularly adult toy. Some of us do write explicit romance, but the person who opened that particular gift was a pastor for her day job and writes the “maybe they kiss on the last page” kind.

      The gift-giver was absolutely mortified and apologized over and over. Someone else gleefully stole the adult toy and said “well that’s my weekend sorted!” The pastor was not forced to give an opinion on whether she’d want that sort of a gift or not.

      In subsequent years, the organizers were CRYSTAL clear about what a “dirty Santa” exchange is…

      1. Sparky*

        To be fair, I think “dirty Santa” is a somewhat regional term? I never encountered it before I started reading AAM!

  9. Brrrrrrrr*

    In my office’s secret Santa one year, a coworker got me a gift that came with no label/instructions indicating how to use it — it was just in a plastic sleeve inside the wrapping paper. It was a flexible, padded square of material with a plug, and once plugged in, it warmed up. I assumed it was a heating pad to use at my desk, since I sat in a notoriously cold part of the office.

    I plugged it in and was working with it on my lap when the coworker who had gifted it walked by and remarked, “Oh, that’s a clever use for it! Your cats are going to be jealous, though.” Turns out it was a heated cat bed. Oops!

    1. froodle*

      given how many cats enjoy pinching our hot water bottles / warm laptops / period cramp tummy warmers etc, this is a case of turnabout being fair play

      1. Always Tired*

        Hey, when I have sore muscles, I also steal my cat’s heated bed. Bonus if I can get him to lay on top of me purring, so I have a sandwich of warm. He doesn’t pay rent or chip in on groceries. It’s the least he can do.

    2. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I think that’s an excellent use of a heated cat bed, though. What are humans really except giant cats?

      1. Slippers*

        I’m dying at this because multiple times in the past week have I either compared a group of humans to cats (you give this group exactly what they want on a silver platter and they turn up their nose) or said that what I want is to be a cat (specifically The Yule Cat, who according to Facebook lore, is a giant cat that roams the Icelandic countryside looking for people who are not nicely dressed in new clothes for Yuletide festivities and swallows them whole. I don’t really care what people are wearing but who wouldn’t want to be a giant judgmental cat?!?).

        1. Data Nerd*

          The best part of that legend is the assumption that the person dressed in the tatty clothes hasn’t been doing their share of the work for new clothes (caring for the sheep, preparing the wool, knitting the sweaters), so they’re being judged for their laziness and fed to the cat for their lack of productivity.

        2. Analytical Tree Hugger*

          “I don’t really care what people are wearing but who wouldn’t want to be a giant judgmental cat?!?).”

          Annnnnd new life goal discovered!

          1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

            We have to put a personal goal on our annual reviews and I can’t tell you how tempted I am to make this mine. To say my boss wouldn’t be amused is an epic understatement…

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Right, and probably more durable, especially to puncture wounds. So, probably more expensive than heating pads made for humans, but who really cares if it’s for cats or humans? Although if the giver was really that concerned that Brrrrr used the cat bed correctly, maybe they should have included some info on what it was?

      2. MigraineMonth*

        Mine has extra safety features like a chew-proof cord and a low limit for heat, and it doesn’t auto shut-off after 2 hours.

        Oh no, it’s cold and I haven’t turned on my cat beds’ heaters. I need to go do that!

        1. Sun's Return*

          In the days before auto shut-offs became the norm, we left a heating pad on the low setting under a towel for the cats when we left the house cold for holiday travels. When I ultimately had to replace it, I was very disappointed that I couldn’t find one without the auto shut-off. Now I know I’m looking for a heated cat bed warmer! (For my own use, of course)

    4. learnedthehardway*

      You have inspired me to find a heating pad and to the same thing.

      I discovered this morning that my office window hadn’t been locked since the summer, and it’s been blowing very cold air directly at my window all night, so my office is a freezer. (PSA – windows work MUCH MORE effectively when fully latched.)

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        I realized a month ago when I decided it was finally time to latch my windows that some of them were even a tiny bit open at the top, which would explain how a couple of flies had snuck in at one point. Oops, no wonder my apt seemed colder than usual for November.

        In my defense, the openings were covered up by the shades at the top, so I couldn’t see that they were open.

        1. Jay (no, the other one)*

          I once worked in an office that had been remodeled from an older building. They lowered the ceilings and didn’t replace the windows, so the windows extended up past the ceiling in little niches (sorry, can’t describe it well). When winter came we discovered that the top of the window was open and it was completely inaccessible. It was a very cold winter. We finally kicked up enough of a fuss that facilities sent a man with a ladder to close it from the outside. Somehow.

        2. But what to call me?*

          Several years ago my parents discovered that one of their kitchen windows had slipped down to leave over an inch gap at the top, which finally explained how the occasional giant bug like bees and wasps had been getting into the house for the past few years.

          Mom had been distracted by grad school on top of working for most of that time and dad apparently simply does not notice things at all.

  10. Skeptic53*

    When I was working as a family physician, I shared an office with a fellow physician who ran chronically behind because he would spend as much time with each patient as they desired. I was more efficient and stayed much closer to on time. My patients tended to be practical and appreciated not having to wait in the lobby for over an hour. His patients adored him. (Our patient satisfaction scores were about equal, patients sorted themselves based on our practice styles). One Christmas his patients were deluging him with gifts: Homemade baked goods, bottles of booze, commercial gift baskets. My assistant looked at me and said wistfully, “When will our patients give us stuff?” It was a case of be careful what you wish for. The next two patients gave gifts. The first was a white ceramic piece with a rough, non-glazed surface. It was a lighthouse on a rock, about 3 feet tall, with a tiny light that lit up when you plugged it in. It was meant to be painted as a craft project. My patient had sprayed it haphazardly with red glitter paint, parts were painted, parts were bare. The glitter was coming off as it is wont to do and making a huge mess. I thanked her and put it in my office. The next was a patient from South Asia who had been home for a visit and had brought back something for me. Assuming I am Christian (I’m not), he presented me with a copy of Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” made of inlaid pieces of wood, very very badly done. I thanked him and put it in my office. My assistant didn’t want either item, and they both ended up in the landfill as Goodwill and other thrift charities rejected them.

    1. Jay (no, the other one)*

      My father was an internist/cardiologist in private practice in the 60s and 70s, when apparently patients showed their appreciation with bottles of scotch. Dad didn’t drink much and when he did it was Jack Daniels or wine. Mom put all the gifts in the basement. I moved home during med school to save money and discovered the stash – it was a good-sized coffee table completely covered with bottles of Johnnie Walker Black, Pinch, Chivas Regal, and I don’t know what all. My fiancé’s grad school friends always loved it when he returned from visiting me….

      1. Skeptic53*

        I like single-malt scotch, the smokier/peatier the better, but I rarely drink. A physical therapist to whom I often referred patients would get me a bottle at Xmas. I finally had her switch to donating to Doctors Without Borders because the scotch was piling up. A patient wanted to thank me and asked the PT what to get me, she suggested scotch but didn’t specify what kind. The patient brought be a GALLON of Johnny Walker. I didn’t know what to do with it but hit on bringing it to a family reunion. My cousins demolished it in 2 nights.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      I love the fact that ye had different styles that worked well for different patients, so they self-sorted so everybody got what they needed from your practice.

  11. GovSysadmin*

    At one of our division holiday parties years ago, they had a prize drawing with a bunch of prizes on chairs, gave everyone a playing card, and if your card was called you could claim a prize that hadn’t been opened and then sit down on the chair, or steal an existing prize, so that person has to sit down. A couple of the prizes were pretty nice (bottles of wine or gift cards), but some were more like traditional white elephant gifts, like a bag of 12 crew socks. One of the folks from my team got the socks, and he seemed genuinely happy to get them. As other cards got drawn, most folks started stealing the nice prizes, but then someone stole his socks, and he seemed kind of disappointed. For the rest of the event, our team became SINGLE FOCUSED on winning back his socks. When our cards were drawn, we stole back the socks if someone had taken them, and by the end of the event, one of our teammates had the socks, and we were able to hand them back to the person who had won them first.

    1. froodle*

      my job gave us all two pairs of corporate-themed socks for Christmas last year. I gave them to my partner who was very taken with how soft yet supportive they were. Kinda hoping for a repeat this year tbh…

    3. Dragon Tea Smithy*

      We’re doing a Secret Santa in my department and everyone has to fill out a little form and email it to everyone in the department so their Santa knows what to give them. 80% of the people in my department asked for cozy socks!

      1. Jay (no, the other one)*

        That was my favorite Secret Santa present ever! I asked for cozy socks and received six pair in lovely rainbow colors.

      2. On Fire*

        Lol. I always get cozy socks — I think last year I got 5-6 pair — but I have the hottest feet on earth and can’t stand to wear them. (I’ve even gotten fuzzy socks from my mother, who KNOWS I walk around on mini volcanoes.) I need to take a load to one of the donation points!

      3. GovSysadmin*

        Had these been cozy socks I could understand them being more of a desired present, but we were fighting to get back a bag of generic white crew socks. :)

    4. LifebeforeCorona*

      We got branded socks as a thank you after the pandemic was over, they were okay but I hate ankle socks so they were donated. Much nicer was the hoodies, we could choose our size and colour. I don’t work there anymore but I still love my pink hoodie. The next workplace gave everyone hoodies except they chose natural colours, so they were either black, brown, grey and green. Not colours that I wear but it’s good for laundry days when there’s nothing left to wear.

    5. Tree*

      my last job, a project team lead gave everyone who worked for his project that year nice socks. every year. either high quality novelty socks carefully chosen, or a couple years wool!

      when I left he gave me a bottle of whiskey.

      1. Artemesia*

        A decent pair of wool socks is an expensive gift — and so great. I have limestone floors in a midwest high rise and even if the place is sort of comfortable in winter my feet freeze unless I am wearing wool socks in my shoes — I’d have been thrilled to get wool socks rather than see horrifying ‘soap/lotion’ sets in a holiday draw.

    8. Aphrodite*

      This reminds me of the time, many years ago, that the VP held a holiday meeting and at this one brought all the gifts she had been given at events she attended throughout the year There were perhaps 25 of us. About the fifth draw, the young woman got a handpainted clock that had come from a winery, a very pretty pained 3×5 or 4×6 ceramic one with metal pointers. She loved it; you could see how much she loved it. I was thrilled for her because she didn’t make that much money and I think her family struggled financially.

      Then, about three people on, the dean’s turn came up. And would you believe she stole that clock. The young woman looked very confused until a couple of people explained the “steal twice” rule but handed it over with grace. I know at least some and maybe many people felt as angry as I did since the dean made well over $100K annually (compared to the ~$30K the young woman made.

      Five or six people later, a director I admired, older, took no shit from anyone, stole the clock from the dean. Not too surprisingly, the dean put up a fuss at having to give it up but the VP backed up the director and noted it could not be stolen again.

      The absolute best ending I could have imagined did happen. On our way out, I saw the director stop the young woman–they were in a place not easily seen but I was in exactly the right location to see them–and hand her the clock. I almost burst into tears right then but contained myself until the director and I were back at our satellite campus. I went quietly to her office, told her what I had seen and how much it meant to me that she did that, and we hugged. I have never and will never forget that. It made my holiday season.

  12. SuburbanBonfire*

    Aa! I commented on the last holiday post about some terrible holiday gifts I’ve seen from working in corporate mailrooms, but it definitely fits better here. Apologies for the faux pas of double commenting

    “I worked in the mailroom for a very large corporate office, which meant that every holiday we would receive boxes on boxes of gifts from clients. Usually these were fine, but since we didn’t have any refrigerator for perishable packages and didn’t have the manpower to hand-deliver gifts to 10000+ employees, sometimes things went wrong, including:
    – entire turkeys that rotted in the mailroom during the height of COVID while no one was in office
    – a month old box of cheese that I could smell without even opening it, that my boss proceeded to accidentally stink bomb *her* boss’s office with
    – spending a morning opening un-picked up bottles of wine and googling how expensive they were. Then, leaving the about 50 bottles in grandboss’s office as a surprise

    The best one though, was when someone got delivered a whole box of wagyu beef for the holidays. It was for a department we didn’t technically service, but they had an admin who would pick up regularly. We emailed the admin and moved on with our day, not noticing the admin did not in fact come down. When we returned after the weekend, the ice packs in the box had melted, and a large pool of beef blood had spread across our floor. We got rid of the box and called janitorial services to let them know we had some blood that needed cleaned up, and when he arrived it was pretty clear from his double take that he was expecting a ‘bad papercut’ level of blood and not a ‘many pounds of dead cow’ level. He asked very seriously if someone had lost a limb.”

    1. Mouse named Anon*

      We had the beef thing happen at one of my former work places! For some strange reason it was delivered on a Saturday and wasn’t discovered until Monday. An entire pack of really nice steaks were ruined.

    2. MigraineMonth*

      I’ll give the wine/crackers/chocolates a pass, but there *has* to be a better system to ensure the extremely expensive extremely perishable food you are giving actually gets to the recipient. Maybe, I don’t know, letting the recipient know to expect it and/or hunt it down if it doesn’t arrive?

    3. Rey*

      I loved this comment the first time, so no complaints here about the double posting. The last big employer I worked at, the older employees still talked about when the company would gift turkeys to everyone around the holidays. One of my coworkers would recount tales of the holidays when both her parents and herself worked there full-time, so their small household would receive three turkeys. If I recall correctly, they donated to the neighborhood soup kitchen.

      1. Artemesia*

        my employer gave turkeys for the holidays — there were thousands distributed. You picked them up and your number was also in a drawing for a ham, so many people walked away with a turkey and a ham. You could opt for a tofurky. And all the turkeys that were not claimed were donated to a local homeless shelter that provided holiday meals for hundreds of people. The people I knew who got more than one just passed them on to relatives who didn’t work for the organization.

  13. George Of The Juicebar*

    We live in a tropical city in Africa. In a secret santa, Employee 1 gifted Employee 2 with Perspirex ( Strong antibacterial rollon to fight odors)
    It wasnt received well. Ended up in HR.

  14. Anon Here*

    I worked at a small company about 10 years ago that was perpetually having financial difficulties. The Big Boss, while a nice person and good at his subject matter, genuinely did not understand how to run a business. He always had one scheme or another to generate funds but things never really caught hold.

    One day he went to a local coffee shop – it had been there for a couple years but he had never stopped in. He must have been absolutely floored with their coffee, because he bought each staff member – and there were about 12 of us – a $250 gift card to the coffee shop. People said thank you but were generally perplexed by how he spent $3000 the business probably didn’t have for so many gift cards in such large amounts. I don’t work there anymore (because obviously) and I think I still have about $150 left on the card.

    1. ragazza*

      I mean, I could see going through $250 worth of coffee in a year, but I can also think of many other things I would rather have that cost that much.

    2. Jaydee*

      Did he mean to buy $25 gift cards and accidentally added an extra zero? I could see someone doing that and then just rolling with it out of embarrassment.

  15. FreudOnWheels*

    We’re doing our office white elephant today, in a community mental health agency. There’s a $10 limit, no gift cards. I’m not great at these, so I tried hard this year. I spent a lot of time reading ‘white elephant gift guides’ and clicking through random things on amazon. Then, I came across one of those squeezy chickens that’s been popular on the internet the last few years for making awful noises. I found a glittery one. I had this moment of “YES THIS IS IT! Everyone will love it!” and bought it immediately. As time went on, I have become way less certain of that decision, but it’s already wrapped and waiting in my desk.

      1. Sally Forth*

        My husband’s small company had their Christmas party at our house and we did a true white elephant exchange of horrific gifts, with a promise I would take the unwanted items to a thrift store. You had to tell the story behind the gift.
        One was a large clown painting that had sat over someone’s childhood sofa and terrified them. My son grabbed it out of the garbage and had it in his apartment for years.
        The best was the story attached to one gift. The donor insisted on telling the story before it was opened. “You are wealthy. You fly from Asia to attend your niece/god daughter’s graduation as a doctor. You carry this box to sit with you in first class because you don’t trust it to go in your suitcase.” It looked like a pink wedding cake but was a strange plastic merry go round, about 12 inches high, complete with horses that went up and down. The best part… it played “Strangers in the Night.” She said at first she was sure it was just a cover for smuggled diamonds and kept checking out the box and wrapping, but no. It was the hit of the evening, with everyone fighting to get it so they could take it to their next holiday swap party.

      1. Worldwalker*

        Indeed. Mine is not glittery, and it should be.

        Not that it would have helped me the time I sat on it!

      1. Zephy*

        My sister got a pink squeezy chicken in a work gift exchange, but hers is wearing headphones for some reason. The headphones are around the chicken’s neck, though, so if you aren’t close enough to see the detailing that makes them obviously headphones, they look like breasts.

    8. Looper*

      I love when people add some chaos to a low-budget white elephant! It’s very hard to find genuinely nice, please-everyone gifts for $10-20, so i appreciate when people bring something silly. Especially in office settings, fun totems can become a weird, unexpected tradition that bring people together. If it’s a potluck party, bring in an extra special treat to assuage any lingering guilt if you still feel your gift isn’t up to snuff.

      1. AnotherOne*

        yeah, I try to shop well in advance at sample sales or places like tj maxx. i can sometimes snag stuff like moleskine notebooks for $5 at a sale or bombos socks for $12 at tj maxx (instead of $30.)

        since i know events like this are going to take place. (and i look for small things that are easy for me to store.)

    9. darsynia*

      My favorite ever White Elephant gift was a wicker lobster about the size of a sheet of printer paper. It’s a wallhanging. You’ll do great :) TBH the best gifts are the ones people want to re-gift at the following White Elephant but wouldn’t be really sad if they had to give up to regift. A glittery honk chicken is exactly that sort of thing.

    12. JustaTech*

      One year someone gave a squeezy rubber chicken for white elephant and I was delighted to win it and take it home.

      I was less delighted after I gave it to my husband and only then remembered how much he *loves* to make repetitive annoying noises. But it was still a great white elephant gift!

    13. JMR*

      If this is one of those White Elephants where gifts can get stolen, this is GUARANTEED to be stolen several times.

    15. I edit everything*

      People in my office would come to blows over that. One coworker had her husband in a headlock over a cheap plastic popper ball (fidget toy giveaway) yesterday. We have 2500 of them just sitting in boxes.

    17. Blue Spoon*

      That is hysterical, and I personally would love to get it as part of a White Elephant exchange.

      I’m also impressed with the amount of thought you put into it, as the gift I brought to the last White Elephant exchange I participated in was something that I bought from a game shop across from my workplace right before I left work for the party (it was a small Avocado squishable, and people really liked it).

    18. Artemesia*

      The worst thing that will happen with the rubber chicken is someone will think ‘meh, the old rubber chicken joke again’ — but probably people will all secretly hope to get it.

    19. Bronze Betty*

      At my last holiday party (family, not office), I ended up with an actual ceramic white elephant. It’s cute! Yes, I stole it from the person who originally got it and I plan to re-gift it at some future white elephant gift swap.

    20. HCworker*

      As someone who works in community mental health this sounds specially designed for people who work in community mental health, I desperately wish I had one myself

      1. FreudOnWheels*

        An Update: It’s very hard to wrap a rubber chicken, so it wasn’t the nicest-looking gift in the pile – and it got left until the end. One of the supervisors drew the last number and he stole a gift, sparking the longest chain of gift-stealing I’ve ever seen. I kept imagining how the most recent victim of gift-theft would react to it, and locking eyes with my coworker who knew what I had brought. After like 10 minutes of buildup, the original supervisor decided to go for my gift. He LOVED it. He took a video of it to send his friends and immediately started looking up other chickens to send to his family. The office dog was jumping around and barking excitedly every time it squeaked. Everyone else seemed to think it was really funny- they asked who brought it, and genuinely clapped when I raised my hand. I’m going to bed feeling very content. Thanks yall for the comment positivity!

        1. Pomegranates*

          This is so sweet, I love this. There’s something immensely satisfying in having a well-received white elephant gift.

        2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          If nobody liked it the dog would have it. I bought my dog a squeaky giraffe at a jumble sale last summer: it’s a classic toy all French babies chew on, and he loves it to bits. The strangest thing is that he hasn’t destroyed it, he’s making it squeak right as I write. It cost me one euro and it’s given him endless fun.

  16. Baby Yoda*

    (If this appears twice, it’s because I didn’t see my original post.) At prior job, chairman of the board would make a run to the dollar store and return with a little something for everyone.

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        My mother-in-law, in addition to the more normal gifts she got everybody, used to go to the dollar store and just walk around the store grabbing a dozen or so things for each family member. Each of us would unpack a huge “goody bag” of dollar store junk as she watched, absolutely delighted with herself. I tried to just sort of laugh it off, but it felt so wasteful.

  17. Mouse named Anon*

    I had a co-worker who was great. He was a great trainer, friend and sort of mentor in a way. The first year I was working in that department, he got everyone a Christmas gift. This wasn’t required nor did we even have a gift exchange. It was a pack of dollar store knives. It was just so odd. Other people got something else similar and odd too. Very well meaning, but odd.

    1. Filthy Vulgar Mercenary*

      Aww… I am imagining him feeling awkward, wanting to give gifts but not being able to afford that much, wondering if his coworkers would be offended if he didn’t give anything, googling what to do and stressing out about it, and finally landing on the dollar store idea.

    2. Lenora Rose*

      IME, when trying to provide some cutlery for events, dollar stores run out of packages of forks way before spoons, and both WAAY before knives… so they may just not have had forks.

      Why he would think anyone would want forks or knives, you’d have to ask him…

  18. SPB*

    I’m a teacher, and where I live we have teacher’s appreciation day. One year, we got socks as teacher appreciation gifts from the district. But not just any socks – those synthetic borderline disposable ones you get on a plane, for example. And they were yellow with a logo for the district. No one took theirs home, and they were left at the school and used by students whose socks got wet in the rain etc.
    But it did spark a tradition where every year for the holidays our principal gives all staff members socks, usually she makes an effort for them to be soft, fluffy, or have cute prints.

      3. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        I have given my kids socks every year: they fit nicely into the Christmas stocking. My son commented recently that he hadn’t ever needed to buy socks his whole life. They’ll be getting several pairs again this year. Some traditions are worth keeping up.
        I have to ask if I want some though!

  19. Classically Ambigous English Prepositional Phrase*

    For a former workplace’s Secret Santa, on the paper where you would write your name, there was also a space to write things that you like and dislike (maybe you like tea but not coffee- there were multiple shifts, and it was helpful to have a guide if you hadn’t encountered that person before.) The Secret Santa exchange lasted a week- 4 small (under $5) presents Monday through Thursday, and an under $10 present on Friday. Totally optional.

    My coworker put candy under dislikes. Her Monday present? A box of candy on Monday, one of those dollar ones from Walmart. She was disappointed, but maybe her Secret Santa forgot her dislike an things would improve. Her Tuesday present? A dollar box of candy. Oh. Oh dear. Wednesday and Thursday- dollar box of candy. Followed by the reveal of Friday’s “big” present… 2 boxes of dollar candy.

    1. Artemesia*

      Obviously the SS read ‘Candy’ and remembered that. I once got a huge box of herbal tea from my mother like 40 different tea bag varieties. (obviously on a table at Walmart). She remembered I drink tea and remembered ‘herbal’ — she forgot the I only like black tea and really dislike herbal teas.’ I put it in our break room and staff loved the lavish choice.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        I have a similar tale of being saddled with a variety of tea (in a lovely display box, I must say) and taking the types I didn’t want to work- I think of the 10 varieties, I kept 3 and the other 7 went to work. But similarly, my coworkers were thrilled.

      2. Classically Ambigous English Prepositional Phrase*

        I do appreciate the attempt to extend grace to the Secret Santa,but it’s more likely it was just laziness. His mother also worked there and apparently took him to task for his lack of effort. (I still have and enjoy a plant that she gave me in another year’s Secret Santa, so apples do fall far from the tree!)

  20. FitnessSpouse*

    My husband worked in the fitness industry where it’s common to have a “we’re family” attitude (aka no boundaries). One small boutique gym he worked for had an employee Christmas party every year at the owner’s house that included spouses. This annual party was notorious for drama: one year we played a very entertaining but absolutely not-work-appropriate game of Cards Against Humanity that included the high school aged son of the owner embarrassingly explaining to his mom what a specific type of sex toy was…, and another year the owner’s wife used her youngest kids to steal all the white elephant gifts she wanted from employees. But the worst was the year the owner, who I’m convinced might have been a robot instead of a human based on his general lack of humanity, decided to give gifts accompanied by glowing thank you speeches to only 2/3 of the employees (out of a total of ~10 employees), really alienating the 3 or so who did not receive anything. One long-time, very well-liked employee ended up crying in the bathroom for the rest of the night because she was left out while multiple recent hires were given gifts and speeches. On the upside, the food was amazing, so my husband and I attended for the snacks and schadenfruede.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Wow. I hope that well-liked employee started a competing business and is now living her best life while that owner continuously steps barefoot on LEGO bricks.

    2. Pinta Bean*

      I am stealing your last line, and will someday invite people to a “Snacks and Schadenfruede” party. Or maybe “Come for the snacks, stay for the schadenfruede!”

  21. Bunch Harmon*

    I once had a colleague who passed out tins of “Jesus Mints” right before we broke for holiday break. They were those soft barrel-shaped mint candies, individually wrapped with cellophane that had bible verses on them. The Jewish folks in my department were not amused.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Honestly, I’d think that Christians would also find Jesus Mints offensive. Having been raised Christian, I can totally see my relatives finding that pretty sacrilegious.

      1. Rex Libris*

        It may be denomination dependent. My spouse’s family are all Lutherans, and I’m sure they’d find it hilarious.

      2. Lab Snep*

        On the other hand, I have Christian Friends who make it their very mission in life to find the weirdest and/or most offensive Jesus stuff they can.

        1. JustaTech*

          I had a coworker who was a devout evangelical Christian (raised Catholic) who also loved to collect “hideous and tacky Jesus decor” (her words). Her favorite was a light switch cover that was unintentionally obscene (because of where the light switch stuck out of Jesus’s front).

        2. Chirpy*

          The tacky Jesus nightlight was a fantastic hit at family Christmas one year.

          Best part was the packaging, which of course said “let Him light your way”!

      3. I edit everything*

        When my dad retired from being a pastor, I got him a Jesus action figure as a retirement present.

      4. UKDancer*

        Depends on your sense of humour. Rome has a lot of very tacky religious souvenirs and I got a fairly active Roman Catholic friend of mine a “Pope on a Rope” once, so a soap made to look like the Pope (Benedict at the time if I remember rightly). She thought it was absolutely hilarious and really enjoyed it (so much so she asked if I was going back because she wanted another one with the new Pope on.

    2. Not A Manager*

      Okay, I do understand why they were not amused, but honestly, I am Jewish and I would LOVE to have a box of Jesus mints.

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        I would be amused by this as well, mostly for the sheer tackiness. But, I also own an “ugly Hanukkah” sweatshirt with a menorah made of glitter and the phrase “let’s get lit,” so my taste in holiday-themed items is probably a little suspect. (And I’ve worn it to work! But only for ugly holiday sweater day. Hey, I decided against the one with candles that actually lit up …because it was $80 instead of $15…)

        1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

          I’ve been wearing really pretty Christmas Sweaters to parties the last two weeks. Today I broke out the “BAHHUMBUG” sweatshirt that I picked up at a thrift store about 8 years ago.

    3. Zona the Great*

      Yeah this has happened to me before. A woman at work basically shoved a sort of trading card (or something?) with Jesus’ face on one side and some bible verse or tract on the other. I was so offended at the action of forcing me to take it–and she knew I was Jewish–that I immediately threw it. She tried to claim I discriminated against her with HR and was told never to shove religious tracts into people’s hands again.

      1. Grizabella the Glaimour Cat*

        Good for your HR!

        I hope she learned her lesson and didn’t try that with anyone else.

    4. One Duck In A Row*

      As a mint loving Jew I think I’d eat them and then return the wrappers to the gift giver – they can surely use them more than I can. And who knows, maybe it’s disrespectful to Christians to throw bible verses in the trash? Better be careful and return them (ALL of them) just in case. ;-)

      1. MagicEyes*

        You could use the wrappers to make a bracelet and give that to someone else next year! (Google “gum wrapper bracelet” for how to do it.)

    5. Trixie the Great and Pedantic*

      …how did the manufacturers miss the “Sacra Mints” or “Testa Mints” puns?

      I mean, I’d be annoyed in a way that would not get through our wonderful hostess’s profanity filters if I got some of those, but I’m also offended on a lack-of-creativity level.

        1. I DK*

          I had to google. They’re a thing. (With the tagline ‘Powerful fresh breath. Powerful message.’) LOL

  22. Brain the Brian*

    I was gifted an exotic soap set from a foreign country one year in the office Secret Santa exchange. My coworker had bought it for herself in vacation and then decided she didn’t want it. The soap contained ingredients to which I have allergies. Totally useless gift, but I managed to hang up the nice cloth carrying case as a decoration.

      1. Brain the Brian*

        Likely not. I can’t really fault her on that front, although it was a little odd to pass on something she’d bought for herself as a gift to someone else. I get re-gifting something that you’ve been gifted unwittingly, but this wasn’t that. Oh well. Nice person otherwise.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Hmm, I do that pretty often. I’ll buy an item because it’s beautiful or high quality, or because it supports a good cause, then get home and realize I already have five of them. Rather than throw it out, now I have a beautiful or high-quality gift for the next Secret Santa, host gift, etc.

  23. That Crazy Cat Lady*

    A few years back, I was working at a café located in a hospital. I was overweight at the time. Management decided we would do a gift exchange where we each drew one person’s name and got them a gift. Simple enough, right? When it came time for the gift exchange, most people got things like a necklace, a sweater, etc. Basic stuff but still nice. I got…a gift card to Burger King. I thought it was an odd choice, but I said thank you anyway to the lady who drew my name (she was a new employee so we did not know each other at all). She responded, “I don’t know much about you, but I know you like to eat.”

  24. StressedButOkay*

    At an old job, we had this really …. interesting coworker. Just really quirky. Two years running, she gave quite interesting gifts for the white elephant. The first year, it was an empty box. Just an empty shoe box. Upon the really befuddled WTF look from the guy opening it, she explained she was going to donate to a food bank in their honor. O – kay, couldn’t you have at least put that in an envelope or put a note in it – why an empty shoe box?? No one understood and the CEO made a big deal about stealing the empty shoe box so the guy would get something to take home.

    And then the next year, the gift she put in was a jar of gravy. No explanation given this time. (It wasn’t even a specialty gravy!) The person who got the gravy went home with it.

    3. Tinkerbell*

      Picture this: a small, rather stuffy government-adjacent tech company. $20 limit for a white elephant swap. All middle-aged guys. One of the presents turns out to be… a dollar store type vase covered in bedazzled black jewels spelling out “PIMP.”

  25. Lorna*

    At my Mum’s old job the CEO’s daughter was allowed to pick the holiday presents for the whole staff one year. The women received stick on glittery earrings and the men got Bob the Builder stickers. The CEO’s daughter was 4 and her father thought it was the most adorable idea ever.
    In his defense, the employees did get their Christmas bonus as well.

    2. SimonTheGreyWarden*

      TBH I’d rather get the stick-on earrings than some of the gifts I’ve gotten from jobs (sure! I would love one of the college branded water bottles we hand out to incoming freshman as my christmas gift two years in a row, thanks!)

      1. MigraineMonth*

        As one of those peculiar, bizarre and downright strange women who never got their ears pierced, they would work better for me than actual earrings!

    3. alle*

      Not totally the same, but my former boss let her kids pick out the color scheme when the office was repainted and refurbished. Everything ended up several lovely shades of baby blue and turquoise.

    4. Tinkerbell*

      This sounds like the best of all worlds, honestly – kids get to have fun, the boss gets to say “I got you something!” and the employees get their appreciation mostly in cash :-D

  26. Mags*

    My coworker Donovan did a lot of art as a hobby, including oil painting and life drawing. As a joke one year, for our White Elephant party, he put in an oil painting he had done of his mother in the style of Napoleon. He put a note on the back stating something like “can be swapped for $25 Starbucks gift card”, but the person who ended up with it wanted the painting and wouldn’t give it back! That oil painting hung in the guy’s office for the rest of his time at my company. I can’t imagine taking it to a new company and having to explain that it’s an ex-coworker’s mother.

      2. Moonlight Elantra*

        Imagine a new coworker entering your office and asking about the painting. You respond “Oh, it’s Donovan’s mom” and offer absolutely no additional context. You can’t put a price tag on awkwardness like that!

        1. KateM*

          You don’t really have to, do you? Maybe it was just a model. You don’t exhibit a Mona Lisa and explain each time your personal relationship to the model.

      3. UKDancer*

        Me too. I mean if it’s a good painting or something you enjoy looking at, then it doesn’t matter whose mother it is. It’s a picture that gives the owner pleasure. If he takes it to his new company and someone asks who it is, just say “I don’t know the model but the artist was a colleague of mine and I liked it.”

  27. Rosie*

    The year Borat came out I worked in a small office with only one male colleague. Guess what he got from his secret santa!!

      1. Rosie*

        The gift was the green mankini the movie made infamous. We were all quite drunk by the time he opened it so we all thought it was hysterical. A fair few of the other gifts had also been tasteless and stupid, which everyone else took in the spirit meant, but he went purple with rage which he tried and failed to conceal, which only made it funnier. Considering what a sexist jackass he was normally I had no sympathy whatsoever.

      2. BuildMeUp*

        I’m assuming it’s the bathing suit Borat wears in the movie, which is basically a thong on the bottom with suspender straps that go over the shoulders.

  28. ashie*

    The Executive Director of our small-ish nonprofit was a Shopping Channel fanatic. One year she gave every single employee got a pack of those flocked “huggable” hangers as a holiday gift. Weird gift, but super useful!

    1. JustaTech*

      Not at all where I was expecting that story to go!
      One of my aunts was addicted to TV shopping (she eventually got better) and wow some of that stuff is … questionable.

      Glad you got something useful!

    3. The OG Sleepless*

      Once again I’m reminded of my MIL. Her house was full of weird Home Shopping Channel stuff by the end of her life. I have to say, though, those flocked hangers were pretty nice.

  29. KK*

    I was part of a Secret Santa gift exchange of about 40-50 ppl in my finance group. It was 2 wks long. We drew names that had your likes, dislikes & allergies. The idea was that for 2 wks you could leave anon notes and token gifts & drop hints to your recipient (not required thought) as to who you might be & reveal yourself after the 2 wks with your $25 max value gift. I left my recipient gum, a company logo pen, $5 coffee GC, a bag of Cheetos every other day or so. On reveal day, I gave them a $25GC to their fave restaurant listed.

    Who ever drew me did nothing. I got no token gifts, notes, hints, NADA. On reveal day, that person was not in the office that day. They DID leave me a gift: a got caramel dipped apples that were a month expired.

    This item was SPECIFICALLY on my dislikes list (were they confused??)

    I let the organizer know; not wanting anyone to action anything, just to be aware of the slight. And I emailed my gift-giver and told them it’s not in the spirit of Christmas or considerate gift giving to give rotten ass fruit.

    Am I a thoughtless recipient? Maybe so. I’ll take the flogging for that.

    1. Zona the Great*

      Perhaps you were but you did the world a favor by addressing such thoughtlessness. If “it’s the thought that counts” is to be taken literally, there was zero, and perhaps negative amounts of thought behind that gift. My father gives me gifts he found on the ground or in the broken-and-busted bin and doesn’t understand why I’m so unappreciative.

      1. ferrina*

        If “it’s the thought that counts” is to be taken literally, there was zero, and perhaps negative amounts of thought behind that gift.

        Yes! I hate it when people claim “the thought counted” when there were clearly no thoughts about the recipient. That works for small children and people that genuinely tried their best, but there are some people that put in no effort or try their worst, and those people should also have their thoughts counted…. against them.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Yeah, when you try to take your friend to their favorite restaurant but the car breaks down partway and you can’t get there, you should get credit for your intention before outside circumstances thwarted you because you’re trying your best.

          When you try to take your friend to your favorite restaurant but detour on the way there to get their help with some stuff, then you run out of gas and need your friend to pay for it, and by the time you make it to the restaurant it’s closed, you only deserve as much credit as you gave consideration to your friend: less than none.

            1. Zona the Great*

              hahhaa I thought to myself, “Oh MM has been burned before”. I have too. I will no longer do anything where I’m captive so I don’t ride with people to the event, party, meeting, what-have-you.

          2. Chirpy*

            I see we appear to have a friend in common….

            Mine took me out for my birthday. To a restaurant she chose, because I’d get a free birthday meal from the restaurant. I had to pay for my own soda and show my ID to get it. She also very regularly said “let’s hang out” only to insist we go do her errands, which once included driving two towns over to pick up a free wheelchair. Which she did not need.

        3. Irish Teacher.*

          Yeah, “it’s the thought that counts” should apply to things like somebody who is really struggling financially who gives a $5 gift in a situation where others are giving gifts that cost $20 or $30 or $50 or to stuff like the jar of mold which was useless and weird but came from a really sweet place, not to people giving something literally gone off.

      2. Cafe au Lait*

        Yes, “it’s the thought that counts” only works when you give the recipient something in the area they like but not exactly what they would’ve preferred.

        My MIL knows I like to read mysteries. My preference is cozy mysteries that aren’t angsty. Last Christmas she bought me a psychological thriller. Not my preference AT ALL. Based off the blurb on the back I can see where she thought I’d like it.

        1. Retirednow*

          To the OP I would’ve said something as well. I don’t participate anymore, but an online group I’m a member of a secret Santa every year that is organized by someone who loves doing it.

          There are a lot of rules around value, etc. and you have to fill out a questionnaire about your likes and dislikes to participate.

          There is a fund from the company that sponsors the group that if someone doesn’t get anything from their secret Santa they step in.

        2. KateM*

          IMO “the thought counts” also if you get someone something that you yourself like without giving a thought about if the receiver would like it or has any use for it. It’s just that – as ferrina said upthread – in this case your thoughts or more like your thoughtlessness counts *against* you.

  30. WesternWonder*

    Early in my career I worked in government, in a department under an elected official, although my department rarely saw them because there were other departments under them that got a lot more press and public attention. My department’s relationship with that official was pretty poor, as sh readily admitted that she didn’t know we existed before we got elected, and was eager to cut long-standing budget items of ours for short term gains. So relations with this person were not good, but we made our way to the annual Christmas party to try to foster some goodwill. One year we did a white elephant gift exchange with all the departments, and while most everyone brought pretty tame mugs and gift cards, someone who decided to bring in a joke gift, presumably because they were anonymous. I live in a part of the US where you can get old-timey western portraits taken. The gifter had taken an old timey, lightly boudoir-ish photo of a madam and a cowboy in a saloon and photoshopped the elected official’s head on the madam and her male second in command’s head on the cowboy. I felt incredibly tense as this gift was opened and revealed, but it turns out the elected official thought this was truly HILARIOUS! She insisted on passing the photograph to everyone in the room, circulating it throughout the whole party. People kept putting it down somewhere but then she would pick it up and start showing it to people or asking them to pass it around again. To this day I have no idea if this was from someone who knew her well and knew he would like it, or if this was meant to mock her and failed spectacularly. But it certainly was the talk of the party.

    1. Katydid*

      I have mentioned before being a hall director at a small college, but apparently after I left for a new role – a picture of me was turned into one of those motivational style posters and essentially said “What would Katy do?” and was given at the gift exchange. I got many texts and photos of it and thought it was hilarious.

  31. JustaTech*

    I’ve shared my While Elephant gone wrong story, so here’s the tale of “The Coworker who Gifted”.

    I had a coworker who was, I’ll be honest, not my favorite coworker (very clearly didn’t want to be there, unsafely messy in the lab) but he wasn’t a bad person at all. Just annoying.
    I don’t know if he knew he was annoying, or if he didn’t quite understand our team’s lack of holiday gift giving, or if it was his way of saying “thank you” for eating fully half of all the baked goods my office mate and I brought into the office, but two years in a row he gave small-ish gifts to me and my officemate.
    One year I got a pair of meat mallets (he thought they were for lobsters?) which was weird, but the next year he gave me a Vogue knitting book of colorwork patterns. That actually made sense because he’d spent most of the year asking me for advice about knitting (he’d just taken it up as a hobby) and then completely ignoring my suggestions (ie, buy new yarn, don’t rip apart an existing store-bought sweater).
    My officemate got a pair of ashtrays that he thought were appetizer dishes (they were not) and something else almost but not quite right (I don’t remember what exactly).

    The whole thing was odd because 1) our team didn’t do holiday gifts at all hard stop (maybe homemade foods) and 2) he’d obviously put some thought into what he was getting us (but it still missed the mark).

    1. Moose*

      The actual gifts are funny but I’m sorry. This man had to be told to buy yarn?? And not take a store bought swearer apart?? What????

      1. Rocket Raccoon*

        People sometimes save money by buying sweaters made of nice yarn at the thrift store, unraveling them, and making something else. Technically this can get you nice yarn at cheap-yarn prices, but it takes a level of skill that a beginner wouldn’t have. For a beginner it’s a recipe for frustration and disappointment.

        1. JustaTech*

          Yeah, no, he wanted to make a striped sweater because the one he found at Macy’s was a women’s sweater. So he was going to have his mother-in-law pull it apart for him. Thinking about it now that sweater probably had side seams!
          This was after I told him that if he wanted horizontal stripes he just needed to buy two colors of yarn and self-striping yarn was probably not going to give him the results he wanted (especially as a novice knitter with inconsistent gauge).
          I also showed him a friendly, reasonably-priced yarn shop on his bus route home as a place to buy yarn, but he was determined to buy it online, without any understanding of weight.

        2. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Yeah, I’ve ripped out a couple of things I knit as a beginner and reknit them better when I was more experienced, and even ripping out the things I’d made was hard work.

        3. Another Kristin*

          Yeah, and it only really works if it’s a high-end sweater to begin with where the pieces are knit to size then seamed together. Cheaper sweaters are cut out of pre-knit fabric, if you try to unravel them you’ll just get endless 2m lengths of yarn and it will NOT BE WORTH IT.

        1. JustaTech*

          Oh no, his mother-in-law was going to do the ripping. But the sweater was from Macy’s so it probably had side seams, so I don’t think it happened.

      3. Frank Doyle*

        That’s . . . not that crazy. Yarn is expensive, especially natural fibers. If you can find a 100% wool sweater at a thrift store, and it doesn’t have seams at the sides, it’s going to be MUCH cheaper than buying wool yarn. (Also unravelling a sweater is EXTREMELY SATISFYING.) I don’t knit, but I’ve done it to obtain wool yarn to make homemade dryer balls.

        1. Dahlia*

          Yeah, my mom used to do that. She’d get a bunch of sweaters for like 5 bucks total and take them apart to make blankets out of them.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          Were you making the dryer balls doing something like felting or wrapping in a ball? In that case, the condition of the yarn (whether it’s really kinked or fraying) doesn’t matter much (and fraying is probably better for felting).

          My brief foray into knitting ended with me accidentally splitting the yarn multiple times, and that was with brand-new yarn. I think learning to knit using fraying, splitting, and kinked yarn would be extremely frustrating.

          (I agree that unravelling can be very satisfying, though.)

  32. McThrill*

    We had a white elephant exchange at the office christmas party (very reasonable rules, gifts must be less than $10, no gift cards, no cash, used or joke items encouraged) that had always gone well. My co-worker decided that he was going to make a joke gift this year, and made a “build your own pet rock!” set – a box containing a rock and a piece of paper that said googly eyes, paint, and glue were not included. It wasn’t out of line with other joke gifts that had been given in the past, and while humor is subjective it would have gotten at least a chuckle if one of our coworkers had drawn it. However, this year the children present were also allowed to participate, and the box with only a rock in it was drawn by a six-year-old girl who immediately burst into tears. My co-worker felt so bad that he stole it from her when it was his turn, and ended up going home with his own rock.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I could see that going either way. Some kids love rocks!

      (I recently went to a gem and mineral show. Definitely some gung-ho children there. Enthusiastic but well-behaved seemed to be the general type.)

    2. One Duck In A Row*

      It occurs to me that in the right context an actual build your own pet rock kit could be a great gift! Or even a fun activity at a kid’s birthday party. Cool rock, all sorts of items that could be used to decorate it/turn it into a little creature, some glue and scissors, etc. This would actually be a great way to get rid of leftover art supplies – fabric scraps too small to use for other projects, random beads, pipecleaners, etc. Now I’m sad I didn’t think of this as a birthday party activity when my kid was younger.

      1. McThrill*

        It was momentarily upsetting but her parents handled it with grace and she got to pick a new gift soon enough.

    4. Wendy Darling*

      My FAMILY did a white elephant gift exchange for years with a $20 limit where the gifts were 50-50 pet rock-level ridiculous vs something someone would actually want. And then one year my idiot relatives decided, without telling the people with no kids in advance, to let the little kids participate.

      So this is a bunch of 30+ adults and then four kids under 5 doing a white elephant that includes, like, scratchoff lottery cards, novelty socks, Starbucks gift cards, and bottles of booze.

      One of the little kids opened a novelty gumball-dispenser shaped thing that dispensed M&Ms and was DELIGHTED… and then his own grownass adult uncle stole it from him. He was gutted. Everyone is like, it’s fine, you get to open another gift! So he opens another gift and gets a set of scented candles.

      So of course the kid starts to cry. His parents basically told him to suck it up, the uncle who stole the candy from him did not care, and all the older adults and I were furious. My aunt, the kid’s grandmother, ended up conspiring with multiple people to steal a set of scratchoff cards and some candy enough for them to be out of play and then giving them to the kid. So he ended up with a bunch of chocolate and won like $15 playing scratchers.

      And that was the last year we did white elephant in my family.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I will never again participate in any game that involves stealing presents from children. I don’t think it’s fun to have something you like taken away from you as an adult, with years of practice in managing disappointment. I think that adults have a responsibility to teach kids about the unfairness that already exists in the world, not to personally make a child’s life less fair.

        1. Grenelda Thurber*

          I’m confused – why anyone would ever think a white elephant gift swap that includes grownups *and* small children would be fun for either group.

          1. amoeba*

            I mean, if you know in advance, I can think of a few things that would go down with both groups! Like, food/drinks for once (like the M&M dispenser), but also funny gadgets, lego sets (those go down great with a lot of adults!), stuffed animals… but yeah, I’d definitely chose *very* different things if I knew there would be kids participating. And also, no, you don’t steal the thing the kid is super excited about from them as a grown adult!

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I don’t think there should be child-only white elephant gift swaps (or Yankee auctions, or other stealing-based games) either. I participated in one in elementary school, and I still remember the classmate who unwrapped an incredibly cool present (a robot or something) being absolutely heartbroken when it was stolen and he ended up going home with… a leaky pen.

  33. Shellfish Constable*

    The best part of this thread might be the “curses” folks are doling out on behalf of those who received bad gifts:

    *”[May he] continuously step barefoot on LEGO bricks”
    *”May every beverage they consume be lukewarm and decaffeinated for the first of eternity”
    *May their sheets always be too warm and slightly damp”
    *May their pinkie toe find every hard and jutting surface and may their shoes offer no protection”
    *”May she be left with only the last square of toilet paper that you can’t pull off the roll without ripping it to shreds every time she goes to the bathroom”

    I love it! My department is [fortunately] having neither a gift exchange nor a holiday party this year, so I consider this ^^^ my own delightful holiday gift. Keep ’em coming, please!

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Haha, the LEGO one was mine and I definitely didn’t come up with it. But I love the other ones too.

      1. Worldwalker*

        There are worse things to step on than Lego bricks: supports from 3d printing. I am an adult fan of Lego and my day job is as a 3d printing project manager, and I have two cats, so I have plenty of experience with both. I’ve never had to pull a Lego brick out of my foot with tweezers.

        1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

          I once responded somewhat smugly to my brother-in-law’s tale of stepping on one of his son’s Legos that this was something I didn’t have to worry about as someone without kids. Well, don’t know you know the very next day was “little miss smug steps on a plug” day for me. Ouch!

          1. froodle*

            “little miss smug steps on a plug”

            wow that expanded Little Miss and Mister Men universe is wild, huh?

        2. Strive to Excel*

          I did that with the little metal cap of a christmas tree ornament. You know the things that have the hoop and the prongs in them that you put in glass balls & similar? Yeah. I had to improvise a bandage with cotton & duct tape because bandaids don’t stick to the sole of the foot very well.

        3. Seeking Second Childhood*

          Who else here is old enough to have stepped on jacks?

          Who else here is nerdy enough to have stepped on d4 dice?

          Owwww.

      1. Skeptic53*

        I woke up one morning hung over after a party and my college roommate said “You look like a bucket full of a**holes, with all the pretty ones taken out”. Best insult I ever got

        2. froodle*

          I want you to know I literally laughed out loud reading this. real undignified pffffffftttthahahah noise too

        4. Tinkerbell*

          A phrase from a coworker of a friend: “It could be raining [slang for female genitalia] but I’d still look up and catch a dick.”

  34. KTbrd*

    I worked (and still do seasonally) at a semi-upscale department store. Every year the company gives a gift to all employees– I’ve received a Swell-esque water bottle, Stanley cup-eque vessel, lunch boxes, blanket– all with the company logo, of course. A few years they’ve just done sweets/popcorn or included a treat with the main gift, too. But my second year there, they had just published a book about the company’s history…and that was the gift. People were livid! I was mildly interested (though I’ve still never read it!), but most egregious to me was at my store at least, when handing them out the managers made a big deal about “something special inside” and Alison, it was a simple paper bookmark. It would be one thing if it had been leather or metal or even laminated, but nope, just a cardstock-weight bookmark. I’ve enjoyed the other company gifts but that one missed the mark. If they’d just given us a bar of chocolate with it I’d have been so much happier!

    1. Another Kristin*

      The book thing happened to a friend of mine, except it was some awful book of leadership advice written by the CEO of the company she worked out! If a business book ever hits the best seller list, you can bet that the author made their company buy like 10,000 copies as “gifts”.

      1. KTbrd*

        This one is at least (supposedly) interesting–I still haven’t read it but I lent it to a newer co-worker who didn’t get a free copy and we were talking about some of the crazier stories the other night!

    2. Artemesia*

      I wanted a good pen — preferably a fountain pen, but a nice ballpoint would be cool also. I wanted one throughout my career and it is the type of thing often given as a gift, an appreciation etc. But nah.. One year I got a narrow long box at an award dinner and I thought, finally. But nah. It was a metal bookmark. I don’t think many people use book marks – except the random envelope, dollar bill, gum wrapper etc — but a METAL bookmark? Really. Even at retirement, no pen for me.

  35. HailRobonia*

    At our work yankee swap yesterday the surprise hit gift was a frame photo of our Big Boss (along with a $20 gift card).

    The weirdest gift was a jigsaw puzzle called “Pooping Puppies” – a big picture of dogs going their business. It was 1000 pieces unfortunately – if it were 100-300 pieces I would have taken it and regifted it to my dog-loving niece.

    1. Koala*

      A surprising number of cultures believe that if you watch a dog poop you will get pinkeye or a stye. So anyway, now everyone at your job is going to come down with pinkeye.

  36. CzechMate*

    Not so much what the gift *was* so much as how it was given. I worked for a well-known, highly visible nonprofit (one where the CEO and COO frequently met with elected officials and state representatives). The COO was an extremely intelligent woman, the consummate professional, organized and well-liked all across the state. She typically didn’t share much about her home life, but she had recently taken up glass blowing as a hobby, so one year she brought two hand-blown ball ornaments as gifts for the office holiday party gift exchange. They were exquisitely made and very beautiful.

    COO also brought her husband “Fergus.” Fergus was COO’s complete opposite: loud, obnoxious, unemployed but convinced of his own brilliance. He put out the Christmas ornaments as if he himself had made them and proclaimed to everyone that they were “CHRISTMAS BALLS.” You can make a joke like that at a company party *maybe* once or twice, but he just. kept. saying. it. Allllll night. “Hey, you check out my balls?” “We got some hard balls here for one lucky taker.” “[COO] brings the class AND the balls.” “We’ve got some balls.” And so on. COO smiled vaguely the whole time, but she looked like she was internally cringing the whole time.

    A few months later, I asked COO how her husband Fergus was doing. She said they were getting divorced.

    1. Jay (no, the other one)*

      My husband is a glassblower and makes lovely ornaments. I am now profoundly grateful that he calls them “ornaments.”

    3. Emily of New Moon*

      That kind of humor was hilarious in that famous Christmas skit on SNL with Alec Baldwin, but not appropriate at a work party.

    5. amoeba*

      Hah, was he by any chance German in origin? We do call them “Kugeln”, which would literally translate to “balls”, so that sounds like a mistake we’d make! (There is no weird connotation in German though, as balls called “eggs” instead here…)

  37. wanderingwatson*

    In my first professional job out of college, the engineering firm I worked for held a white elephant gift exchange. One person decided to wrap a box of diapers for female dogs in heat.

    The person who received it did not own a dog. Unsurprisingly, no one chose to steal this gift.

  38. Marie Antoin-not*

    This was 2014 or 2015. I arrived early at the office to a gift and a card at my desk. I opened up the card – something about getting healthy in the new year. The gift was a bento style lunch box and a book of recipes but the kicker was each portion of the lunch box was a color to denote what goes where – green for vegetables, red for protein, an itty bitty container for fats and oils, and the recipe book was from the same brand, telling people how to to stick to this great portion control diet by making your own meals that fit in these itty bitty cups and boxes. I thought I was the only person in the office and I actually yelled, “WHAT THE HECK I’M PREGNANT NOT FAT!” Luckily a colleague in the cubicle farm was also there and explained that it wasn’t personal, it was corporate gifts, everyone got one, even her (couture fashion model build), and she agreed it sucked on so many levels but at least it wasn’t personal. It took me awhile to calm down. I was due in late May or early June.*

    I mention it being 2014 2015 because of the influence of health care costs on corporations then and also because I would like to think companies have evolved since then but probably not. *yes I ended up with 2 kids about 13 months apart I almost literally didn’t know what year it was until 2019 and then the pandemic happened. Have mercy.

    1. Tech Industry Refugee*

      I would actually enjoy that gift, but as a fellow woman I can completely understand the hormonal anger making it 100x worse!

    2. ferrina*

      I almost literally didn’t know what year it was until 2019

      This is so real. Parenting for littles took a toll on my brain, and unimportant things like the year leaked out.

      1. Artemesia*

        Really? A little over preachy – but bento boxes are cool and handy — I’d have loved to get one instead of the corporate crap we usually got.

        1. Marie Antoin-not*

          I mean I like cute little lunch boxes but sometimes I mix protein and vegetables and fats and dressing together and call it a chicken salad, where does that go?!

          It was not a great gift.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          The bento boxes were pretty cool. The recipe book “telling people how to to stick to this great portion control diet” was not.

          For me, there’s a difference between offering (fresh fruit and cut veggies in break rooms, on-site gyms, flavored water) and telling (not allowing employees to bring in soda, nutritionists who won’t take “no” for an answer, giving employees books telling them to follow a particular diet). The latter is overstepping when it comes to food, IMO.

      2. Marie Antoin-not*

        Agreed! Or for anyone with disordered eating or related issues! That’s why I hope companies don’t do this anymore!

  39. Riley*

    I feel like these requests for “worst of” or stories about debacles contribute to the atmosphere that yesterday’s Overnight Coworker OP called out. When you put out calls for negativity (and subsequently collect the most negative stories and make them their own post), you create an environment that encourages jumping to the worst conclusions. Multiple OPs have noted this in their updates.

    2. Strive to Excel*

      1. People don’t write into workplace advice blogs about nice normal workplaces that are functioning well.

      2. Preparing for the worst while hoping for the best is generally a sound strategy.

      3. Alison posts the weirdest and wildest, which are sometimes negative but not always so. The jar of mold story above is at worst about someone mildly clueless but overall is rather sweet and funny.

    3. Polly Anna’s evil twin Molly Hannah*

      There was Good News Friday for a while but to be fair a lot of the stories were the same. Guess what! I got a raise or a new job, thanks to this website! There are a million ways things can go hilariously wrong.

    4. Dinwar*

      Agreed. I’d like to hear “Best Of” stories. “Worst Of” generates more traffic, but ‘Best Of” is better for our mental health.

      I remember a project manager getting annoyed that field workers never got to participate in holiday parties a while back. We’re in the field doing work, and can’t stop to travel to the office for a day. So he took us out for a really nice dinner–us, the contractors working with us, it was something like 15 people. Paid for by the company. It started something of a tradition. Our field office holiday dinner is tonight, in fact. They looked at us funny when we got to the restaurant, because we went straight from work (one guy was still in his high-vis vest), but the staff was friendly, especially when they saw how much we were going to spend that night!

    5. Ginger Cat Lady*

      I have no trouble seeing humor in these stories. Maybe try looking at them through that lens if you are wishing for “positivity” at all times and in all situations.
      But sometimes things are not all Pollyanna and it’s okay to talk about them.

      1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        Also, we can commiserate and learn from others’ experiences- at one time, I had a hellacious job and I’d read this blog to put that job into perspective: good and bad. Being able to level set through seeing other people’s good and bad experiences allowed me to evaluate how bad the job was, what I was willing to tolerate and what I wasn’t, etc. I find the fanfic in the comments to be a bit much sometimes, but over all, Allison’s advice is pretty solid and the commentators have interesting takes that make me rethink situations outside of my own perspective.

    6. Ask a Manager* Post author

      My intent with round-ups like this is usually for them to be funny, not predominantly negative (and most of the stories I choose for the resulting compilations are the funny ones) but I can make that clearer with future titles.

    7. Be Gneiss*

      I think there’s a huge difference between commenters jumping to the conclusion that someone is an alcoholic because they host a happy hour twice a month, and commentors telling the story about the time everyone in the office accidentally brought socks to the gift exchange.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Agreed, and “worst” is negative, but “weird” does not necessarily mean negative! Some of the most fun and memorable office gift stories are about weird gifts. (Behold the jar of mould mentioned above, which sort of fits into both categories.)

        1. The Other Katie*

          There was also the one about the priest and nuns and the fiercely-contested pair of lightly used running shoes. Weird isn’t negative – often the weird stories are also the most wholesome.

        2. MigraineMonth*

          A jar of mold is objectively both one of the worst and weirdest gifts to receive–but the story of receiving it is incredibly sweet and positive! There are stories here about people righting wrongs and standing up to injustice, grown adults playing silly games, and the broad diversity of human thought processes.

          I’m having a ball.

  40. Dinwar*

    Not necessarily a holiday gift, but the traditional gift for birthdays in our field office is “whatever we can grab.” We’re talking ketchup packets, zip ties, a Ziplock bag, maybe a half-used pen, paper clips, just whatever. We’ll also throw in a gift card, but you’ve got to dig through some stuff to find it.

    2. ghost_cat*

      We did something similar – you had to provide something from your desk. We had old marketing merch, half-filled coffee loyalty cards, sushi fish soy sauce packets etc. One person who recently delivered a key strategy, put on bright red lipstick & kissed the front page of a hard copy of the strategy & then autographed it.

  41. WeirdChemist*

    For a secret Santa at an old job, we all put down a list of (cheap) items we would like to receive. The woman whose name I drew only wrote down “olives”. So, olives I got her. This was a min wage retail job, so they were just some grocery store jarred olives, nothing fancy, but she seemed happy with her gift? Everyone else at the gift exchange was absolutely baffled though lol

    1. Rocket Raccoon*

      My kids *love* olives and when they were little our budget was tight enough that olives were a treat – especially anything fancier than tinned black olives.

      It wouldn’t have occurred to me to put olives down as something I wanted but I would have been stupid happy to get some!

      1. WeirdChemist*

        Iirc, it was a jar of green olives and a jar of Kalamata olives. Not fancy, but definitely better than canned!

        I come from a olive-obsessed family, and I am so looking forward to all the olives I’ll get to eat when I’m home for Christmas :)

      2. pally*

        yeah- a former co-worker would pull out huge bottles of olives and enjoy a whole bunch of them at a sitting. I’m not much of an olive person myself, but I’m glad co-worker enjoyed her olives.

    2. Santa drives an Astrovan*

      My mother loves salty, vinegary foods, and always has. She used to get olives and pickles in her stocking and Easter baskets as a child, and probably would have requested them in a secret Santa exchange, had she participated in one.

    3. Csethiro Ceredin*

      My mum loves olives, and when I was a child my dad and I wrapped a jar of olives in creative ways every year (to look like a pill, or a stick of dynamite, or a rocket). It got more ornate over time and I think the last year (dachshund) involved both soldering and papier mache.

    4. froodle*

      I worked with a guy who also got a big jar of olives in the secret Santa and was absolutely made up with them. I’m assuming whoever his gift giver was knew him very well because “give Jamie the IT guy a 2kg thing of olives” wouldn’t have been in my top twenty picks for him…

    5. iglwif*

      Well I would be extremely happy with that gift! I looooove olives but I rarely buy them because no one else in my household will eat them.

    6. Grilledcheeser*

      When i was a teenager, and very very fond of green olives, my older brother told me he had a fantastic christmas gift for me. When my friends came over to the house, he would take them to his room to show off his gift. I would hear “rumble rumble” *laughing* “rumble rumble”. Christmas morning finally came, and wrapped up under the tree is a gallon glass jar of green olives that he’d been rolling out from under his bed to show my friends – warehouse stores had just made their first appearance in our state, and he’d made a trip to check it out & bought it for me. Yup, it was a fantastic Christmas!

  42. Jane*

    Years ago, at a retail job, I signed up for the Secret Santa exchange just for the hell of it. The person who got me was someone I don’t think I’d ever worked a shift with, and they gave me a scented candle (fine) and a bunch of lottery scratchers that had already been scratched (trash? trash!).

  43. Anonsy*

    A coworker in a white elephant exchange got a child’s microphone and lyrics to a Christmas song that had been rewritten by the giver to be in line with what the department did. (Think instead of “Oh Holy Night, The Stars are Brightly Shining…” it was “Oh Department Y, our work forever impacts…”). They expected the receiver to sing it for the group. It was 2 pages of lyrics.

    To note, the white elephant exchange was just normal if quirky items under $20. Other people got items like water bottles or novelty mugs.

  44. HushedGalaxy*

    After I graduated from college I worked in manufacturing team – our department was about 14 people. We had four people who worked weekends Friday to Monday (including me and two people who started six months after me in November) and the other 10 worked weekdays Monday to Thursday.

    The first year we didn’t seem to do anything in December as a team.

    The second Christmas I was there I mentioned “hey we didn’t do anything as a team last year, it’d be fun to do a department Secret Santa this year.” and one of the people on the weekday shift said “What do you mean? We DID do one of those last year.”

    Apparently they left off everyone in the weekend shift. I pointed that out. She said something to the effect “Oh everyone on the weekend shift was so new on the job last year we didn’t think to include them since we didn’t know anybody.” She and I had started working there the same day.

  45. Three cats in a trenchcoat*

    Our office manager imposed a secret santa by fiat last year, and it was honestly a stunning power move. She had put up a sign up list in the breakroom, and must have been disappointed by the lack of sign ups, because she appeared at a staff meeting with a pre-filled jar of names. She handed it to the chair of the department to chose his secret santa, and then once he’d done it, everyone else felt like they needed to.

    It ended up being a very nice gift exchange where everyone picked up very nice reasonably thoughtful gifts in the price range, which is more impressive when you consider how it got started.

  46. Jay (no, the other one)*

    Two successive bosses, two successive years, best and worst Doctor’s Day* gifts ever.

    The best: a bobblehead of – me! It’s based on my work ID picture, it’s identifiably me, and it’s hilarious. It was my Zoom avatar for a while. What made it even better was that they were sent to our homes and the company that made the dolls mixed up the addresses so the first thing I received was an Email of my boss holding my bobblehead. I of course responded with a picture of me holding his bobblehead. He was an awesome boss and I don’t think anyone was happy when he accepted a promotion. We were even less happy after we’d started working with his replacement.

    The next year for Doctor’s Day I received a walnut box with a glass top engraved with my name and the year. It had compartments that were clearly designed for a specific purpose and I couldn’t figure it out. My husband finally figured out that it was for storing and displaying wristwatches. It had nine compartments. I have one watch. It’s an Apple watch, so when I’m not wearing it I put it on a charger. The boss, of course, is a watch aficionado and so assumed EVERYONE would want one. Spoiler: nobody did, and I had to explain to one of my colleagues what it was. And then I threw it out. I couldn’t even donate it because of the engraving.

    1. Irish Teacher.*

      Yeah, I have…two watches, I think. I have a spare for when mine needs a new battery or stops working but generally, my watch only leaves my wrist when I shower.

    2. UKDancer*

      Yeah when my grandfather died we had to work out what the box with the compartments was for when we were going through his things. None of us had enough watches or wanted it. So we put it on Ebay and it actually went quite fast as surprisingly some people obviously do want a watch box. I can’t remember what it fetched but it was a fair amount.

    3. Missa Brevis*

      NINE? Nine hypothetical watches?

      I have two watches purely because I like to coordinate my accessories so I have one in goldstone and one in silvertone (with rosy/copper accents, so it conveniently goes with even more of my jewelry). Maybe I’ll get a third one if I find a nice one in an aged bronze finish, but then I’ll be set for life.

  47. SoftFundedAcademic*

    Years ago, one researcher brought “Do-It-Yourself Coffins for Pets and People” for the white elephant gift exchange. I thought it was pretty funny, but the person who ended up with it was NOT amused. (There tended to be a divide in the office between those who did more gag/joke gifts and those who wanted something “nice.”)

    1. AnotherOne*

      I read this a DIY coffin kit and was thinking- did the kit come with all the wood? that would be a pretty big kit if you could make a coffin for a person?

      just taking it totally serious.

  48. ScentFree*

    Somehow a coworker has gotten it into her head that I love smelly lotions, while in reality I don’t wear perfume, and use Ivory soap, cocoa butter lotion, and scent/dye-free laundry detergent because smells really bother my husband. I know I should have told her at the start but we’ve been working together for 2 decades now and it’s way too late. (And, to be fair, the husband sensitivity thing has gotten worse as he’s gotten older, so it’s been a combo of her upping her scent game and him getting less able to deal.)

    1. Dr. Vibrissae*

      Perhaps you could break it to her like it is a health issue? “I know you usually give me lotions, but Mr. ScentFree has recently developed a terrible reaction to some scented items, so I’ve stopped using them for his health.” You can even play it as a isn’t this just one of those disappointing things that happens sort of event.

    2. RetiredAcademicLibrarian*

      Since his sensitivity has gotten worse, I think you could frame it to your coworker that your husband can no longer tolerate strong scents, so you need to change your lotions to unscented varieties.

  49. Charlotte Lucas*

    Best gift ever. I worked for The Disney Store back in the 90s. At that time, all permanent employees (FT and PT) received 2 tickets to any park twice a year (once in December and once in the summer). There was no expiration on the tickets. The December tickets came with a holiday card designed specifically for employees.

    I was able to travel to Florida and visit Disney World for 3 days with my boyfriend, something we would not have been able to do otherwise.

    I still have the cards, as Disney items created for employees are popular with collectors.

  50. Not Hanukkah Balls*

    I may have shared this story before, I can’t remember. My first year of grad school, my advisor gave all her advisees the same holiday gift. She and I had some tension, but mostly got along at that point, and had spent an entire semester traveling together to do presentations and collect data. She knew me well. She also knew, dear reader, that I’m an observant Jew and allergic to nuts.

    The gift given to all her advisees: a Christmas mug, with a Christmas koozie, Christmas socks, marshmallow treats (unkosher) and a bag of spiced mixed nuts. Happy Hanukkah to me, right?

    I still have the socks, they’re cozy. The rest got left in the student break room for others to take. I later learned how tone-deaf she is about all sorts of diversity in and around her research work; she turned out to be a pretty terrible person overall.

  51. Elle Woods*

    A former colleague brought a discarded straw dispenser from McDonald’s to the white elephant gift exchange one year. He happened upon it while out for a run and figured it’d make a good present for the exchange. The colleague who wound up getting it had a catering business on the side and was kind of excited to get it.

  52. Looper*

    My husband worked for a company that of course turned out to be a complete sh*t-show but we didn’t know that the first Christmas he was there so we went to the company holiday party. There was to he a white elephant gift exchange, limit was $25. Great! We do fun gift exchanges with friends all the time, our gifts are always a fun hit, we’ll make sure we keep things safe for work with a vintage, in box Bart Simpson chia pet and a Star Wars themed gift bag (this was a tech company, lots of SW fans) with also a vintage collectible SW salt & pepper shaker set. Cool stuff for such a small limit! We get to the party and the gift exchange starts. First gift: a brand new IPad. Next gift: $250 Amazon GC. Next gift: A 70″ LED TV. We are like wtf??? Apparently every year, the owner seeds the gift exchange with good stuff and then everyone else tries to keep up by spending hundreds of dollars. Someone opens the Bart Simpson and literally throws it to the ground while literally screaming “what $%&@* brought this garbage gift??”” It was so awful. I steal the Bart so this person can get another gift (they got an IPhone), my husband picked the gift i brought, and we left before it ended.

    Silver lining: my husband was headhunted by a client firm, where he has now been successful for many years, and he in turn headhunted the few good employees from old company before ending their contract with them and leaving the company in shambles. Lol!

    1. One Duck In A Row*

      1. What a mess
      2. OMG I need to go off and search for a Bart Simpson chia pet. Or really, any chia pet? I think my kid would get a kick out of that. (As would I, honestly. If I ever received that as a work gift I’d be over the moon.)

      1. JustaTech*

        The year someone brought a Bob Ross chia pet to the White Elephant it was a very popular item and my coworker was thrilled to grow it at her desk!

        1. CeeDoo*

          My aunt gave my sister that Bob Ross chia pet several years ago. Weird thing: we left it in the garage in the pile of “take to goodwill” that we never actually took to Goodwill. Then someone broke into our garage (I think it was kids wandering through garages in the night). The little boogers opened the Bob Ross chia pet! They didn’t steal it. They just opened the box and left it there.

      2. Looper*

        We ended up taking both of these gifts to a friend holiday party and they were big hits! To be fair, if everyone else got Ipads and I got a chia pet, I’d be bummed. But there is no way on this planet I’m buying a random coworker of my spouse a $400 TV!

      3. Worldwalker*

        I saw a display of chia pets this year that included Bob Ross (born to be a chia pets) and Sonic the Hedgehog (so incredibly not). But they definitely still exist.

      4. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

        In college, one of my dorm-mates got a Chia pet. I don’t remember which one, but I distinctly remember how allergic half of us were to whatever plant seeds are included and how miserable we were while it was growing.

        1. Missa Brevis*

          Chia seeds! The same kind we mix into smoothies and what not. The story of how they went from novelty to health food came up in a book I read recently, but I don’t recall it well enough to retell here.

    2. HonorBox*

      First, spending hundreds of dollars on a coworker’s gift. Nope. I like all of my coworkers but won’t be buying them something I wouldn’t be buying my wife, children or parents.

      Second, why on earth didn’t someone clue new hires in on this?

      While I can appreciate the fact that you and your husband picked/stole your own gifts to keep the peace, part of me would have let the jerk who complained about a garbage gift sit with it just because of their reaction.

      1. Looper*

        That was my suggestion, but he can play politics better than me lol! The whole thing was so gross: yes, why not clue in new hires? (Because it turned out the whole place was run like a cross between a fraternity and a military barracks.)

  53. CatLady*

    it’s been more than 20 years and I am STILL salty…
    Secret Santa time comes along where I (still) work.
    I bought a small artificial tree and festooned it with jewelry I made. The garland was hand beaded lanyards, the ornaments were hand made French hook earring. This took me weeks to make.
    I got a used paperback book in a plain brown lunch sack. How did I know the book was used? Dogeared pages and crusty fingerprints made by someone who apparently loved Cheetos while they read. *shudder*

  54. Pikachu*

    Years ago, a relative’s company made the theme of their holiday party exchange “As Seen on TV.” That meant any gifts had to have the red As Seen on TV logo. I think this was around the time of the Snuggie so the novelty factor was a lot bigger, but I’m sure there are still folks out there getting Ove-Gloves and Clappers and ShamWows for the holidays!

  55. MissAgatha*

    This wasn’t at work but a student organization I was part of in college. We did a White Elephant with a limit of $5 because, college students. A guy in the group had been in a farming accident over the summer that required a skin graft, so he had a silicone patch of some sort that he had been wearing on the wound under a glove. All semester. So he arrived at the party, asked the faculty advisor’s wife for some wrapping paper, and added his “gift” to the pile. After I opened it, trying not to burst into tears and/or vomit, he sheepishly told me he intended for one of the guys on the team to get end up with it, which strangely didn’t make me feel better. I still hope that he has not once in the past 20 years had dry socks.

  56. Jolly Holly*

    The Christmas before Covid was our last in-office holiday party/gift exchange type thing. Things had been off with my department for a while. Two managers “Todd” and “Margot” had been dating and then broke up, which made it very awkward. I was lucky not to be on either of their teams but it was still hard to get work done when they brought their break up into the office. The department director gave them each a warning and the war cooled down slightly for a few weeks.

    The holiday party rolls around with a Secret Santa gift exchange and I don’t know if Margot got Todd’s name by chance or if she tracked it down and traded with someone. The festivities shut down real fast when he unwrapped an enlarged, expensively framed sonogram with “DEAD BEAT DAD” engraved on a plaque on the bottom.

    Oh, and Todd and Margot were both married to other people who also worked there, just not in their departments. Most of us didn’t know that.

    Other memorable Secret Santa gifts from that catastrophe of a party:

    Someone gifted their sober coworker in recovery an expensive bottle of Port because “it’s the holidays”. And someone got a giant stuffed pickle; they collected stuffies and really loved pickles so their Secret Santa did a good job at least. When I say giant stuffed pickle I mean it took up the entire back seat of their SUV.

    2. JustaTech*

      Stuffed pickle – brilliant and hilarious.
      Port – super rude/ thoughtless.

      The sonogram – oh no ……

    3. ferrina*

      Wait, so everyone knew about the affair but most people didn’t know about the marriages? Wow, that’s just….something.

    5. WorkingRachel*

      Wait, was she actually pregnant? And was that actually when he found out? If so, that mic drop is both deeply cruel and hilarious.

  57. Zipperhead*

    Personally, I think the best White Elephant gifts are deeply weird, and many Secret Santa gifts should have at least a trace of weirdness about them.

    My go-to White Elephant gift (though I haven’t been to a White Elephant gift exchange in at least a decade) is a single coconut in a festive gift bag. The first time I gave that, the recipient got such a look of profound, head-twisting puzzlement, and it was so gratifying to see. :)

    The best Secret Santa gift I ever got was a large bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms, a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, and a very nice crowbar. I had asked for all three on the Secret Santa form, though the crowbar was included as a joke, and I’d requested other items that were far more sensible (books, comics, etc.), but the crowbar apparently spoke to the gift-giver in a way I hadn’t expected.

    2. Somehow I Manage*

      Something as unique as a crowbar would have forced my hand if I had you in the exchange too. That’s an awesome gift!

    3. curly sue*

      My teen is involved in a secret santa for a club at school, and their recipient put ‘Plutonium’ on their list as a joke. Little do they know we have a 3d printer, and my kid knows how to model molecules.

  58. Queen Ruby*

    Not exactly a gift-giving thing, but one year for Christmas, I received an envelope with my (misspelled) name on it. It was a bonus from the uber-wealthy owner of the company. Inside, I found a $20 bill, and 5 beat-up $1 bills. Most people got $200-$500 bonuses.
    Later I heard from his admin that he gave her a list of who should get $25 bonuses and told her the amount was intended to offend the recipients, because I guess we were the slackers in the company.

  59. DonutGarden*

    When I was in college I interned at a fancy architecture firm over winter break, and was invited to participate in their holiday white elephant book exchange. All the white elephants I’d previously done involved funny gag gifts, so I just assumed this would be similar. I ended up wrapping a stack of five well-worn Captain Underpants books from my parents’ “to donate” pile. Once the event began, it quickly became apparent that “book exchange” meant beautiful, high-quality coffee table books that were mostly related to architecture. The person who got stuck with Captain Underpants was very confused and I was too mortified to ever admit I was responsible.

    1. Slippers*

      I did something somewhat similar in that I brought a repurposed (unused) wedding shower gift of an informercial microwave pasta cooker to a white elephant that was most definitely not a gag gift type of white elephant. I wound up with the best gift in the exchange and told no one that I was the perpetrator of the Fasta Pasta.

      1. No Direct Reports*

        Have you mentioned the Fasta Pasta before? Because I read about it on AAM in some comment, thought “finally, a solution to my fancy-ish stove taking 20+ minutes to boil water”, and went on Amazon and bought one! It works exactly as I wanted it to!

        1. Tinkerbell*

          I just bought one too, based on your comment! I have two kids who LOVE pasta with butter and parmesan cheese but neither are willing to brave boiling it on the stove. This sounds perfect :-D

        2. Slippers*

          YES I have told this story before (I think I maybe also recommended it to someone who didn’t have the option to boil water somewhere?) and I am completely delighted that you purchased one!

    2. Emily of New Moon*

      Rule of thumb: never bring anything even remotely related to underwear to a work gift exchange.

      1. ferrina*

        To be fair, any collection of young reader’s books would have had the same effect at this party. Dogman or Cat Kid Comic Club wouldn’t have fared any better.

    3. Bureaucratte*

      This is literally the reason I declined to participate in a White Elephant that was “announced” only via a tab on the spreadsheet used to sign up to bring food to the party. The rules need to be so clearly spelled out and often are not!

  60. Ann O'Nemity*

    My previous organization’s white elephant gift exchange (aka Yankee Swap) was a true gamble—a festive roulette wheel of hilarity, disappointment, and mild outrage.

    Year one, I unwrapped a used, broken ice scraper for car windshields. Used. Broken. Later, I discovered this thoughtful offering came from a VP pulling in six figures. Uh, thanks?

    Year two, I landed a used, broken toy parrot. Apparently, this “gift” was a legendary relic, passed down like a cursed heirloom in the exchange for years.

    My final year was the pièce de résistance: an at-home waxing kit from the 1970s. I left it in my office when I quit.

    Predictably, the most popular gifts were always gift cards and booze—proven crowd-pleasers in the otherwise lawless chaos of the gift exchange.

    The Rules? Loosely Interpreted. The instructions suggested a $15 price point and encouraged “whimsical, funny gifts.” Most people interpreted this as an excuse to buy Starbucks cards or a bottle of bottom-shelf regret.

    Then there were the trash gifts—pure trolling in gift-wrap. One still baffles me: a beat-up cardboard box with “Water” scrawled across it in marker and handwritten instructions to (1) add water. Clearly the work of someone who made this “gift” about 30 seconds before the exchange.

    Of course, there were a few genuinely nice gifts that caused a frenzy—gift cards to actual restaurants, a fancy Bluetooth speaker, a Ninja juicer. These were always added by the organization itself, presumably to inject excitement or to cover for folks who showed up empty-handed. It worked, but it also made the disparity glaring: on one side, a blender. On the other, a broken windshield scraper.

    If the white elephant exchange taught me anything, it’s that holiday spirit comes in many forms—sometimes as a thoughtful bottle of wine, other times as a passive-aggressive gag gift from upper management. But hey, that’s what makes it memorable, right?

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I think part of this is how people understand the term “white elephant.” To me, it has always meant something that you already have but don’t want/need and have never gotten rid of (for whatever reason).

      But it should also be something that someone else might actually want. (My mother once brought in a Christmas decoration that my paternal grandmother made. It was not at all her taste, and my parents were divorced by then. One of the designers she worked with loved it! He was all for kitsch. So, it found a happy home. And my mom became work friends with a talented but notoriously difficult coworker.)

      1. Tinkerbell*

        My teenager has a white elephant exchange next week – the group’s organizer specified that it should absolutely be something you already have in the house.

        As it so happens, I bought a Costco-sized bag of Halloween candy this year and then it poured on the 31st so we only had four trick-or-treaters. My son is sticking the rest of the bag in a plastic Halloween bucket and wrapping the whole thing. I predict four pounds of candy will be a hit for some teenage boy :-D

        1. March*

          One time, my fiancee was gifted a ten-pound bag of “strooigoed” (tiny ginger nuts and candy, a traditional Dutch St Nicholas treat) at our yay-she-moved-in-with-me party. TEN POUNDS. I loved it, and filled up all our biscuit tins, and gorged on it for months until realising that even I couldn’t keep it up. After picking out all the best bits, I regret to say that a lot of it went into the garbage in the end. Four pounds sounds eminently reasonable in comparison. :D

  61. Somehow I Manage*

    Last year we added an optional White Elephant exchange, but because we didn’t want people to feel like they needed to spend money, we labeled it a “Garage Sale Gift Exchange.” The rules were simply that you bring in a wrapped item that is work-appropriate and in good working order (and being that I was the one setting it up, I included some suggestions – a record, a clean kitchen gadget, a bottle of wine that isn’t your taste, a set of glassware). If you brought a gift, you could pick a gift.

    My wife had an old roaster – the kind where you can put water in the bottom and serving trays on top – and we were planning to donate it. So I wrapped it and brought it in. The recipient was one of our youngest team members. Still in college young. I couldn’t quite tell initially what he thought, so later on, I offered to swap a gift card that I’d received. He refused and shared that he was ELATED to have it because he loves throwing parties and always wanted something like it.

    We are doing this again at our party this year. Hopefully someone is equally as elated with a Nerf dart gun set that my kids no longer use or the Nest mini that is sitting unused in my basement.

    1. JustaTech*

      See, this is the way to do White Elephant/ Yankee swap – with clear instructions in advance!

      Don’t make people guess if this is “actually fancy books” or “your gift should be at least $200” or “useful used items” or “funny trash”. Just tell people. It will still be fun, it will still be funny, and many, many fewer feelings will get hurt.

      2. Somehow I Manage*

        I tip my cap to AAM for all of the stories about parties gone wrong leading me to the instructions. And to the “this is totally optional” part of it too. Post script to that second part… because my boss and I brought in more than one item, even those who didn’t bring something got to play along. Another coworker who had just started with us was just telling me the other day how she still uses the travel bar set I’d brought in.

      3. AnotherOne*

        I think the biggest thing is that you need to make clear the rules, especially to new employees.

        Don’t think people will magically know the rules of your office gift exchange. Someone in HR or department management should make themselves responsible for pulling new people aside (or better yet sending them a form email) that explains in this office white elephant exchange means this, last year people bought stuff like X, Y, Z.

  62. Laura*

    I’m not good at white elephant gifts so one year I googled “best white elephant gifts” for $20. One of the items was a microwave popcorn maker where you put in kernels and oil of your choice. I love fresh popcorn and as I was looking at it, someone looked over my shoulder and exclaimed that they had one and they absolutely loved it, gifted it all the time and people all enjoyed it. So I got that. To this day, I still remember and cringe at the look on the recipients face when they opened it. I only give gift cards now. they are always well received.

    2. Lily C*

      My office gave me one of those, with popcorn, as a holiday gift a couple years ago. I almost re-gifted it, but it turns out I actually like using it. We also have a vintage hot-air popper that my husband prefers to use but scares me, so now when I want popcorn and he’s out of town I can make a whole bowl for myself.

  63. Beth**

    Last year my department did a Secret Santa for the first time (or at least the first time since I arrived in 2020). The rules were not clear in advance except for the spending limit (£10 = $13). No names were assigned in advance and on the day it became clear it was going to be a gift stealing event. Everyone had bought nice-but-bland presents except for our head of department’s PA, who thought it was a “joke gift” vibe and had brought photo frames with photos of the head of department in them. She wound up stealing back her own gift to keep the picture frames since it was clear no one else wanted the photos of her boss.

    My worst secret santa present was in a previous team where there *was* more of a “joke gift” vibe, but I (F and then in my 30s and one of the few married people in the team) was given a joke-y book with the title “How to Be a Good Wife”. It felt work inappropriate, even in 2008-ish, but I didn’t know what to do, since I suspected one of my bosses might have been the purchaser. Another time I was given yoga socks. I don’t do yoga. Oh well.

    The best was during the pandemic (for a team I was no longer in by the time Christmas rolled around but I got invited to participate in the secret santa of anyway) where my ex-boss drew my name and she got me silicone baking mats that I still use almost weekly 4 years later. My boss knew me well enough to know that I was a keen baker and got an excellent (for me) gift.

  64. alle*

    In my first year of moving to France, there was an office Secret Santa where the gifts were distributed randomly, so not specific for each person. I ended up with a pop quiz type game full of questions about French celebrities I didn’t know. The next year, everyone has to buy a gift for a specific person, so I guess I wasn’t the only one who got something not really suited for them.

  65. Mary (in PA)*

    This happened to me just yesterday! I work on the admin side of a human-services non-profit with a team of mostly women and one man, who I will call Edgar. Edgar is in his mid-sixties, is very kind, very well-meaning, and not very smart – but his first two qualities make it difficult to get angry with him about the third.

    Our team voted, unanimously, to do a Secret Santa this year, with gifts exchanged and givers revealed at the holiday luncheon. $25 present limit. Our boss distributed questionnaires to everyone to help us in our shopping endeavors. Stuff like, what kind of music do you enjoy, what’s your favorite snack, how do you like to pamper yourself, things like that. We fill out our questionnaires, pick our recipients, and everyone has a lovely time shopping over the weekend.

    The luncheon is scheduled for yesterday afternoon. Yesterday morning, I am chatting to Edgar and to Mallory, another co-worker, and Edgar says to me, “How does this Secret Santa work, anyway? Do we all just put $25 in the pot and then draw names?”

    Mallory and I exchange a Look, and I say to Edgar, as gently as I possibly can, “No. You buy a gift for your recipient that costs no more than $25, that’s appropriate to their interests according to the questionnaire that we filled out, and then we exchange them at the lunch.”

    He says, “Oh, *shit*.”

    After a hasty brainstorming session, Edgar leaves the office to run to the nearest Target, which sells both gift cards and festive greeting cards in which they could be placed, and Mallory and I express our mutual incredulousness that: one, Edgar hasn’t heard of Secret Santa before; two, he voted to participate in Secret Santa despite not knowing what it is; and three, he didn’t bother to ask anyone about how it worked until three hours before the deadline. Happy Holidays, one and all.

    1. KateM*

      In the art group I attend, we do the kind of gift swap where everyone brings a gift and then we draw who gets what, no swapping after that. It’s mostly women, but we had one man last year and he was of the kind who happily leaves all work to women. Never brought anything for our coffee breaks nor washed his dishes afterwards. He came to party with nothing whatsoever as well. Only, then he realized that the gifts are “bring one, get one” – didn’t bring a gift, will not get a gift. Luckily for him, there was a little Christmas fair for handmade stuff right next to the building and off he scooted. I got to draw the number for his hemp seed bar.

      2. Bossy*

        Will never understand wtf is wrong with people. Mostly based on “you don’t have to participate” but then they insist they simply must and literally everyone fucking regrets it. Reminds me of the people who insist they simply must join pot lucks but will never bring anything. They suck so bad. This is why I prefer to just work at work and do fun things with friends and family who are actual cool, fun, people.

        1. KateM*

          Our coffee breaks *are* like potluck at a small scale in the sense that (almost) everyone brings in some cookies or cheese or fruit or whatever.

    2. Irish Teacher.*

      He sounds like a colleague of mine who…when we did a “Split the Pot,” where everybody who wants to enter puts in…I think €5 and the winner gets half and the other half goes to charity went around telling people who “the organiser understands it all,” like she was really impressed that somebody could understand those instructions. I could totally see her misunderstanding a Secret Santa.

      She’s lovely, just seems to miss what’s going on a lot.

  66. Irish Teacher.*

    When I was a student teacher, the school I did my work experience in had a Secret Santa. The gifts themselves were fine but…they let this really long-winded boring teacher do MC and hand them out and he kept making really unfunny jokes and long lead-ins before he handed out each one. This wouldn’t have been too bad, except…if anybody interrupted or there was any disruption, he’d go right back to the start (of the speech about whichever person he was about to give out; thankfully, he didn’t go back over those he had already handed out) and start over. Now, this was a party, so of course, there was cheering and heckling and interjections.

    Eventually, another teacher called out, “who do you think you are? De Valera?” Which of course made him go back to the start of whatever speech he was making at that point, but it was just so appropriate because de Valera was a…former politican, taoiseach and president of Ireland, who was known for making really boring long-winded speeches and he was the founder of the political party that teacher had actually run for local election on behalf of.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        They hated him. I had to change an assignment once because I was getting them to create comic strips and was going to give “school” as an option to create one about, but I realised somebody would definitely do one mocking him, so I changed it to “English class,” because I figured a) if I was going to risk them mocking a teacher, it should be me and b) I was pretty sure any mocking of me would be affectionate whereas mocking of him was malicious.

  67. Meg*

    At a previous workplace, we did a Yankee swap each year where you could steal presents. It was a $15 or $20 limit. We weren’t a stuffy department — there were always a couple of bottles of wine in the mix, and one woman always contributed lottery tickets (I won those one year and got $10 or so). But normally it’s just generic gifts that any adult might be able to use or at least regift that are also ok for professional colleagues to see. Except that one year a coworker opened up a promising-looking gift and it was a box of condoms! Everything came to a halt. The person who opened them was massively embarrassed and the person who brought them had to have a talk with management and HR.

    1. AnotherOne*

      I just have to wonder at the person who thought- condoms for a work yankee swap, that’s perfect.

      That or they used the same paper and had similarly sized gifts for two different events and the moment the “gift” was opened went ‘F- that’s my gift for the holiday party with my friends tonight!’ but in that case, wouldn’t it be better to loudly exclaim that?

  68. JustaTech*

    Since the season of White Elephants is upon us, and someone upthread asked for a more up-beat post instead of just “worst”, here are some white elephant/yankee swap gifts that have gone very well at my company (Pacific North West tech company, for regional context).

    A case of Red Bull
    A Bob Ross chia pet
    A screaming chicken
    A sampler pack of 24 different kinds of hot sauce (Cost Plus World Market and Trader Joe’s are great places for this kind of stuff)
    A popcorn air popper
    Fuzzy socks
    Coffee (interesting whole beans)
    Wine
    Captain Picard Funco Pop
    Tarantula in acrylic paperweight (everyone who wanted it said “my kid will love this!”, but yes, it’s still a giant spider so know your crowd)

    May everyone’s work holiday gift giving go well, with no terrible stories to share next year!

    1. AnneCordelia*

      For your paperweight colleagues, I recommend a signature New Mexico souvenir, the scorpion lollipop. Literally a real dead scorpion encased in translucent hard candy. This could be a great stocking stuffer for their kids!

    3. The Prettiest Curse*

      I don’t think she got it in a gift exchange, but a former colleague had a Bob Ross chia pet at her desk. Unfortunately, it failed to grow and Bob’s hair was basically chia mould.

      1. Stoppin' by to chat*

        JustaTech – I also live in the Pacific NW and work for a tech company headquartered here. Maybe we work for the same company!

    4. Artemesia*

      The only one remember standing out as an ‘everyone wants to steal this’ — was one years ago where someone brought a toy submarine. It was a toddler type thing that could be taken into the bathtub — really cute. I had a 2 year old and really wanted it and got it on first draw but then it was stolen half a dozen times — everyone wanted it.

  69. WinWin*

    Several years ago, our (quite conservative) company had a completely optional gift exchange with the usual “steal one or open one” rules. Usually the items are Christmas/holiday related and completely benign (think candles, ornaments, fuzzy blankets), but that year, one of the gifts was definitely not (think Rudolph thong speedo). The person who unwrapped it was very young (first job out of high school) and she could not have looked more embarrassed or uncomfortable. Everyone else thought it was hilarious but no one had any interest in stealing it from her and she looked increasingly miserable with each G-rated gift that was opened. I would have stolen it anyway just to rescue her, but it was a win-win for both of us because I participate in a “white elephant” gift exchange every year with former coworkers where we compete to bring the worst gift. We both left that exchange happy and that thong was a hit at my next exchange.

    1. Somehow I Manage*

      I love the idea of a follow up gift exchange with the worst gifts. That sounds like a lot of fun.

      Similar-ish: Some friends of my wife and me got married a couple of months before we did. This is a long time ago, so I don’t remember the exact specifics of how we set this up, but I think we agreed before their wedding not to get one another gifts, but rather exchange gifts after our wedding with anything we’d gotten duplicates of or had no need for. They loved the electric carving knife, and I’m pretty sure we ended up with a hand mixer.

        1. Bookworm in Stitches*

          Too funny, Slippers! Your reply wasn’t there yet when I was posting mine. Great minds think alike:)

  70. Hobbette*

    A few years ago, my SO received a “Can of Whoop-A**” for an office White Elephant gift and later gave it to me for my company’s holiday exchange. People, this was literally an EMPTY CAN with a funny label and everyone was fighting over it. (FYI, you can buy one on Amazon, in multiple varieties.)

    1. Meep*

      lol. My sister gave my husband a gag gift of Grinch toilet paper because she bought it for a White Elephant and then found something better. That thing has been passed all around the family even on the off-season because have gotten such a kick out of it. Literally $10.

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        Jittery Joe’s! There’s a name I haven’t seen in awhile. I think I’ve seen that whoopass can.

  71. Joyce to the World*

    How about something fun and very creative. First year on a new completely remote and small team. Everyone drew names. You created one PowerPoint slide that outlined your virtual gift for the person whose name you drew. One person gifted all new state of the art kitchen appliances, another gave a date with a very handsome actor. During our online Christmas party we went through the slides. It was fun and very sweet.

  72. Ann O'Nemity*

    My previous org’s white elephant (aka Yankee Swap) was the stuff of legends—or nightmares, depending on your luck. Every year was a total gamble. My first year, I unwrapped a used, broken ice scraper for car windshields. Later, I learned it came from a VP making six figures. Uh, thanks for spreading the holiday cheer, Scrooge. Another year, I got a used, broken toy parrot that had been haunting the swap for years like some kind of cursed artifact. And my final year? An at-home waxing kit from the 70s that screamed do not apply to skin. I left it in my office when I quit—a tiny act of rebellion, or maybe just self-defense.

    The instructions suggested a $15 price point and encouraged “whimsical” and “funny” gifts. But let’s be real—most people either went the safe route with a gift card or cheap bottle of wine, while others let their chaos shine. Case in point: someone once wrapped up an empty cardboard box labeled “Water,” complete with instructions to “just add water.” To this day, I can’t decide if it was abstract art, an environmental PSA, or just pure nihilism.

    To make things interesting, the org would toss in a handful of legitimately awesome gifts—like a Ninja juicer, a Kindle, or a Bluetooth speaker. These unicorn prizes added a buzz of excitement and helped cover for the inevitable “Oops, I forgot!” contingent. But they also made the disparity painfully obvious. On one side, you’ve got someone unwrapping a shiny new blender; on the other, me clutching a broken parrot that looked like it had been to war.

    It was all part of the charm—or trauma—of white elephant. Because really, what’s the holiday season without a dash of chaos? Cheers!

  73. Zephy*

    My small team of ~6 people has done a Secret Santa gift exchange every year I’ve been here. We do a team potluck lunch during Thanksgiving week at which we draw names for our office Secret Santa, and we have our exchange about 3 weeks later (this year’s is tomorrow). The slips with our names on them also have suggestions for things we would like, the limit is like $20 or something.

    Last year, the boss who originally hired me (“Beth”) moved to another department, but somehow weaseled her way into our 2023 gift exchange – she literally barged into the office while we were in the middle of drawing names and insisted she participate, forcing us all to re-draw. Beth drew “Andrew,” the guy who took over for her in our department. Coworker “Jake” had originally drawn Andrew and drew my name the second time, but I guess he forgot, because both Jake and Beth showed up to the exchange with gifts for Andrew and no one showed up with a gift for me. Beth’s gift for Andrew was a (fairly nice) insulated coffee mug, that happened to be my favorite color, so Andrew ~graciously~ offered me the mug just so that I would have something. I accepted and laughed it off at the time, but it did sting in the moment. Beth has, thankfully, not crashed our party this year, so I’m hopeful that I will actually get something closer to what I asked for tomorrow.

  74. Meep*

    A bad gift that wasn’t so bad?

    We did Sockmas one year. Basically, a $20 white elephant where socks are the wrapping paper so you get two things. The owner, a successful millionaire, bless his heart, brings in this old, ratty black sock (just one) and inside is magnetic measuring spoons. I ended up winning it and taking those measuring spoons into the office. It is surprisingly helpful for all of our loose leaf tea.

  75. Hydrangea MacDuff*

    In a college on-campus job, we drew names for a secret Santa. The idea was a few inexpensive treats the week before finals. We had cubbies where we kept our stuff, so most people snuck the treats/gifts into the cubbies, and most people got 2 or 3 over the course of the week.

    All week I checks my cubby and all week it was empty. Finally, on Friday, a colleague I didn’t know well came up to me and said, with a smile, “Have you checked your cubby today?” “No, not yet,” I replied. At the end of the shift I indeed checked my cubby and indeed found…a burrito. A cold, flat, soggy Taco Bell 99 cent bean burrito.

  76. Sara_H*

    First off, a disclaimer that I don’t think this is a terrible or weird gift. At all.
    I work at a large hospital in a northern European country. It’s a tradition for employers to give Christmas gifts to employees (usually along the lines of food hampers). Most large businesses have wisely decided to move to vouchers, but very large ones (my hospital has 12 000 employees) often have a physical and/or online market in which employees can select their gifts.
    This year, budgets for health (and education) have been dramatically cut in order to give tax breaks to well-off people. Presumably for this reason, the hospital decided to abandon the market, with gifts around the 30 – 50 Euro mark, and give everyone a box containing pancake mix, a pancake pan, pancake toppings… It’s a nice, harmless idea – and of course, there are gluten-free mixes available.
    The staff lost their collective shit.
    When the news broke, half of them spent the day posting angry-to-borderline-deranged comments on the staff webpage. The other half spent the day updating the webpage and laughing at the comments. One beleaguered HR member spent her day trying to respond to the comments before giving up in despair.
    The story has made it to at least one national newspaper (including a follow-up today: Hospital staff still furious about pancake mix) and the radio. Discussions about the comments have kept us all entertained.
    I really hope they do this again next year.

    1. Janne*

      Amazing.

      I’m your neigbour and despite the budget cuts we had the normal christmas market yesterday, with 40 credits to spend on local/sustainable gifts, university merchandise and classics like blankets/electronics/bags. I got a university hoodie and a pair of socks, and donated the rest of my credits. The only complaints I heard are about the hoodies having printed letters instead of “luxury” stitched-on letters this year. And there always are people that would have preferred to get plain money or gift cards, instead of these credits.

      I worked in a hospital last year, and everyone in my department got a fortune cookie baking package as a New Year’s gift. But baking fortune cookies is quite complicated so nobody used the package. I used up the butter in my package for something else, our office had some expired butter laying around, and the packages of flour and sugar will probably be useful sometime or they will expire too.

  77. Brian*

    At a white elephant gift exchange at my school, I received a nice bottle of wine. The president of the school board exchanged with me for the gift he’d brought: a dollar store pedicure set for little girls. I was a childless bachelor at the time.

  78. AMS*

    One year a client brought everyone in our firm gifts (small CPA firm, we did the bookkeeping and payroll for their small business). His wife made several of them. Put on an excellent performance upon opening the box to find the most hideous pair of giant earrings. She’d super-glued giant tacky fake stones to earring backs. They lived in my desk drawer, I didnt take them when I quit, presumably they are still there.

  79. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    In 2020, my boss sent us each a Christmas gift to our house. They were beautiful chocolate ornament-looking things, and there was no information on where they were from or what they were. So it was just four large festive chocolate balls in an unmarked white box. I love chocolate, so I decided to try one and took a big bite. All of a sudden, cocoa powder went everywhere- on me, on my kitchen counter, on the floor, on my dog, everywhere.

    They were hot cocoa balls, designed to be put in a mug of hot water or milk. The heat would melt them for delicious chocolaty goodness. This is why hot cocoa balls need instructions, so people like me don’t make a huge mess! :D

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      Whew, I was afraid they’d turn out to be bath bombs and you got a mouthful of fizzy soapy ick! At least they were edible, if messy.

  80. FoolMeTwice*

    I *briefly* worked at a company where the head of my department was very “old school” which is a fancy way of saying sexist. One year he gifted all the women in my department scented candles. He did not give the men anything because “it is weird for men to give other men presents.”

    This was a great move because everyone was equally unhappy.

  81. Pippi*

    I was voluntold to plan the company holiday party by a manager who wasn’t mine at a company that paid me far too little for doing far too much.

    I came up with a bunch of complicated games for people to play (like a “reindeer race” where groups of eight people each had to race each other in a two-by-four formation) and then took PTO the day of the party.

  82. Oops*

    Many years ago, when I was a 22 year old executive assistant working in Big Law, my boss very generously got me a gift card to a local spa (recommended by his wife) for Christmas. At that point, I had never been to a spa, and I was sort of nervous about it all, so procrastinated on putting the gift to use. Fast forward some months, gift card still unspent, and I had a big trip planned with my new boyfriend. I decided to put the money toward a…particular waxing service and scheduled an appointment. As I settled in for my very awkward service and made polite small talk with the waxer, she asked what brought me in as a first-time customer of the spa. I answered honestly: I got a gift card from my boss! A weighty silence ensued. She looked at me. I looked at her. And only then did I realize what it sounded like.

  83. HA2*

    One thing many of these stories have made clear – if there’s ever any sort of gift exchange in a workplace, it behooves the organizers to be EXTREMELY direct about the gifts expected. Price range, seriousness, everything.

  84. AnneCordelia*

    I’ve been in uncomfortable situations where some people observe the price limit and some people don’t. At one teaching job, we had a Secret Santa with a supposed limit of $5 (this was a number of years ago). I thought carefully and got my recipient a cute folk-art Christmas ornament, which she loved. But the person who drew the principal’s name, got her a $50 gift card, and there were many other “exceptions.” Very awkward.

    I’ve also done the kind where you leave a note giving suggestions of small things you might like, your candy preferences, etc, and that has worked quite well.

  85. Reasonwhywedon'tdothisanymore*

    From an old team’s white elephant’s gift exchange:

    Calendar of man’s French bulldog
    (next year) Calendar of man’s feet. Each month seasonally appropriate.
    Copy of Fifty Shades of Gray
    Elvis costume
    (next year) Elvis costume came back. VP (who brought it prior year) accepted it as his gift and modeled it for us, on the condition that we donated money to a charity.

  86. WellHere'sTheThingJanet*

    I used to work for a start-up that was doing extremely well. We had a huge Christmas party that was full of games, drinks, and everyone was having a good time. The CEO stands up to give a speech and spends the next 20 minutes comparing us to…the Titanic, that legendarily unsinkable ship. He genuinely did not understand why the speech didn’t get a better reception.

  87. Harrowhark*

    In college, I went to a Christmas party organized by and for students in the theatre department. I trawled thrift stores for the perfect white elephant gift, and my search paid off: I found an (unused!) infant CPR training dummy. It was essentially a baby doll with an inflatable body and a rubber face that you’d expect to see on tourism brochures for the uncanny valley. The student who opened the gift was delighted, and the party was swiftly derailed by an extensive family portrait session. The proud “father” toted the dummy around for the rest of the night — until someone sat on it and popped it. The next semester, the deflated dummy occasionally showed up in dorm rooms and out-of-the-way corners to jumpscare people.

    1. Slippers*

      My brain decided to scroll ahead in the text and thought that said someone sat on it and pooped on it. That was a very short 5 second adventure for my brain.

  88. The X-Rated Tape*

    Many years ago, I worked at an insurance broker and one of the VPs hosted the Christmas party at his house. Employees were meant to bring their significant others and their kids, but I was single and had no kids, so my coworker and I drove together. I was 24 and my coworker was also single (divorced) and 40. It’s important to point out, because I was new to corporate work, and my coworker was… not.

    Anyway, I was the designated driver (by choice) and my coworker was… not.

    The party was a snoozefest for me, because besides being new to corporate work, I was relatively new to the company and didn’t know anybody that well. The food was not great, and the drinks were flowing – but since I wasn’t partaking, I found all of it profoundly dull. That is, until the White Elephant exchange.

    I have no idea what I got during that exchange, because someone had snuck in an X-rated video under the tree. It was the high-end kind that you can get a selected stores (this was the early 2000’s, so people still had VCRs). You could tell it had been… well-loved, I guess that’s the word I’d use. Someone opened it to great cheers from everyone in attendance. The kids didn’t know what the heck the adults were cheering about. My coworker, who was already three sheets to the wind, had drawn the last number and quickly stole it, and was super proud of herself – showing it off to everyone, including some VIP customers that had been invited to the party.

    At 24, I was a sheltered girl and found it scandalous. Nowadays… meh. I might say something to the gift-bringer, but no one seemed scandalized other than me.

  89. Dr Sarah*

    Slightly tangential, but… did we ever get an update on the Hanukkah Balls story? I see the OP was planning to have a Firm Word with Christmas-Obsessed-Hellboss and to report back, but, if she did report back, it wasn’t in this thread.

  90. Elizabeth West*

    At OldExjob, we used to get stuff from vendors — gift baskets with food, etc. The rule was that these were supposed to be set out for everyone to share. One person always gave us a giant ham and little buns for sandwiches, and it would sit in the break room and be slowly demolished over the course of the day.

    Gift baskets and those giant popcorn tins usually stayed in the office, but a certain vendor would always give us a cooler of ice cream cups (in summer). There was never enough for everyone, so the priority was for the shop workers to have it over the office workers since we always got the baskets. Some people always sneaked them and not everyone in the shop would get one. :(

    1. JustaTech*

      Many years ago, in January, I had my contact at a vendor say something like “did you not like our Christmas present?”
      “What Christmas present?”
      It turned out that several of our vendors had sent candy or cookies to either my team or the whole department, but all the gifts had been waylaid by one team lead who either gave them to just his team, or plain took them home.

      So I had once vendor where I was their main customer and contact at my company all hurt and offended at me that I didn’t know how to send a Thank You email because Dr Greedy wanted to eat all the Christmas chocolates.

  91. Dancin Fool*

    Years ago participated in a Secret Santa with my colleagues with a $15 max limit. Everyone was asked if they wanted to join, about 10 people, and all said yes. I drew Sansa and got her a nice candle and some chocolates. So the party comes and we all show up at the managers house but no Sansa. Manager said she went home sick earlier that day and wouldn’t be coming. No problem I thought, I’ll just hang onto her gift and give it to her on Monday. When we started exchanging gifts we realized that Sansa had drawn my name as well. So Monday rolls around and I find her in the morning to give her the gift. She stumbles and stammers and eventually says she left my present in the car and can she get it later, which was totally fine by me. At lunchtime one of my other coworkers notices Sansa going across the street to the dollar store. She came back and very quickly handed me an unwrapped angel figurine and a tea light candle with the dollar store price tags still attached. Went straight in the garbage. Wish she would have just told me the truth and I would have kept the gift I got for her.

  92. Secrétaire Extraordinaire*

    Many years ago I worked as an executive assistant for the CEO of a major non-profit in town. A department manager gifted me a coffee mug colorfully decorated with the word PEON. It was not an inside joke. I was not amused.

    1. Bast*

      I wouldn’t be either, and I’d probably start looking. If that’s REALLY how you see me, I don’t want to be there. I’m sure this attitude was reflected in other actions as well.

  93. Jillian with a J dammit*

    When I was in my mid-twenties, all the office employees drew names for a gift with a $10 limit (late 1980s). One of the male manager had my name and in front of everyone I opened what he called a small rubber tree. No, not the nice plant with thick leaves. A small potted artificial plant with condoms attached like ornaments. I was mortified; HR was present and did not say a word.

  94. SAR*

    When I was 22, I came into work on Valentine’s Day to find some Hershey kisses and a small stuffed animal at my desk. Thought it was a nice gesture until 1) I found out I was the only one in the office who had received such a gift and 2) I opened the small card that had been tied to the stuffed animal’s neck. The card read as follows: “We are all equals in the workplace, but there are a few days of the year when one must call attention to the fact that women really are the fairer sex. Yes yes yes, the office certainly is sweeter because you’re part of it. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

      2. Not sweet*

        Nope. Singling out a young woman in her place of work to let her know you see her as an attractive ornament, explicitly based on her gender, without even letting her know which one of her co-workers thinks of her this way, is incredibly demeaning and creepy as hell.

  95. Lemons*

    The first time I was in an office that did the ‘you can steal a gift’ thing, I found it mortifying. I was relieved to get something crappy so I could get out of the fray and shrink away.

    The second time I was in an office that did the ‘you can steal a gift’ thing, they made us go one by one, then the steals, then those people would pick again, repeat. There were 75 employees. I think it took like 3 hours.

  96. KJ*

    One of my directors one year (small office of about 10 people – and quite toxic) said he was going to give everyone presents to suit their work style. He has a wicked sense of humour, so I expected something entertaining.

    I got an inflatable punching bag (that I still have and use) because I used to have to deal with two horrible people in the office (both the worst boss and worst coworker I have ever dealt with) and also I was the “help desk” for our psychometric testing software, so got phone calls from people who had never used a computer before, because they’d always handed out the tests in person.

    Others got funny ones (another director who was in a long distance relationship with his partner, got something got a blow up doll “to keep him company”) – and everyone laughed because he knew everyone so well, as we had a very “crossed boundaries” type of office. Also, we’re Australian, so I think some of our humour is somewhat different to the US!

    The best / worst one by far though was the horrible coworker. She was always moody, rude to people unless she could get something out of them (like work) and generally disliked. She should have been fired many times over, but hey – worst boss as well.

    Our director got her mood rings “so I know what kind of you I’m getting before you speak”.

    We all cracked up laughing – she smiled and said thanks and then acted all hurt to our boss at work the next week because she thought the directors liked her.

  97. Lore*

    My old department used to do its Yankee swap with the rule that unlimited stealing was permitted, but you couldn’t unwrap anything until all the gifts were distributed. So all the stealing decisions were made based on cleverness of packaging, and by the time you got to see your gift, it hardly mattered what it was. One coworker was the best at clever and deceptive wrapping—the gift was usually a gift card or movie passes but one year they hid in the middle of a giant ball of rubber bands, one year it was some sort of globe of layers of cellophane, and the best one was a giant box filled with crinkly paper and a few jingle bells so it made noise when shaken. My gift was never so popular as the year I found Scooby Doo paper at Walgreens.

  98. Sunflower*

    Not the worst gift and quite amusing. One year, my boss gave us all a bag of potpourri and a bottle of room fragrance stuff (a shampoo-size bottle of liquid). Only she left mine in her car and the liquid froze. I put the bottle in the workplace bathroom sink to defrost all day since I was afraid it may leave my desk wet with condensation as it melted.

  99. An Opossum*

    A place where I did a grad assistantship during my PhD had an annual Holiday potluck and white elephant gift exchange. A previous grad assistant the year before had never heard of a white elephant, so they explained it was an exchange of funny gifts under $X, and he brought… a rusty doorknob. The doorknob got regifted in subsequent years, which is how I heard about it, but the regifters always included some sort of gift card to make it fun rather than disappointing.

  100. WS*

    We had a Secret Santa with a $10 limit. I went to a discount store and saw a big tub of branded lollipops that I knew my designated giftee liked, and bought them for $9.95. It had a slight dent in one side and was otherwise great. Gave her the gift, she was appalled that I’d broken the $10 limit, how dare I? I explained where I got it, but she would not believe me and kept arguing until the boss shut it down so we could move on to the next person. For the remaining two years that she worked there, she constantly checked on me every time I handled cash, since I obviously didn’t know what $10 looked like, and when we gave her a going-away card, she said, “I hope you didn’t let [WS] buy it, she’ll break your budget.” She kept the tin of lollipops, though.

    1. Lou's Girl*

      Same with an old coworker- he gifted a small Electonic device that usually costs more than the $20 limit. When asked, he simply stated that he stole it (five finger discount was his exact wording). We were never sure if he was kidding or not and no one ever asked.

  101. Azure Jane Lunatic*

    A very bad mismatch between gift and recipient: someone at work thought that the gift of “An Experience” would be great! There’s this company! You can choose any of these amazing activities! It’s local!

    … and all of them involved extensive walking and/or standing. And I could barely do either.

    I eventually re-gifted it to my brother and his husband for their wedding.

  102. earlthesachem*

    Many years ago I worked for a marketing company owned by the richest man in our state. One Christmas he gave everybody a gift- a copy of his book, which detailed how he became the richest man in the state. I got him to autograph it for me, then burned it in my firepit.

  103. fluffy*

    I once had a coworker who was vegan, and quite clear about this. Not annoying about it, but it was a deeply-held personal practice. Our office had a Secret Santa, and this coworker made it quite clear that he was a vegan.

    So imagine his disappointment when his gifter gave him a steak-of-the-month club subscription. They were quite nice steaks and they were gifted without malice, but the gifter had apparently completely missed, or misunderstood, his veganism.

  104. Eli*

    At my husband’s old company, they used to have a Christmas lottery every year. The prizes were nothing to write home about – candies, company-branded stuff, that kind of things. But then there was the grand prize: always a last-generation expensive high-tech gadget. One year, the grand prize was the latest iPhone, and let me tell you, people were buzzing about it.
    So, during the company Christmas party, the winners were drawn. And who wins the grand prize? The intern who’d been there for two weeks. Two weeks. The whole crowd just stared in disbelief for a second, and then – boom! Standing ovation.
    Some of the more seasoned employees were not happy about this, and they went on to grumble about it for months. It was like the ultimate Christmas scandal. Epic, really.

  105. I come from a land down under*

    So,

    In my first corporate job (small software company ), they organised a secret santa. One where you draw a name from a hat. One year I drew up the ahem… office pervert. Apparently had a lot of raunchy female pictures on their hard drive & made inappropriate comments to male colleagues about female staff.

    So I thought would get a key ring which had some cartoon figure with an ahem… large male appendage (a really not suitable for work item).

    Much hilarity abounded for the rest of the staff on seeing his very very angry reaction to the gift. He demanded from everyone to know who gifted it to him & I never owned up to it.

    Would I ever do that again? Doubt it having many years of maturity now. But oh boy do I always remember it & think yep, that was perfect.

    Did the behaviour change much after the gift? No.

  106. Irish Teacher.*

    Not a holiday story and not an organised exchange (which was what made it amusing), but at the end of my student teaching year, the other three student teachers and I agreed that we would bring in treats for the staff on a particular day at the end of the year to thank them for supporting us and all.

    What we DIDN’T know was that two other teachers who were leaving at the end of the year had also planned to bring a load of cakes that day to say goodbye (like they had about 4 or 6 boxes of cakes between them) and somebody else would had been on maternity leave or something was bringing in treats to thank people for covering when she’d been out and there might even have been something else as well. So the tables in the staffroom were covered one end to the other with chocolates and sweets and cakes.

    Not a bad thing, just a bit over the top. People just came in and stared, like “WHERE did all this come from?” Seeing people’s reaction was amusing.

  107. Sun's Return*

    The comments are actually delivering a wealth of ideas for wonderful gifts!
    At one office holiday gift exchange, the office manager refused the idea of submitting lists of preferences from each recipient, “No, no– let it be a surprise!” She drew my name and gave me a deplorably cutesy piece of Christmas decor– decent quality and expense, maybe a music box-train-snow globe thingy?– but not to my (Solstice-celebrating and boho) taste at all. I burbled my appreciation and offered to use it as part of our office decor, but she insisted it was for me to take home.
    It was rewrapped and passed along so fast it didn’t even have time to bounce! It was veritably lobbed out of my life by the next night.

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