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Mumsnet Discussions:
Christmas '08
: I really hate it when you give people a gift for Christmas and they rudely hand it right back to you - has this happend to anyone?
(110 messages)
Right. My stepdad has done this on several occasions. Last year I spent quite a bit of time picking out a gift for him - a buckwheat-filled pillow because he's always complaining of neck pain from sleeping - and he opened it, looked at it, said "I don't like this" and handed it back to me. I was gobsmacked. Literally speechless. In the ensuing silence (because everyone else was as stunned as I was) he said, "you can get me a book instead". WTF?????
Has this happened to anyone else???? What did you do??
Several days later I had a chance to talk to my mum about it alone, and even just talking to her completely lost the plot at his ignorant fuckwittery. All she could say was that she knew how I felt, that he's done it before, and no, she did not blame me in the least for not being arsed to worry about buying him a present next year. It is now "next year". I'm tempted to give him the proverbial lump of coal.
Definetly give him coal this year, a nice dusty piece that will roll onto his lap and stain his, hopefully, pale-coloured trousers so everyone spends the rest of the day asking him what happened...
Not quite, but I did buy my SIL a Radley purse for her birthday since she likes the bags (they're not to my taste at all) and I got it back for my birthday, well passed the date for returning it. There was nobody else I could give it to so I've ended up with an expensive purse I don't like [sigh]
Buckwheat-filled pillow is a very thoughtful gift, taking into account his complaints. Rude man. I take it his presents to you are always well considered? Let's hope so.
Give him a card this year. Have you really got time to think about what he wants? I'm sure you're far too busy.
Jack, seriously I wouldn't give anything. I only suggested the fiver because you sound like you want him to have something. In our families, it is only acceptable to hand back a gift if it has been duplicated, but it's always doen with a "really sorry, but my mum/sis/dh bought it for me as well. great minds eh?" comment. It's never hurtful and often results in giggles.
Slightly different but, one year I gave a good friend a lovely photograph frame. The next year I got from her a lovely photograph frame! How rude I thought - if you don't like your presents and want to recycle them at least make sure you don't give it to the sender.
Later in the year I went round to her house and on the mantlepiece was the frame with a picture in She'd obviously not recycled my present but had bought another!!! Thank goodness I am not the sort of person to say anything
I would by him a book on etiquette. Can't believe any one could be so rude!
I would like a nice warm buckwheat pillow, it beats some of the truly awful presents that I have received, please see the other thread for some real stinkers!
BTW Heated, I rather like Radley, maybe you could sell it on Ebay?
I actually thought your pillow idea was lovely, at least you thought about what might be a good present for someone instead of just buying any old crap.
I'd put a £10.00 Waterstones/Border Books gift voucher in a card for him and he can have his book and choose it.
Was terribly rude of him to do that to you, I'd have been quite upset.
my nasty evil step grandmother hasnt even got a card since she was so rude 3 birthdays ago
her evil son, my step dad, has now joined her and will never again get anything at all from me.... was his birthday last weekend and i havent mentioned it and im making a 'happy Xmas MUM' card and will exclude even his name as i DONT wish him a happy Xmas at all, and refuse to pretend i do...
i am even ensuring that anything i get for my mum cant be used at all or benefit him in the slightest and am writing my mum out of my will so that he cant get anything at all from me ever
some people arnt worth wasting time over.
OP, your stepdad was very rude and doesnt deserve anything from you ever again IMO!
Bloody hell! What an ignoramus. Under no circumstances does he deserve a present with that kind of behaviour. Just tell him why you haven't bothered this year whilst everyone else is opening theirs if he asks. Good luck
I'd get him nothing at all, unless you want to make a point in that case get him another pillow.
I have never heard of anyone doing that!
My MIL didn't talk to us for 3 weeks after we got her a baking set for Christmas. It was a cookie cutters and decorating thing, idea being she could have lovely baking sessions with her granddaughter who she looks after quite a bit.
Apparently the floods of tears on the phone to sone revolved around 'is that all I'm worth...'
Now had it been my mum I'd have screamed that no, but it's all we have and if you want to give us some money we'll be happy to go buy you some smellies or other tat, but as we are skint saving for our wedding and everyone got £10 pressi budget each, so we can't.
I kept well out of it and they came round a 3 weeks later and I just sort of smiled weakly at them .Have never actually looked her in the eye again however.
You can get any message embroidered on pillow covers you know. I suggest 'complete twat' in fetching pink
Or better still get it in installments, each time he gives it you back, have another insult added. Soon you will have a litany of insults which qualifies as the book he requested!
I heard a great story about an old lady who decided to send all her family cheques in their cards one Christmas. She wrote out the cards with "you can buy your own present this year" written in them.
In February, she found the pile of cheques she'd written out and had forgotten to put in the cards.....
LOL - I sent the babysitter a card with 'please accept this small token as thanks for your help this year' meaning to enclose a cheque for £50. Instead DD put a raisin in the envelope
OMG - you have all made me cry I'm laughing so hard. I really would follow the suggestion to give him back the buckwheat pillow but I'm using it and I love it!! Thanks for all your posts, they're fab.
oh dear me - I'm crying with laughter here! Some really funny stories (and suggestions..). Loving the raisin-in-envelope and the old lady with the cheques
OP - if it was me I'm not sure I'd buy him anything.
Years ago I bought her a really nice top that I thought was really 'her', based on what she usually wears. She unwrapped it in front of us, held it up and announced "Oh I won't wear that, you'd better have it".
Despite the fact that she's a size 16 and I was a size 8 and twice my age
As my boyfriend really liked receiving massages from me (more than he liked to give them as I recall), I gave an expensive set of massage oils with massage IOU vouchers for his birthday, not as his only present either.
His face dropped and he said words along the lines of it being about the last thing he'd ever want from anyone.
How odd. Sometime I think some MN posters must live in an alternate universe, I've never come across anything so astoundingly ill mannnered as the bloke in the OP
I don't think I live in an alternate universe, what about the mother-in-law on the "shite presents" thread who handed a blouse back saying "I won't wear this, you'd better have it"?
But I will say I sometimes think he lives in an alternate universe!!
My DS on his last birthday did open a couple of presents and push them away saying 'Don't like this.' However he was 3. Once or twice among my family someone has been given something they have already got (book or CD or DVD) and said so but very nicely - but this bloke sounds a complete twat, and one of the few really worthy recpients of a Third World Latrine instead.
This thread has had me in stitches. Don't know what I would give him tbh.
My mil did ask us to take back a cd we had bought for fil as even though he had specifically asked for the cd, apparently on listening to it he didn't much care for it. We also bought him several other things and he got my sil to ring oh and complain about the chocolates we had bought too!!
As I was expecting my first child imminently, my oh told her to sod off and try thinking about others for a change and the imminent birth of our child! I was furiuos and never asked either of them what they would like as a present ever again. They get what they are given now.
I had this when I bought MIL and FIL a DVD player - MIL said 'hmph more instructions I wont read'! I was really shocked and very hurt too. I have gone the gift card route since.
I have decided I am going to give him another buckwheat pillow!! (Am keeping the original one, love it to much to risk losing it in case he's had a personality transplant and wants to keep it!)
MIL often hands back presents she doesn't like. She has even taken photos of the children we have given her out of the frames and handed back the frames. And she handed back a scarf SIL gave her one year saying it wasn't something she would wear. I was as no one in my family has ever been quite that rude forthright.
Wow - that's even more horrible!! Taking the pictures out of frames and giving the frame back?? Holy cow. Maybe my stepfather and your MIL should get together and start a "we're too rude to deserve presents" club.
I bought my neighbour, who cat sits when we go away, a £30 voucher for a massage or pamper session locally last Christmas. A few days later she knocked and said "it's really nice of you but I really would never use it" and was visibly shuddering at the thought of anyone pampering her".
I was initially a bit shocked, but was then pleased that she'd had the guts to give it back so it wouldn't go to waste.
Just want to report that there was no handing back of presents this year... no, it wasn't because he didn't get anything [frgin] - we all took the high road and banded together to give him a heated vest (it's a vest with heating threads in it and a tiny little battery pack that goes in the pocket) because he's always cold. It's kind of like an electric blanket except it's a vest --- anyway, he loved it... so... we'll see what happens next year!
Absolutely, here you are: Brookstone Catalogue, Men's Heated Vest. I just checked and it looks like they ship to the U.K. If not or if there is a problem, you could order it, have it shipped to me (I live in Canada) and I'll post it to you.
Yes, amazed at your forebearance, although I suppose upsetting him would only have hurt your mum.
It could have been the perfect opportunity to stop presents for adults altogether though, and just 'give' people the famous OXFAM goat/chickens/latrines etc. Think of the reduction in stress!
(Careful with goat with children, though. I did a fundraiser with my class once to buy a goat and they were so enthusiastic they raised enough for 17.5. They were very disappointed not to get the goats delivered to the classroom, though. They seem to have imagined gift wrapping them! But great lesson in global citizenship for Jackson.)
as no one in my family has ever been quite that rude forthright. 
