Have you ever received a present so shity saying thank you made you cringe?

[BlueMoonAndRedNose]

I turn 50 at the beg of Sept. A friend asked to meet me for coffee yesterday and gave me a gift, she asked me not to open it there and then, but she didn't mean to wait for my birthday either.
This friend of mine turned 50 2 years ago and I gave her a stunning Becksondergaard scarf which she has worn a lot, I see her in photos wearing it all the time.
Got home, opened the present, it is a plain little milk jug. No tag on it, no label, looks unused but old, has a small chip on the handle.
I am not usually materialistic but I think that this is a thoughtless present and nothing, or a £5. bottle of wine would have been more appropriate.

One year an old (straight) friend bought me a turkey baster... we didn’t remain friends for long, after one too many gay jokes I didn’t appreciate.
Although I ended up putting it in the middle of some silk flowers in a vase for years... quite the talking point with visitors

Not RTFT but No excuse for giving anybody a damaged present. you can't even use a chipped jug for pity sake! Taking you out for a coffee and cake would have been nicer by far!

i'd have to ask, was there any particular reason you gave me as a gift a chipped milk jug?
because i've never found the need for one!
perhaps you'd like it back? as you thought so long and hard before
you bought it for me!

This may be outing but I used to buy birthday presents from a certain website. 2 guys I dated, broke up both times shortly after. And worse, two clients (I was a cleaner). They both died within a couple of months!

I don't buy from there anymore

Not me but a friend got a pair of knickers from another friend. The knickers had ‘lard arse’ on them and came with a pack of glitter. There was a label o them with a poem I think, something about ‘sprinkle this on your lard arse and it will get smaller’!
How to keep friends and influence people! Hideous!

Just remembered another one! When my MIL turned 70 her niece got her an IKEA photo frame worth £5. Her SIL (niece’s mother) promised to take her out to dinner. The dinner never materialised.

Neither party are strapped for cash. Just tighter than the proverbial duck’s bottom.

We got a Forever Friends bride and groom mini bear set from someone who came to our wedding (with his wife and two kids). Dh wrote a thank you note, we really struggled to think of something to say - in the end said thanks for coming and the bears are nice. This prompted a txt from the donor of the bears saying ‘glad you liked the bears, so hard to get anything for under a fiver these days’. WTF? Did we offend them by inviting them or something!

From my SiL - a hideous tartan souvenir tin of shortbread with the “best before” date scratched off. She doesn’t live in Scotland, hasn’t even been to Scotland for several years, so I think it must have been ‘re-gifted’ after having a kitchen cupboard clearout.

Also, the same person, had been to visit a local deer park and brought my OH a single venison burger. Then told me they’d got one for me as well but had eaten it because they were hungry. (My OH said it tasted awful so I was glad they’d eaten it!).

*not grabby and in no way should a dgd count for more than a dgs......
But...
Mil had 6 dgs and was elated I was due a dgd at last....
Got a few moth eaten dresses - no joke - from a church sale, had been congratulated already by her friends, all hyped up it seemed.
Ils were there when I got back from hospital with dd.
They had a gift for me in the car.

Dh went dutifully out to the car...
It was a Tefal frying pan!!
No words.... No words.

one xmas i had 2 broken teeth and a friend who knew, as she was taking me to the dentist for treatment, gave me a box of toffees. I never eat toffee anyway but really with 2 broken teeth?

I had no idea what to say to that!

Cheap Pot Pourri. It didn't even smell nice, it was like cheap mens aftershave. To think as I opened it I thought it was a box of chocolates.
Oh and I once asked a friend for some CDs for my birthday, made sure it was the cheaper ones that in total came to £20. I got one. Not even on the list. A promo version of one of them with no sleeve notes, no inlay, just the CD. Why? Because it was the cheapest one. The year before I got one CD I did ask for at least but not the other. I'd deliberately asked for the cheapest ones as well that were online. Instead of the other CD, probably the same amount as the other was I got a load of stuff out of the pound shop.

XH, one year, for my birthday gave me an IRONING PRESS MACHINE! I wasn't able to iron at the time due to a couple of operations that affected the muscles that you use and it would make me vomit. (I couldn't hoover, either, but he somehow managed that himself!) It did a lovely job, as long as you didn't mind burning your knuckles every time you used it. I gave up on it as a bad job and he used it for a while to prove that I was just useless and then quietly quit after burning himself innumerable times.

Another old friend bought me some chocolates as a gift and my favourite make as well. I thought "oh that's really nice!" When I got them home and flipped them over I saw they were out of date. My face dropped. They were from the cheap market stall that sells out of date chocolates. Buy one get one free!!!!!!

A pen with a name on it. The wrong name.

A four pack of Aldi WKD alike drinks for my 40th. I have never drunk the stuff.

An umbrella with rusty spokes

All from FIL & his wife. They also gave DH:

A 70s rubber walking machine on rollers that was deteriorating having been in their shed for years

A very old, very used Breville toaster

A set of car mats and some Allen keys from the £1 shop

A Val Doonican jumper several sizes too small

They are far from short of money.

My DSIL and DBIL suggested we exchange charity gifts one Christmas. I picked out charity gifts that reflected their interests. They got me nothing at all and blatantly re-gifted the gift card I gave DSIL back to me in the post a couple of days later. So they faked a donation to charity, when it was their idea in the first place. Genius.

My mother has written me a cheque in my maiden name just this year. I've been married for 16 years. I can't cash the cheque and bring myself to tell her.

My sister once sent me a card which said on the front: ‘ Once a cow, always a cow.’ I cried all day every time I remembered it afresh.

More fool me for being so ‘saft’.

My Step Gran, who we always saw a lot of, got me a set of orange and green garden furniture for my 16th birthday. I was in school, living at home and these cushions were not only horrible but only fitted a certain type of chair.

The same person got me size 22 (her size) pjs last year when I'm a comfortable 12/14.. I didn't bother to take them home and stuck them in a drawer in her house because I figured she would at least be more likely to use them!

*garden furniture cushions!!

@BlueMoonAndRedNose the chip in the handle says everything to me - suggests a big surprise later on and this is to send you off track... maybe a surprise tea party?
There’s just no way you’d give a damaged gift to someone without mentioning it may be antique.

Absolutely agree with the thought rather than amount spent thing.

For my 40th a close friend (who was fairly well off) got me two paperbacks. I love books so ordinarily this would have been a really good present, but both of these still had a ‘3 for 2’ sticker on and she obviously didn’t think I was worthy of the one they got for free. The receipt was in the bag. I liked the one she kept more than the other two rather random choices

My mother is a genius gifts.

She has given me over the years- Anti Wrinkle hand cream ( for hands that are beginning to show signs of ageing) a box of dishwasher tablets, an iron, scouring pads, and the best was a chistmas gift of a new toilet seat. Because my old one was wobbly.

Interestingly when my sister married ( too young and to an unsuitable man in he opinion) she put together a gift pack of bucket, mop, brush, rubber gloves, scouring pads, bleach, washing powder, kitchen cloths.

So inspired.

I would suggest you thank her for the jug and tell her it was damaged and that you will return it to her in order that she can take it back.

Mention you hope she still has the receipt.

When l was with my ex husband, one Christmas his brother and his wife gave us an Animal Hospital annual. l was 35, my husband was 30, and we had no children. Why they thought it was appropriate, l have no idea.

My mum once received a lovely silk scarf from my aunt one Christmas - at least I thought it was lovely when I bought for my aunt's birthday 18 months before. It was the exact same one that I had bought her with the same packaging.

My PILs passive-aggressively gave me a book of 'Classic British cookery'. DH is British, I am not, and they know I cook him all sorts of world cuisine except British (I don't like it, and he's had enough of it to last a lifetime).