WWYD - Work Collection

[TDMN]

Okay, so here's the situation, interested to hear everyone's thoughts.

Office collections for birthday/baby/leaving - standard at ours is an envelope goes round and you stick a bit of coin in, normally somewhere between 50p - £2 (there are a lot of us so adds up quick)
There are a lot of people in the office, 300+, and we are split into sub teams of anywhere from 5 to 20 people.

However this expectation has arisen where if someone leaves on your team whose been there a long time, you put £10 in, regardless of how long you've personally worked with that person/if you got on or not. Its not a subtle hint either, the designated organiser person will wait until the person whose leaving isnt in the room and just say they need £10 from each of us for the collection. The conversation moves on swiftly so no chance to challenge. You then get email reminders.

For full context - we are on a decent wage, but there's a lot of variation - majority are on between 30 - 50k. However there's obviously plenty of reasons why you personally might not want to give £10, or even have £10 to give.

So WWYD if you really only wanted to give in the region of £2/£5? How would you respond?

Put 2 quid in says its xmas and your skint...simple xx

Thanks @Cccsss011 might just go with that, it would be pretty rude for anyone to challenge me on that i guess but wouldn't surprise me at our place.

I'd just through some change in say that's all I have , they won't know how much exactly you put in .

I would raise it as a general (rather than a specific) point.

Say what you've said above, there could be a variety of reasons that it could be difficult for people and it would be better if it was anonymous
(Rather than seeming as if you were happy to do it for X & y but don't want to for z)

Throw not through

I never donate in the office whip rounds. Firstly, it’s extremely rare that I have cash. But most importantly, it usually seems to be for people I never speak to and I just don’t want to contribute. If people want to call me a tightwad then go for it but I want to spend my money on me and my family.

I don't contribute either, I just say no thanks when the envelope goes around