To think if you want to take part in office secret Santa

[lastqueenofscotland]

You have to get into the spirit of it....

Not gladly accept the well thought out £10 gift from another colleague while handing the person you got (who you happen not to like) a bottle of that £1 Alberto balsam shampoo and a normal sized galaxy bar.

We are all on fairly senior roles in the city so money is NOT an issue.

She'd spend more than the budget on lunch a day

I'm not even the reciever of the gift, but I organised it within the team and am annoyed at the lack of effort when everyone else tried

DD does SS in her form (year 10), £5 spend, obviously optional.
First year she got a big tub of celebrations which was a big hit.

Next year was a gift bag with bits from someone's sweet cupboard at home, 2 packets of Tesco crisps, mini chocolate bars and the leftovers from Halloween - must of cost all of 50p.

DD had put so much effort into her gift too!

First I REALLLLLYY hate the assumption by whichever person at work comes up with the idea of doing Secret Santa that £5 is affordable by every person working there! For me, it's yet another insult to my finances that honestly I can do without. "Everyone has a fiver!". No, they don't. I have a spreadsheet at the moment (especially since a week ago XH stopped paying maintenance) and literally everything I spend above the routine direct debits I enter on that spreadsheet so I can nurse my pennies to the end of the month. Some months, like this one, I've got a whole predicted £22 left so £5 plus some expensive boring staff meal on top, would totally wipe that out.

One year (and I've been struggling financially to a slightly lesser extent for the last 10 years) I had to buy a gift for someone and sought out a beautiful hand made organic soap wrapped in beautiful handmade paper and very prettily gift-wrapped. The bitch colleague opened it and pulled a right face. I've hated it since then.

Bah humbug.

lastqueenofscotland how do you KNOW 'money is not an issue' - one of them could be in massive debt, about to lose their house, gambler losing thousands of pounds a month. Sorry but you have no right to be angry with anyone.

"I'm annoyed at the lack of effort" - Jesus Christ.

My office is small but we agreed to spend between £7 - £10 each. And because we all know each other really well it's never been an issue with inappropriate presents. Later year I got a hobby reindeer which my 11 month old loved and he still loves this year.

I've never done it, but a few people at my level joined this year and we've become friendly, so we're merging departments for the meal out and Secret Santa. I'm dreading it! I pulled someone I didn't know, so re-pulled! The person has a certain breed of dog and is a bit of a foody, so she has a calendar with her dog breed on and some posh shortbread and Earl Grey teabags. I'm dreading who got me and what I'll get! One girl told me she's getting someone a fart cushion for her recipient. He just isn't the type to appreciate it, I dunno how she's got it so wrong.

Pollyanna9
Are you being forced to take part in it? Because normally everyone's asked if they want to do it.

This is the time of year that I truly appreciate being freelance and not having to get involved with this stuff.

I find Xmas a very difficult time for historic reasons and doing the right thing by my own family takes everything that I've got, without any enforced jollity.

Yup.

To those who hate SS, either refuse to join in (it is possible) or just enter into in with very little thought - don't spend hours choosing a gift for someone and don't over analyse what you are given. Expect your gift to be binned and expect to bin what you receive, in the same way you would a cracker toy - which is the ultimate pre-bought secret Santa.

All this angst and feeling the effort put In wasn't reciprocated, or someone didn't spend their full £5 is giving it all far too much thought. It's meant to be a quick 5 minute filler at the Christmas meal, not a big deal. Either opt out or engage but at a very low level - it is this becoming over invested in it all (seeming to expect a quality, personalised gift - unrealistic expectation) or overly sensitive to the gift itself which causes the problem.

I cannot believe that the work SS will be anyone's key gift given or received this year - give it the very limited thougt it is worthy of, rather than being offended in one way or another. And if you can't afford it or are offended by the whole thing, simply say so......the worst possible thing is to take part with bad grace and be offended. No one needs to do this.

Then why even bother and waste the money of staff who can't afford it?

Wherever I've worked I have NEVER, EVER been asked - do you want to do it. It was implicit that this is what's done and you would want to do it too.

However, on both occasions I bought thoughtful gifts which, on both occasions, exceeded the £ limit stated - cos in any case, you can get bugger all for £5 anyway.

Yes, I don't get the whole ' buy something crap, expect to receive something crap then throw it away' message either.

And it could be someone's key gift and/or a lot of money to them.

I also agree that it isn't always particularly optional either.

And one person's idea of thoughtful gift is another person's idea of crap, and vice versa.

We've always been asked if we want to take part which I think is right

It's optional where I work.
We all know each other quite well too.

I always buy something personal.
I have chocolates and cheap smelliest so fingers crossed for this year.

I'm not really a fan based on past experience! One year I was fairly new in the office but as the budget was tiny (I think £2?) I was happy enough to join in, and spent ages in the Poundshop looking for something I thought my colleague would like. Eventually found some quite nice jewellery bits that seemed exactly her style, so was quite pleased with myself. Turned out that everyone had forgotten to tell me that the actual aim was to find the most tacky and ugly present possible, so I ended up feeling really embarrassed when it came to opening then when everyone else was hooting with laughter over hideous mugs and so forth, except for this one colleague opening her perfectly normal gift. It struck me as a bit pointless to be honest since the 'hilarious' mug I got given went straight in the charity bag.

The worst secret Santa I've been involved with though was definitely whilst I was at university, and one of the white guys thought it would be hilarious to give one of the black guys a bottle of bleach. Huge fallout, the giver got formally disciplined, lots of e-mails reminding everyone that racism is not funny, and the poor chap who'd been given the bleach was absolutely devastated. It happened at a Christmas party involving outside entertainers too, one of whom was also black, and they sent a very pointed message afterwards saying they never wanted to work at our college again if those were the sort of attitudes we held. Awful.

God how mortifying Coffee.

That is terrible, Coffee. I've read of something similar, where the giver was sacked, or forced to resign, over their Secret Santa gift. They'd given bacon and alcohol to a Muslim colleague. Although the colleague didn't complain, the bosses were distinctly unimpressed.

We spend a tenner on our SS at work, names picked out of a hat.
Hate that people receive tat because the giver doesn't particularly like/clashes with the receiver.
As it's the season of goodwill, I buy a nice gift whether I like the person or not.
We can't all get on, so to me it's a bit like putting differences to one side/being respectful.
And like somebody said earlier, it might be the only present somebody receives, and therefore looks forward to.

Not read the whole thread yet (too busy laughing), but this time last year I was working with a right C*nt. Outwardly as nice as pie but passive aggressive bully. He was that year going to buy his family charity goats even though they weren't keen on the idea. He was getting cycling stuff from them.

Thing is, we have all seen the FB selling sites. Some people love wine glasses with glitter stuck on (I'm assuming they must as people buy them) so just because you think it's a crap gift doesn't mean the person didn't try.

^to me it's a bit like putting differences to one side/being respectful.
And like somebody said earlier, it might be the only present somebody receives, and therefore looks forward to.^

Well said Cheese. I can't bear cruel "jokes" or spite because someone doesn't like someone else - you're all putting the same amount of cash in, and you're all entitled to a thoughtful gift. If people aren't prepared to be generous in spirit, they should keep out of it.

We had our ss today and I'm delighted with mine 😀
It's jewellery.

Ss last night and mine had clearly made the effort to notice things about me and buy accordingly ~ very happy :) 100% better than last year!

I have done many SS but a few years ago we had a horrible one where I worked. We had a budget of £10, people generally bought nice presents but unknown to us the managers, 3 of us, were to get "funny" presents. Actually they were horrible. I had a difficult year, DD had been in hospital and had a serious operation, my husband is disabled and I was working fulltime and caring for him. I had little time and by Christmas I was tired and feeling low. I had worked really hard doing rotas for Christmas so that people got the time off they wanted and when I got handed my present I was looking forward to a nice treat, the first 3 or 4 presents that had been opened were really nice, thoughtful presents. I opened mine and as everyone laughed at the "funny" present I tried to smile. I cried on the way home as I stopped to dump it in a bin. I was too humiliated to let my family see what my colleagues had done.

It might seem funny to give someone hairgel when they are bald or chocolate when you know they are desperate to lose weight but just remember you don't know what is going on in their life, it might be the last straw and wouldn't that be funny, a suicide for Christmas!

I got nail varnish.

I never wear any make up of any sort. Ha ha secret santa. I'll give it away I suppose, as it's no use to me.

I got a (hopefully) nice gift for the person that I picked out of the hat.

I agree that there should be a choice whether to take part. Ours is meant to be £5 limit, but I think people often go over it.