To want to let colleagues know that this "lovely gesture" is making me feel like crap

[KeithLeMonde]

Every now and again someone at work does this "Random Acts of Kindness" thing where they wrap little gifts in lovely paper and pop them into people's pigeonholes anonymously with nice messages about how lovely the person is.

Each time they do it they seem to pick a selection of colleagues. It seems to be about 1/3 of the people each time. It's obviously different people each time they do it. One of my colleagues has had a gift every time - she is obviously lovely. The other women who I share an office with have had gifts once or twice. I have never received one.

I know this is meant to be nice but I feel like everyone at work fucking hates me.

The recipients send round these all staff emails (because the gifts are anonymous) saying how lovely it is to be appreciated. And I sit there (as do probably a few others) feeling like shit because it seems like no-one appreciates me.

I am not horrible at work I don't think. I am friendly. I work hard. I go out of my way to help people out.

I am just burning with a desire to let the RAOK person know that it's not nice to play favourites and that you can't plan a whole-class party and not invite one child. Yes, I am 44 not 6. Rubbish at my age to feel like the little girl in the playground that no-one wants to play with.

That sounds awful OP. Do HR know about this? It sounds really exclusive and like people are sucking up to others with their boak RAOK.

I'm sure you are not the only member of staff not to get a shitty RAOK, but I wouldn't even want one. Then you have the ghastly nightmare of trying to work out who RAOKed you and the worry about if you are supposed to reciprocate.

Fuck all the RAOKers!!!!! What an unnecessary nightmare.

It's a big like when you bring sweeties to school isn't it? If you haven't brought enough for everyone, don't share them at all.

If you bring cake in to work you wouldn't dream of dictating who shares it with you.

FWIW there's no card for me when I move teams, while it seems to standard for everyone else. Don't know what I've done to offend.

MrsTerry can't believe you left him behind!

See my thread in Chat @littlewoollypervert

YANBU- I can empathise with you on this, it is playing favorites.

Nearly every company I have worked for has a person like this. Bet this is the same person who instigates sending out cards & collections and are head of the tea money. I always wonder if it is done out of genuine kindness, ingrained social duty or a way of cultivating friendships. (not necessarily malicious).

Missing the point, but can I ask what these gifts are?

I really can't imagine it happening in any place I have ever worked, unless it was chocolates/an ice cream in summer/glass of wine after work and it would be provided by the manager for everyone.

On the bright(?) side, if you've never had one, people quite possibly think it's you giving the gifts ...

If it is genuinely random, there is quite likely to be someone who gets a gift every time and someone who never gets one. Basic probability theory.

Not nice when it is you though.

Can you embrace your unpopularity? I think if this happened in my workplace, I could very well end up not getting anything. Because TBH, I´m not that lovely and I don´t go out of my way to be friendly, kind etc. to my colleagues. I am for professional and pleasant, and that´s about it.

This is the weirdest thing I've ever heard of in the work place.

YANBU!

You do get a nice little note every month that tells you how much you are appreciated at work—it's called a payslip.

As for the gifts, if some members of staff want to buy each other tat, that's their business. You can't demand that they buy you gifts. However, it sounds like the recipients are abusing the 'email to all' function. Surely this should be reserved for business matters? We had some problems with this at my place of work and they changed the system so only the IT manager could send out 'emails to all'.

Have some and and from me.

Work can be soul destroying at times.

I suspect someone (lets call them A) did it to someone else (B). B worked out who it was and did it right back. Then A did it to C and B told C it was A, again C then did it right back to A.

You won't be the only one thinking this is shit.

You could do a round robin email to all staff "Thank you so much for the lovely person who has put a small gift and sweet message in my piegeonhole again - bless you! However I am starting to feel awkward about this - how is this sort of thing making people feel who have never received anything? It's kindly meant but I really do think it ought to stop."

I'd be tempted to put a bloody soppy pink fragranced note in EVERYONES letterbox... expressing the need to appreciate EVERYONE and not just the special few... because your not into favoritism....

This would be brilliant. Though I'm cheap, so it would probably be a packet of chocolate buttons per person. Little photocopied note saying "Just in case you're one of the people who haven't gotten a present - you still rock!"

We used to do this when I worked in education. Well we had a new innovative HT who tried to make it a better workplace and a load of curmudgeonly old farts who took every opportunity to deride him. So I understand the ethos of 'random acts of kindness' but it was never meant to be a massive deluge of gifts.

We also had collegue of the month nominations, one for teaching , one ofr support with a bottle of bubbly.

How come nobody sees some weird Santa type dropping random stuff in people’s cubby holes??

YANBU.
This would really upset me. I’d be starting to feel horribly paranoid about never getting one of these RAOK gifts. It’s the sort of thing where rationally I would know there’s plenty of explanations that don’t involve people hating me, but I’d be struggling to make myself believe it if I got left out again and again and again.
It’d be much kinder to give everyone a smaller present at once so no one feels left out.

Difficult to think how to bring it up without making it sound like sour grapes though.

Pretend it's you sending them! Just do that nose tap and sly look whenever someone mentions it.

The real RAOK sender will then be forced to send you a passive aggressive gift.

This is extremely bizarre.

I'd either :

Give myself gifts and pretend they are from the Gift Giver to mess with the Gift Giver

Or

Get HR involved as personally I think this is mega creepy.

What are these people doing at work?! They're paid to work, not give gifts!

If I were you I'd personally pride myself on never having received a gift.

You're obviously a biatch, Keith

if you feel that way other people will probably be feeling that way too

Definitely. In fact it sounds like the most twee, annoying and vindictive idea ever. Dressed up as altruism. Yuck.

The people who accept the gifts and end up sending emails to everyone are also culpable. I would definitely speak to HR or someone. Rather than trying to stop the gifts, ask for there to be a directive that the emails in response should be stopped (and not be replaced by any other BS). That way the person can carry on with their foolishness knowing no one other than those on the receiving end will know of it.

I wonder how long they would carry on then? I suspect not for very long.

At the risk of sounding rude, where do you work?! People in large professional organisations just don't carry on like this. Or they haven't in the twenty odd years I've been working, for several different companies.

The people who come up with these shit ideas have primary school children mentality.

Oh my fucking God. YANBU. At all.
It's shite like this that makes me so glad I no longer work in an office. I fucking hate ALL of that stuff.
The endless fucking competitive cake bringing , the secret fucking santa, the never ending fucking baby showers. Even the Macmillan fucking tea parties ( yeah I said it).
And YES it's always the same people spending fuck knows how long thinking up these twee, time wasting ideas, then clogging up everyone's email with inane twattery.
I wouldn't be friends with ANY of these fuckers OP. I resolutely AVOID anyone "lovely". You would be the one person I would willingly speak to (when I wasn't locked in the stationery cupboard darkly muttering to myself.)
Bastards.

I don't normally swear that much. ..post office traumatic rage..