Secret Santa is actual wank

[christmastits]

We had a £30 budget a giant fuck off list of stuff the person liked or wanted. It's a voluntary thing, so it wasn't forced or done through work.

I spent a long time picking out nice things I knew the person I had would love and some extras because I knew she's having a shitty time.

Yesterday was the day we were meant to open.. I hadn't got mine. Saw photos of other people's and they looked awesome, the lady I got loved hers,

I got my delivery info this morning and it was posted yesterday.. it arrived this morning but it was just awful, she clearly forgot, grabbed the first thing she saw and posted it :(

I feel so pathetically sad about it, but at least my lady liked hers. :)

We do a work lucky dip secret santa just our dept at work - £5 budget and some people get absolute crap clearly costing £2 max others clearly go above the £5.

This year I bought a really nice book, very relevant to the job we do and it was Christmas themed - I was really chuffed to find something so perfectly suited. It was a bit above budget but I decided to get it anyway.

We do SS at our Xmas do and I watched as the person opened their present, looked at it and pulled a face, then said oh this is a bit beyond me. At the end of the evening she left her present on the table when she went home.

I have decided I hate SS - the pressure to get something good and you always get something crap in return (I got some homemade jam and a mini kids craft thing).

Haven't done secret Santa since the recipient of my gift had a face like a smacked arse when she opened it.

^^ exactly this

It's shit, my work one was a £5 limit, I spent a little more by choice, got something personal to the person I got, everyone got nice gifts what were personal to them.

Me, I got a pound shop box of shortbread and a box of £1 tea cakes, which were out of date!. I will most definitely be opting out next year!.

Giving sex stuff in a works SS is just unprofessional.

Conversely, it's lovely when your gift is appreciated. One year, I bought some pretty earrings from Accessorize for a colleague who was on holiday when the gifts were given out, so I didn't get to see her reaction. I was really pleased when I noticed her wearing them a few weeks later, and she wore them several times so must have liked them.

Ours was £5.

I bought coffee for the coffee addict I drew.

I received smellies.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t.

The secret Santa present I received this year was generic chica, but I don't care, because I take immense pride in the fact that I, by common consensus, won the best gift given, and that's good enough for me. Though of course I can never reveal my genius.

It depends who you work with.

We have a £5 (approx!) limit. In the past I have bought sport quiz cards (found out a few years later he liked them as he was in the same team as DH and told him about them) . Have also done a football team calendar (correct team as he had a team mug on his desk). One person had a glass trinket box a few years ago and mentioned it recently. Not sure about the others but some were appreciated.

I have received fancy mugs, smellies, candles etc, all OK. Best was a diary from next which would have been over the price. Not one I would have chosen, but was really well laid out and I used all the time, so I was secretly hoping the same person would draw me this Yr. :)
Dh is in same office but different team. The only good one was a waterstones voucher from someone who knows he likes reading. He has had others where people have bought tat from pound land that is obviously not suitable for him and could have been offended by. After the third naf one he has decided not to bother anymore.

I'm never doing it again! Spent a lot of time carefully choosing a suitable gift and was pleased to see she liked it. When I was handed my bottle bag I thought "ok Everyone knows I like a drink - no thought there but always like a bottle! "
Then I pulled out the bottle and it had a cryptic name of the wine label. I'm the boss and it was just unkind. I smiled and thanked but it was just nasty. They obviously did put a lot of thought into it after all! Never again.

I don't understand, a cryptic name of the wine bottle? You mean there wasn't actually any wine in it?

I didn't spend ages agonising over my £5 Secret Santa and I hope whoever bought mine didn't either. I hardly knew the lady I drew, but I'd seen her eating chocolate and describing herself as a chocoholic. So I bought her the nicest small collection I could get in Hotel Chocolat and wrapped it in pretty paper. She seemed pleased enough, she ate them all in one afternoon. I got something chocolate related myself, it's a five pound gift from a work colleague who doesn't know me very well. It was nice, what more do people want?

I did one 6 years ago, I’m based in the north and the rest of the team were in London, £5 limit. The person who got me obviously knew nothing about me, apart from I had to get the train, and so got me an awful patterned travel card holder they had quickly nipped into paperchase to get!At the time I was a bit disappointed not to have chocolates or wine, but 4 years later I’m still using it. The awful pattern means I can quickly find it in my handbag!

an awful patterned travel card holder they had quickly nipped into paperchase to get!

It's a £5 Secret Santa gift for a work colleague! Exactly how much time should they spend agonising over it and what sort of boutique should they have frequented??

Ok, you don't like the pattern, that's a matter of taste, but a useful object from Paperchase sounds absolutely fine for a £5 work Secret Santa.

I don't know, how much time and effort is this bit of fun for someone you know at work supposed to cost us all? Precisely how intimately am I supposed to know Brenda from accounts?

Tee only time I ever did it I got a set of wooden salad tongs with elephants carved into the top. They were fantastic and I used them regularly until they broke recently, about 12 years later :( really want to replace them

Those really are rubbish gifts, OP! I can understand why you feel sad. I got a rubbish secret Santa this year too, they didn't even spell my name correctly

PoorYorick I'm surmising that the name of the wine was a cryptic reference to an insult that might have been (apparently) appropriate to the OP.

Now I need to know the name of the wine.

I got a brown paper lunch bag for my Ss gift this year inside it had:
A toothbrush
A bottle of hand sanitiser
Handy wipes
Fluffy socks
2 funsize chocolate bars
A little Christmas wish bracelet.

I quite liked the last 3 things actually but wondered if the first 3 were intended as a dig/subtle hint about my personal hygiene..., what do you think?

PoorYorick I am also racking my brains. If it were craft beer, there'd be a multitude of possible insults, but struggling to think of any wines!

Thirdshepard, I'm not really sure how I'd take those tbh.
Maybe it was meant to be like a hotel take away kit or something?

Some of these gifts are just nasty. It is one thing to be lazy but another to be so nasty and viscious to try and humiliate or insult another person.

Yeah, will stick to being the miserable grinch in the corner who won't join in.

Oh there's lots of insulting wines. There's one called Fat Bastard for example.

I love secret Santa despite usually getting crap gifts. This year I asked the recipientt of my gift if he'd opened it as he wasn't there for the lunch and he said he was going to open it on Xmas day as it'll be the only gift he gets. As our office buys joke gifts I was glad I'd at least chosen him something I thought he'd like

There is the thing that some people might not be getting any other presents at all. Generally, Secret Santa is a nice gesture towards the idea that presents make people happy. Yes there are some workplaces where the secret santa is a cheerful mutual windup (when everyone gets everyone else fart cushions and nipple tassles) but there are others where it's 'get a wellmeaning gift under £5. I wouldn't touch one that was over £15 anyway but you can either not play or play and not whine.

I don’t like secret Santa . Did one one year bought a nice wallet for someone for around 30 bucks and never got anything in return . or thanks . Hopeless.

Said this before but worth repeating. We had SS, and we all met in one of the conference rooms, with everyone bringing in drinks and nibbles, all organized so that everyone brought in some different food, not 200 sausage rolls!
Anyway, one year I said I wasn't doing SS, no problem I thought; I don't buy for someone, they don't buy for me, job done. I was still willing to do my contribution for the drinks and food etc. I was told in no uncertain terms that no SS, no attendance at the food part. Fine.
2 others had been debating about SS for years, so when I started the charge from the front, they joined me and we had our own drinks and food party of our own, more chocolate to go round! (Always been a rebel, me!)
Next year, someone must have either had a word, or more likely stopped acting like 12 year olds and non-participants in the SS were welcome at the joint food and drinks party. There was a lot more non SS people that year as well, all thanks to me!

Where I work now, we're asked if we want to join, and no is a perfectly satisfactory answer.

'Oh there's lots of insulting wines. There's one called Fat Bastard for example.'

Oh, I wouldn't find that insulting at all. Plonk is plonk. Mmmm.