Actually offensive Secret Santa Gift?

[BewilderedPiskie]

I have always avoided Secret Santa arrangements where possible due in no small part to threads on here. This year we had some new members to the small team I work in, in a professional environment, who suggested we arrange one amongst ourselves and to avoid looking curmudgeonly I agreed.
I have been gifted an adult colouring book and some felt tips. I must admit I found this disappointing in itself as I never got swept up in this craze and am a little disappointed that one of my colleagues has concluded I am an adult colourer but that's by the by.
My real issue is that it's the 'Go F*ck Yourself I'm Coloring' 50 swear words to color your anger away, adult coloring book. Which should be fine, I like a robust swear and I have a job that can very much cause stress but I finally looked at it properly today and a lot of the words to colour are not swear words per se but really, really unpleasant misogynistic, sexual slurs and terms that I associate with pornography not swearing. I have actually found myself quite offended that someone thought this was an appropriate gift for a fifty year old female colleague in a professional environment. My quandary is whether I should say something to the group or just hide it in the recycling and forget about it? I think I have attached an image so you can see the kind of thing I'm referencing.

If it's the one posted by @BitterTits I don't think you'd know from the cover that the general swearing, e.g. 'Go fuck yourself' tipped over into more specific slurs such as 'Cum Dumpster'.

As pps have said, I doubt the donor went through each page.

Personally I think it's a tasteless gift even without the slurs. A non-sweary adult colouring book, though not something I'd want, would be a reasonable 'stab in the dark' gift for a Secret Santa you didn't know but with things that are potentially offensive, you have to be 100% sure the recipient will get the joke.

If I'd received it, assuming the pages are blank on side, I'd just use it as scrap paper (strictly within the house - it would be rather embarrassing to use it for shopping lists!).

Either way, HR would just give him a slap on the wrist
OP doesn't want this bloke incarcerated afaik ...
The more little slaps on the wrist that men get for casual misogyny, the faster it will become as unsuitable as Benny Hill-style bottom pinching and leering feels to us today.
This guy may not even need a slap on the wrist - just a reminder that he's at work, not down the pub with his mates.

I’d go to HR. It’s nasty, it’s sexual harassment and it’s not needed in the workplace. They need to find out who chose it for you and take appropriate action.

If I opened a present and the words Go Fuck Yourself were staring up at me, damn right I'd have something to say. Not remotely funny. I'm sweary. But I'd never say this to a work colleague. Not even in book form. Can we please stop minimising this misogynistic crap?

@BooksAndGin

Just bin it. Don't be that person who makes a big deal.

Yes silly women, no sense of humour.

Poor wankers need the safety of hiding behind secret santas to embarrass or harass women with impunity. Especially these days when so many mean workplaces try to stop such inappropriate workplace behaviour and afford some protection to women.

OP I'd let the organiser know. If they have run the kind of pool where there is a mapping in case of gaps they can avoid having this idiot in next year's attempt. I'd also let other women in the pool know so that they can avoid it next year.

If it's the one posted by @BitterTits I don't think you'd know from the cover that the general swearing, e.g. 'Go fuck yourself' tipped over into more specific slurs such as 'Cum Dumpster'
This is a picture of the back cover of the book (also on Amazon) showing all the pages. The words are very clear. Whore, jizz mopper, slut, skank, etc. etc.
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81H8yUD-aaL.jpg

[quote ravenmum]If it's the one posted by @BitterTits I don't think you'd know from the cover that the general swearing, e.g. 'Go fuck yourself' tipped over into more specific slurs such as 'Cum Dumpster'
This is a picture of the back cover of the book (also on Amazon) showing all the pages. The words are very clear. Whore, jizz mopper, slut, skank, etc. etc.
images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81H8yUD-aaL.jpg[/quote]
Ah. No excuse then

Just get rid of it and refuse to participate in secret Santa in future.
What you're experiencing is the real problem with these "friendly" workplace activities.
Colleagues are not your friends - unless they're actually you're friends, of course - the acceptable conduct will vary wildly and if you are adhering to strict standards of professionalism as part of a fun activity, it's going to be more a source of anxiety than fun.
People who want this sort of interaction with colleagues should be left to arrange it between themselves.

Were the felt pens nice ones at least?

@Sonex

Wow, that's really inappropriate as a work secret Santa gift. Do you know who the person that got you it is?

I agree with this, and I am usually not offended by things but in a professional environment the riskiest I would consider going is a risqué mug with perhaps a mild swear word on it, or vaguely rude dad joke book type thing (although I do try to put some thought into SS gifts if I can) I absolutely would not gift that to anyone - and I don't have an issue with swearing at all. Especially inappropriate in a work environment where you don't know the recipient well enough to know they wouldn't like it. I wouldn't say anything though, unless I had some close friends in the team and I would probably mention it to them.

Yikes! I love a good swear, as did my old entirely filter-free boss and I might have bought that for her thinking it'd be 'fuck off' or 'bollocks' as frequently said in our team, but I'd have been mortified at some of those 'swears'

Colour it, and gift a page to each colleague 😉

Adult colouring suggests that the person doing it has not enough of an artistic gift to actually design and draw and outline themselves to "colour in" or can't be bothered
I hope that's tongue in cheek / swiping at the snobs looking down their noses as if it's not, that is just such utter bollocks
I personally love colouring as a form of mindfulness/calming anxiety.

@Didifuckitup

Colour it, and gift a page to each colleague 😉

@Didifuckitup

Colour it, and gift a page to each colleague 😉

If OP has worked in that company for a while, she will have a reasonable idea as to whether there's an overall culture of casual misogyny or not - or whether one of the new staff members has been setting off others' creepyfucker alarms.

Making a big deal out of something that was just thoughtless silliness ie HR investigations, formal warnings etc can cause more of a problem for everyone than ignoring it and moving on. OP knows her colleagues and workplace better than randoms on the internet whether those randoms are 'it's a bit of fun, can't you take a joke' or 'OMG call the police'.

@ArblemarzipanTFruitcake

If it's the one posted by *@BitterTits* I don't think you'd know from the cover that the general swearing, e.g. 'Go fuck yourself' tipped over into more specific slurs such as 'Cum Dumpster'.

As pps have said, I doubt the donor went through each page.

Personally I think it's a tasteless gift even without the slurs. A non-sweary adult colouring book, though not something I'd want, would be a reasonable 'stab in the dark' gift for a Secret Santa you didn't know but with things that are potentially offensive, you have to be 100% sure the recipient will get the joke.

If I'd received it, assuming the pages are blank on side, I'd just use it as scrap paper (strictly within the house - it would be rather embarrassing to use it for shopping lists!).

I think that from looking at the OP’s photo in her opening thread, and on Amazon, that the book she received was definitely the “Go Fuck Yourself I’m Coloring” one! This has all the page images on the back cover of the book, therefore even a 5 second glance at the outside of the book would have shown how vile and unsuitable a book it was!

I was once given some nipple tassels. Not by a man, a woman who had taken a dislike to me.

On another occasion I picked out a colleague who was about to go on a very long charity bike ride lasting several months. I bought him a tub of cyclist’s antichafe cream. I genuinely thought he’d find it useful! But he was offended as he thought it was some sort of lube. Fortunately I think the organiser managed to smooth things over - if the recipient knew it was me he never gave any indication of any hard feelings!

OP that gift is really inappropriate but I am inclined to think the giver didn’t really look at it properly.

Ive actually written and published an adult colouring book, with swearing in, so this is technically my genre. But that's beyond the pale, it isn't swearing or stress relief, it's abusive misogynistic slurs. Yuck.

As for what to do with work, I would probably mention it to someone in the sense that I found the content upsetting, and see what happens after that. Oh, and I wouldn't do secret santa again.

@ravenmum

Very sad to see that even in 2021, people are still advising not to mention a book full of sluts, whores and cum dumpsters because it might be embarrasing for the recipient to act as if she did not find it funny.

Yes absolutely!

@MrsPworkingmummy

Oh dear, you'd hate to work in our business OP. Within our company, we work in professional, busy and highly stressful roles and Secret Santa creates carnage each year - largely because there's a competition to buy the most offensive/funny gift. This includes bottles of good whiskey that have been partly opened leaving the receiver to believe someone had either put something in it, or perhaps took a photo of it up their bum (sadly I'm not joking.), hair dye (for a colleague that has an allergy to it), various calenders/cups/items with inappropriate printed images... You get the idea. Everyone knows Secret Santa is a bit shit, so uses the opportunity to buy funny things. There are 90 of us and because of the nature of the role, we know each other very well and support each other in occasionally dangerous situations. I'd bin it and forget it OP; don't participate next year.

God that sounds horrific. Reminiscent of the kind of culture in which serving police officers could think it appropriate to take jokey pictures of murdered women.

I am one of those adult colourists you look down on, I also swear, I have 4 books that are very similar to this. All sent by people close to me, all sent as funny gifts. Not one of them had flicked through the book, not one of them sent them in malice.

Just a tip tho… those books are such poor quality, you need pencils to colour in them, felt tips just bleed through

They probably bought it online and so didn't stand and flick through anything. Bin it and don't give it a second thought. Secret Santa is either totally boring - a candle/ smellies - or something silly which can be a bit misjudged.

@MerryMarigold

They probably bought it online and so didn't stand and flick through anything. Bin it and don't give it a second thought. Secret Santa is either totally boring - a candle/ smellies - or something silly which can be a bit misjudged.

They wrapped it though.

I think people are grasping at straws to excuse this.

If it had racist words on would you also be so blase?

@MrsPworkingmummy

Oh dear, you'd hate to work in our business OP. Within our company, we work in professional, busy and highly stressful roles and Secret Santa creates carnage each year - largely because there's a competition to buy the most offensive/funny gift. This includes bottles of good whiskey that have been partly opened leaving the receiver to believe someone had either put something in it, or perhaps took a photo of it up their bum (sadly I'm not joking.), hair dye (for a colleague that has an allergy to it), various calenders/cups/items with inappropriate printed images... You get the idea. Everyone knows Secret Santa is a bit shit, so uses the opportunity to buy funny things. There are 90 of us and because of the nature of the role, we know each other very well and support each other in occasionally dangerous situations. I'd bin it and forget it OP; don't participate next year.

Is it the police force you work for?