Presents for colleagues

[Merryoldgoat]

Do you buy birthday presents for your direct reports? If so what kind of thing?

Do you get gifts from your manager? Do you hate or like it?

I have a very small team so it’s not a prohibitive expense but wondered if it’s weird? I like buying gifts though, and stick to ‘consumables’ so no kind of worry about taste being an issue.

I’m just musing. It’s late and I’m avoiding housework by buying my accountant a birthday present.

No, I've never exchanged presents with colleagues - I'd find it a bit weird, to be honest.

The only exception was when I had a colleague who had an unusual nickname, and I saw a notebook with the nickname on it so I bought it for her - that was only a couple of pounds though.

I don't generally know when my colleagues' birthdays are, unless they happen to mention it.

Retired now, but no and no. Unless someone is a friend outside of work, then no. Giving presents sets up expectations/obligations throughout a team.

Work gifts are for births, marriages and retirement. Flowers for serious illness and bereavement.

My DD is a manager and gives Christmas presents as a thank you to her team. Birthdays are best left alone, people book time off etc and it gets messy.

The only presents I’ve given/been given at work are for weddings, new babies, leaving. Never done birthday presents but some places have done birthday cards. And for Christmas and Easter in some teams there’s been a small token gift (e.g a small chocolate gift for everyone in the team at Xmas).

No and No. Don't do it, don't like it.

I will sponsor people if they are off doing some charity effort, maybe a sweep stake, and if there as a secret santa I would probably do that. That is as far as I take things with colleagues etc

We do birthdays and leavings. The birthdays will be a card and cake that people share, and a nice small gift like a fancy hand cream or something. It's nice to get and not super expensive as it's a small team. Leaving is cash in a card and again it's not frequent.
In an old workplace it was the done thing for the seniors to buy everyone a decent bottle at Christmas (one year I had 7!) but no one cared about your birthday. I miss that :)

I was in a very large team, about 30 of us and had a new manager. She expressed shock that we didn't do birthday presents but I pointed out that with 30 of us, it would be a couple of people a month, so expensive. We just circulated a card.