Work Raffle - Colleague claims I’ve damaged their feel motivation

[WorkRaffle]

Last year I was gifted a candle in secret Santa. Great, I love candles and wax melts.

However, for reasons related to environmental concerns and the composition of the candle (the wax used), I won’t use it.

Absolutely fine. Instead of chucking it in the bin, I just kept onto it and waited for this year’s raffle to come by as I figured it would be a good choice. All raffle proceeds go to charity and people only buy a ticket because it’s for charity rather than because they want something nice. So I gave my candle to the raffle.

Anyway, work colleague discovered I had submitted the candle to the raffle! She’s really angry and brought it up yesterday in our weekly catch-up.

I was pretty thrown. Apparently my gifting the candle to the raffle has impacted the colleagues motivation as they don’t feel valued!

AIBU to think the person is being completely ridiculous and unreasonable to have bought it up - it’s a candle from Boots, not their life’s work!!!

So you don’t actually give a crap about the environment because you regifted it for someone else to do exactly what you claim to be trying to avoid. Talk about ridiculous logic.

totally insensitive to regift it to work. She went out chose a gift and wrapped it up and brought it as a present. You kept it in your locker FOR A YEAR to put it straight back in, where, if you had any wit at all, you would be fully aware she would see it.

I would be offended and hats off to her for having the maturity to bring it up at a one to one to save you from embarrassment infron t
of your colleagues. But no, instead of doing some self reflecting and apologising you have the gall to be annoyed at her.

next year, use your head.

In a previous job we had a staffroom donation box in December for unused items to go to charity. A colleague who had made my life miserable gave me a Christmas present. I didn’t want anything from her, so I opened it just enough to show what it was and put it straight into the donation box, right at the very top, fully aware that she’d notice. I was making a deliberate point about how she treated me. It wasn’t subtle, and it was intentional.

That’s the difference here. There’s nothing wrong with regifting something you don’t want, but putting it into the work raffle means the original giver was bound to see it. That isn’t recycling, it reads as a message, whether you want to admit it or not. If you really just wanted to pass it on, a charity shop or school raffle would have avoided the drama.

I’ve only recently found out candles can be made from different materials. I’m really not into candles. Your colleague may be the same. I would be quite insulted if I was given the message I was ignorant when I was in fact trying to do something nice.

So, what you're saying is it was okay to blatantly disrespect and hurt your colleague because she doesn't socialize with the group? How judgemental of you.

Well yes that it is an overreaction, but why are you posting on here to get people to agree with you about your colleague being too sensitive? AIBU means 'Am I, the OP, being unreasonable', not somebody else. Many people including me think that you are. You were thoughtless about where you regifted an unwanted secret Santa gift and now you're sneering at a sensitive person for saying she felt belittled by you rejecting her gift, to the point of finding it hard to work alongside you. Perhaps this colleague feels belittled by you in other ways?

That’s a bit of a reach. I simply replied to someone who said it was a shame as we socialised outside of work and I explained WC is not part of the group.

I didn’t know she’d remember the candle a year later! It’s not like most people would tbh. I certainly wouldn’t - I don’t even remember what I gifted for secret Santa last year. As I said before, if I wanted to be spikey to her…there would have been more effective and quicker ways. I certainly wouldn’t have needed to wait a year!

Despite nearly unanimous comments telling you it was rude, you still aren't going to admit you made a bad decision or accept any responsibility for it, are you?

You know, you could have attempted to mollify her feelings by explaining that you were sensitive to the wax, but it was too pretty not to find it a home, and the last thing you meant to do was embarrass your colleague. (Without mentioning toxins and carcinogens.)

Yup, she'll be known as the office re-gifter candle snob. She'll be lucky if she gets a complimentary biro in the next secret santa.

Tackless, rude, and insensitive. The OP wanted us to agree with him/her. Cannot accept they maybe wrong. They think they have a right to hurt others feelings. Glad I don't work with you.

Yeah it was shitty.

Hurting her? You don't think that's a bit overstated for what's actually happened?

The woman concerned is a similar age to me, according to the OP. If all is as the OP has described, I can only conclude she has other things going on in her life which she has not talked to the OP about. If so, I sympathise, as we are at an age where there can be a lot going on. Women in their 50s and 60s have the menopause and aftermath to cope with, and we can be doing a lot to support older relatives, coping with bereavement and the prospect of it, and also often supporting our children. Also, moving towards retirement is a big moment in life. She may be worried about money, she may be worried about how she's going to fill her days when she isn't working, she may be dreading having to spend all day every day with her husband.

All of this is conjecture. What we actually know is that she bought a small blue scented candle for the OP last year as a Secret Santa gift, incredibly (to me) still remembers that she did this, even more remarkably recognised it from the description of donations to the workplace Christmas raffle this year and has taken such offence at the OP's failure to use the candle herself that she has spent most of the week seething quietly at her desk instead of getting on with the urgent work she is supposed to be helping out with. This is not sensible behaviour from anybody, let alone a woman in her 60s. Even if she did feel slighted (which I personally just don't get) why didn't she just get on with the work she's being paid to do? The quicker this task is done the quicker she can get back to having minimal contact with the OP, given that they are normally in different teams.

If saying this makes me a heartless cow, so be it.

@WorkRaffle Really? I remember stuff like secret santas as they are such one offs .I find they require thought too - joke gift or nice gift, staying in budget, buying for the nightmare colleague.
Clearly you don’t. Why do you do the SS out if interest?

It was mandated by our then Director General...'voluntold' was the phrase used when colleagues described it!

The current Director General has scrapped it and looked vaguely horrified when it was mentioned.

Just say ‘it’s not the same candle. I liked the one you gave me so much I bought another for the raffle for someone to enjoy… obviously’.

Easy fix.

There are Secret Santa threads here every year. They go the same way as all the other present threads.

• X says they bought a lovely thoughtful present for Y, carefully chosen as something they thought Y would really like and enjoy.
• X does not get a lovely thoughtful present in return. She either gets nothing because the SS giver forgot about it or she gets something well under the price limit or a generic gift (e.g. a scented candle) or something that's obviously unsuitable (she's pregnant and gets wine, she's a vegan and gets a meat voucher etc).
• X is upset.

What X does not seem to have noticed is that most people don't put that amount of effort and thought into gifts, especially for Secret Santa. Most people feel they do well if they remember it at all and get something in budget. Best to stay a bit detached and not take it all so personally.

It's also extremely difficult to get it spot on, as the OP's posts demonstrate here. The OP likes scented candles, but only very specific kinds. It's like someone saying 'I like chocolate' and someone else giving them a bar of Dairy Milk when actually what the first person likes is expensive hand-made truffles. The Dairy Milk giver would probably be upset if the Truffle Lover put the Dairy Milk straight into the raffle, but Truffle Lover might be upset too if she also lacks resilience and thinks everybody should remember everything about her because she might feel it's obvious she's not a Dairy Milk person and has often mentioned her expensive tastes.

Minefield.

But if you are against those particular candles on moral/ethical grounds I don't understand why anyone else burning it is any better as they would do if they won it in a raffle or even bought it in a charity shop. If you didn't want to burn it because you think it shouldn't be burnt, why did you not just bin it.

🕯🕯🕯🕯

That’s exactly right. There is so much wrong with this act. Mean in several ways.

Yes, I believe this candle to be bad for
a persons health, here you have it!!

You could have just given it to a charity shop if you didn’t want it but to give to the raffle of the very place you got it from (rather than just putting your hand in your pocket for a fiver) does seem a bit tight fisted. Of course someone was going to recognise it and be offended. What else did you expect?

I'm cringing. I'm all for regifting but not blatantly in front of the giver, how embarrassing! It's basically a big fuck you right in their face. My ASD children have more tact than this.

So you are worried it would give you cancer, but you are ok if someone else wins it. If it is a dangerous product you shouldn’t put it in the raffle. (Is there time to remove it - I don’t think you have thought this through)

Someone else obviously initially bought it and was happy to put it in the raffle. The OP chooses not to use certain candles for particular reasons, but many people are happy to use them.

Unless it was exclusively hand-made, there must be hundreds in the shops. Why did she A) Immediately jump to the conclusion that it was you who donated it? and B) Assume it was the same candle? As previous posters have said, you could have liked it and bought a similar one. Sounds like she was looking for an excuse for her poor work.

I don’t understand why you didn’t just bin something you belive to be carcinogenic? You want your colleagues to be exposed?

Your behaviour is extremely odd on multiple levels.