Am I miserable for not wanting to do secret santa at work?

[Nattyandcatty]

This will be my third year Christmas at this company and for the past two years, I have done secret Santa. I don’t want to do it this year, I find it pointless. It’s only £10 but it’s just the same crap every year. I don’t need another fluffy pair of socks or body wash gift set. I don’t know these people well enough to know what they’d really like, so all the gifts end up being generic or tat and I just can’t be bothered. We do have this online website where you can write a list of the things you like and create a wish list, but no one uses it. I just told my colleague that I don’t want to participate this year and she looked at me like I’d grown a second head and doesn’t understand why. She said she loves secret Santa but I’d just rather but presents for people that I choose. AIBU? Am I a Scrooge?

No it's so boring especially when you don't them properly. Its better when you can have a laugh and get jokey presents

I organise our department’s secret Santa and you’ve summed it up perfectly with this post.
Still enjoy it though.

YANBU. Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. However, I think Secret Santa is awful! After that year when you were a new employee, I commend you for ever taking part in Secret Santa again too. You tried to put some thought into it and clearly none of your colleagues knew much about the woman you were buying for (or worse did know she had allergies and didn’t tell you, so she’d receive stuff that was unusable 😳).

@FillerTrackOnTheAlbumOfLife (and what a great username that is) was spot on in the third post up from the bottom of page 1. I’ve seen every single 1 of those 6 things mentioned happen with work Secret Santas.
Also have to mention @Dottiethelurcher’s post, which noted some of the same things. One of the worst examples I saw was someone thinking their Secret Santa gift was rubbish when the giver had put thought and more effort into it than anyone else.
It didn’t help the budget was “strictly £5.”

My friend had managed to find a good bit of memorabilia on eBay for the football team this arsehole colleague supported. It was a framed, signed photo of the team when they were doing well. She only paid £5 for it as she was the only bidder. It came in a nice presentation box too. The ungrateful arse proceeded to slag said gift off right in front of my friend, which really upset her. He didn’t stop to think the giver might be within earshot.

I was also roped into it in the past at places I’d only just joined. The worst one was the year I’d been badgered into agreeing to take part when I knew my last working day was Christmas Eve. They did Secret Santa on the 20th. Guess who didn’t receive anything? Yep, me. I didn’t say anything.

When I worked in education, we started a secret santa and for the first couple of years it was fun, but then it slowly turned toxic, aimed at people personally, it finally got stopped, but these were teachers, psychologists, St and sen staff involved in early years, quite scary because of the sheer warped minds of some of these staff.

She loves it, and that's fine, but as an adult she should probably understand that not everyone feels the way she does. Of course it's not 'miserable' to want to opt out of something you don't particularly enjoy, especially when it costs you time and money to take part in it.

You can do this at any time of the year.
Why does it have to be 25 December.

Just more brainwashing. More pressure. Making people think they have to buy something because it's Christmas and assuming everyone celebrates it 😄

They can be fun. If it is not your thing then that’s fine too.

I actually like secret Santa because where I work we have a larger team and we don’t know an awful lot about all the people, so we make a point of doing it as team building. So in the lead up to the deadline you have to slyly make conversation and find out their interests. It’s not frowned upon though not to participate.

I'm a Scrooge but I do quite enjoy a secret Santa, I do like and know my colleagues though.
We set a £15 spend.
Just buy a bottle of wine and be done with it, your making it a bigger deal than it is.

@narcASD Just buy a bottle of wine and be done with it, your making it a bigger deal than it is.

Perfect example. I don’t drink. (And neither do lots of people)

If you gave a bottle of wine to an alcoholic that would be a thoroughly thoughtless shit gift.

A few years ago, at a new company, I was asked if I wanted to do secret Santa. It was made clear it was a bad idea to refuse. “Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to join? You are the only person… “ All I wanted to do was buy myself a nice lipstick. I was spending upwards of £200 a week on childcare, as a single parent. I had to buy someone a pile of old crap instead - a “joke secret santa” instead of the new lipstick I fancied. There was a big pile of landfill like “joke” toupees etc and most were chucked to one side. It was often the women with childcare bills who didn’t really fancy these secret Santa arrangements. And nobody felt okay to say no.

You do not know what’s going on in people’s lives and how much they need a tenner.

see it as a ten pound charge to not be seen as the miserable bastard who won’t join in

It’s a bit of fun, and not taking part might draw unwanted attention. How about changing it so the gifts have a theme of some sort? If I don’t know the person very well I buy a 10.00 voucher and wrap it with a chocolate tree decoration on the bow. One year knowing a colleague liked watching Who Wants to Be a Millionaire I bought them the quiz book from the series and a lottery scratch card. They won 20.00 and bought treats for the team.

My colleague received a £10 Tesco Voucher, they were raging.

Person that would probably have been the best present Secret Santa ever gave me.

I would be very happy with that!

Best one I ever saw was with a group of scouts, it was £5 secret Santa but you bought your own gift. Every single child was ecstatic 😆. I’d definitely join in with that.

I don't have any family now, but I did use to love going Christmas shopping. So buying my Secret Santa present is the only thing I have to Christmas shop for really. It is hard trying to find something for someone you don't really know and I'm that well meaning but always buys crap presents colleague! A colleague still moans many years later about the crap present he got one year that I'd bought (obviously he doesn't know it was from me) but I genuinely thought he'd like it! Now our team gets anonymous presents so you don't know who you are buying for which makes it even harder. The gift I bought last year has become the stuff of legend it was so badly received - but honestly when I saw it I thought it was fun (it wasn't rude or inappropriate). Oh well. I've bought this year's Secret Santa already and ChatGPT has told me it's good, even if it is a bit retro.

How about making an alternative suggestion, instead of secret Santa everyone guys a gift upto £10 for a child or elderly person to donate to a local food bank or charity collection? Or do the same with food. Staff can get around and wrap the gifts or make up hampers to deliver.

If you really want to buy a present head into a supermarket with a giving tree and pick one of the tags off. I enjoy this every year. And if you’re in doubt ask a staff member if you think the gift would be well received. Last year I picked a 12yo boy and was deciding between a big nerf gun on sale or a set of boys smellies, I asked about 3 different staff members and they all agreed the nerf gun would be more fun. I really hope he liked it.

We have a rabid Christmas loving department head who insists on secret Santa and all the other paraphernalia. Not a normal secret Santa though where you know who you're buying for, but you have to buy a random gift that could be suitable for anyone in the department.

I absolutely loathe having to pretend I want to socialise with a group of people I have nothing in common with, and hoped I would be on annual leave the week she's insisting on doing it. No such luck, she's changed the date. Thing is, if it was just the nice people in the department I'd quite enjoy it.

But as per usual the domineering boss and her sidekicks are dictating how we 'celebrate'. I really hope the jobs market improves next year...

I do love this idea. If our place did it, I would definitely take part because you can get some fab wee gifty stuff at charity shops.

It was a case of worse the better I was delighted with my book of patterns for homemade knitted swimwear

I loath it. I do it to make the people who like it happy - they all seem so thrilled. When they are opened I volunteer to do any rather than attend. I then pass on my fluffy socks to a charity or a food bank if it’s hygiene products.

I really hate all this forced workplace jollity.

Go to work. Be polite. Go home. Then end. Don't make people with wildly different salaries and family constraints spend their own money on landfill tat or dinners out at weekends.

Oh last year I spent £16 on an orchid and got fake tattoo sleeves from Temu in return. Which went in the bin. So, some poor person in some factory had to make that shit, it had to be delivered and someone had to wrap it and it really made me wonder what the knock on affects on the climate is for this crap.

I love Christmas. I'm not that bah humbug. I just hate people being forced to participate for [insert stupid reason relating to pseudo ideas about workplace harmony and good will]

You could make a point of knitting swimming costumes for people you really hate 😅

I've seen vintage pictures of knitted swimwear drooping soggily, it looks so uncomfortable.