Flakiness/Not contributing to work gifts

[Truthfully555]

Well I am getting sick of flakers. At my work theres a mix of men and women, probably a little more men 6:4-7:3. Anyway, I'm getting rather a negative impression of female colleagues and it's making me think this a female trait. I've been in a group of 5-6 workers for 10years. Every year or two someone leaves or moves to other positions/locations in the company where we no longer see/work with them but I'm happy to stay. As I'm the senior I will organise leave gifts and there's a predictable pattern that the women either sign the card but never offer to contribute or offer but flake. I never have this with the men. Men are almost falling over themselves to do the right thing and not to appear mean or cheap. Well, gifts are usually in the region of £15-20 it's typically something small, card plus chocs or some small gesture which means divided between 4-5 it really a tiny contribution for each person. As it's a small amount when people offer but don't come through I just ignore it, but after years of this I decided to follow up on an offer and the response was radio silence. Now again, a girl says she'll pay end of week. It never happens. A week passes I don't mention it. Another week passes, I send a message "oh sorry I forgot to send my bank details", she says she'll do it payday. Nothing. Next week comes says she was going to give change but instead will just do transfer. Another week passes. I would never get this level of faffing around from a guy and I wonder if she's really that scatter brained or her offer is disingenuous and she's just expecting me not to call her on it. She's 30 not 70, has no kids or family to worry about. Maybe something is going on in her life, but don't we all have something going on? I even made it clear in message to others for collection that it's completely voluntary if they want to contribute and the message was in individual PMs not a group chat. Why has not one woman ever contributed? Do we need strong emotional connections to put our hands in our pockets now? Why is it so difficult to simply give because ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

It's not 15-20 pounds each, it's in total. If a gift were being bought it's hard to think of much less that could be given.

Unless there are very special circumstances (such as someone ill in hospital) I think staff collections are a "racket" and do not hesitate to say so. I have never contributed for people I dont know. If people wish to buy a gift privately for a colleague, fine. I cant tell staff how to spend their money. However as a manager I forbade them in my workplace in the sense of one member hawking round their colleagues asking for money. I see it as a form of bullying.

I also feel the same about being asked to sponsor someone's son/daughter to do XXX or to support some pet charitable cause. I have my own causes I contribute to and thats a private matter.

A young grand niece of mine started in a workplace and was asked to contribute £10 to someones leaving present. When she explained politely that she had not yet been there long enugh to get her first month's salary and she did not have £10 spare she was told "Go to the cash machine". On my advice she went to HR and told them she felt bullied and humiliated. A few days later a memo went around that all such staff collections were now prohibited.

I'd not have them sign the card unless they contribute

I own a business if someone leaves or it’s for something special I buy the gift on behalf of everyone (and sign it from the team). No way I would expect people to put their hands in their pockets.

maybe the women sensibly don’t want to fork out money for someone they’ll never see again when they have other things to spend their money on.

Nobody is obliged to donate to work collections. Is it nice to do? Sure. But I only donate to people who I actually speak to and like.

It's not up to you to decide that someone else should donate because they don't have kids. You don't know their full financial situation. And even if you did, they can still just... not add to the collection and that's fine too!

Fun little office things like this are only fun while they're optional. Once you start pushing people to do it, it just becomes a burden.

A serious lot of assumptions about age, forgetfulness, family status, respect or feelings about colleagues, willingness of people to be badgered about people leaving, to name just a few.

I even made it clear in message to others for collection that it's completely voluntary if they want to contribute and the message was in individual PMs not a group chat.

There you go then.
It's completely voluntary.
Whether you give or not, people will see that as no reasons being needed. You can turn the possible ones over in your own head and judge away if you wish, or just note and move on.

Sorry, I read your ratios as number of people and just didn't update my facts when you then put your group size. Forget the bit about wondering if it's appropriate on the basis of too many people.

The only example I have where I've been privy to what's given by whom was a small office based team, 4 men 5 women. Myself and another women organized every gift situation (one person's wife died, and 3 leaving dos over about 4 years). Everyone gave to the widow. 2 men didn't give to any of the leaving dos while they and I were there).

But in all the teams I've worked in where there were whip rounds for anything, none of them were organized by men. In most places it's been either the roll of the office manager (always female) or something that someone on the team did organically, again, always female. In two offices, when it was the manager that did it when I started, she left and a man took over, the male manager didn't organize. In one case a woman in the office took over and in the other it just stopped.

I'm not sure how that helps you, though. All these are, yours and mine, are anecdotes. Individual data points. It shouldn't surprise you, even if men do tend to give more often than women, that there are some examples where they do not. It would be truly extraordinary if there were no contradictory examples.

I retired last year and I was given a bottle of rum. The reason they chose rum is because I told someone I don't really like spirits but I don't mind the taste of rum. Whoever chose the rum must have thought that spiced rum would be nice. The problem was, spiced rum doesn't taste like rum, it tastes of vanilla. And I don't like vanilla.

Complete waste of money. Most of these gifts are. It's better for people to spend their own money on things they know that will make them happy than trying to guess what will make someone else happy and then them having to pretend that they're pleased. I don't like champagne, it's an unpleasant sour drink.

Simple solution, stop doing leaving presents. I thought these were a thing of the past tbh you must be one of the last holdouts.