Secret Santa With A Twist
My office is doing Secret Santa, but it’s not just the typical buy a present for a randomly chosen coworker type of Secret Santa. We have to buy three presents (~$5 each) for a randomly chosen coworker and somehow find a way to sneak those presents into the coworkers office without being seen on three separate occasions sometime between Dec 1 and 15. I’m pretty excited to see what kind of presents everyone is going to get, but also already stressed out about the possibility of getting caught sneaking into someone else’s office!
Anyway, if you have any ideas of what would make a good $5 present, I’m all ears!
Image Credit: Posted by allerleirau on Flickr.
Comments |6|
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Category: NaBloPoMo | rampant consumerism
Tags: Christmas, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo2009, presents, rampant consumerism, Secret Santa, tis the season
Tags: Christmas, NaBloPoMo, NaBloPoMo2009, presents, rampant consumerism, Secret Santa, tis the season
Sounds… well, sounds like something could go wrong. And honestly, Secret Santa is frustrating enough without adding new "twists."
But Office Deliver The Flag x 3? Glad it's not me.
Hee hee – it is Office Deliver the Flag X 3?
Why do you find Secret Santa frustrating? I find it fun! I really liked it when I was in Joanne's lab, because we all knew each other really well and so could come up with creative presents that were very appropriate to the person. In my office now, I know a little bit about the people as we all have lunch together most days, but with $5 you can pretty much get generic gifts (Starbucks gift cards, chocolate, etc.).
Also, I should point out that it's optional, so anyone who doesn't want to participate doesn't have to and we are also putting together a food/presents basket through the Food Bank to give to a family in need.
I often find buying gifts for people quite a burden, because I want to get good gifts that are non-generic. If I was expected to get gifts for officemates who I only vaguely knew, I would find that extremely stressful, because even though the $5 limit pretty much guarantees you have to go generic, I would want to get something special and well-suited for the person and have my gift stand out.
Even when I know people well, I worry about finding good gifts for them.
So I find the whole notion of Secret Santa completely off-putting. It's hard enough buying gifts for the people I already know and care about, let alone adding people to the mix and throwing in arbitrary price limits (which are obviously necessary in the context of buying things for officemates but still make things that much more complicated).
Oh, and yeah it might be "optional" but if you didn't participate, and most others did, you could easily face some weirdness there, too.
Yeah, that's true. Fortunately there's no weirdness about it here – only about half the people are doing it. Not everyone celebrates Christmas, so it would be weird to expect people who don't to have to participate.
My Dad's office did this one year, but with small gifts that would lead up to a larger one.
His partner in crime (the other fat/oil chemist) Elaine pulled his name. She kept leaving nuts and bolts in his office; the big gift was a 'robogrip', which was new that year and with which he was OBSESSED. It was a riot.