I’d be bummed. I mean, not over the Secret Santa thing but that someone would use a company sponsored (I’m assuming the department pays for dinner) event organized on company time that is supposed to be a team building exercise to play really stupid little power games. And call me petty, but I might go to the department manager and make sure he realizes that this petty shit happened so that this woman is never burdened with having to put together a team building activity in the future. Either build the team, or don’t bother with the team building activity.
Because these things have an objective - that’s why businesses do them. And her act had the opposite effect of meeting the objective - AND WAS INTENDED TO - unless, she was just so incompetent that she could track eight people on slips of paper.
I’d make sure the department manager understand it isn’t about getting cheated out of the Thomas Kinkaide 2007 calendar, or a great candle - that your issue is the misuse of company time and resources.
My company doesn’t do this sort of thing much. Sometimes we do mass mailing lunches and stuff for coworkers. But the team I work with is spread all over the world - the person I work closest with is in Colorado - I’m in Minnesota - so the whole “department lunch” thing isn’t really functional.
Or, maybe since the OP was out that day, there was one extra name in the hat (the OP’s) and people didn’t feel as if they had the “right” to opt him in on an activity that costs money, waiting for him to enlist. New and Improved, had you returned to work on SS-drawing day to find that a $20 commitment to Secret Santa had been made in your name, what would your reaction have been? Pleased that they thought to include you or irritated because they just “spent” $20 of your money w/o your approval?
Because, frankly, the other scenario implies that the entire department was in on it (the conspiracy of silence). And if that’s the case, now I’m wondering what you’ve done to make yourself so unpopular that every single one of your co-workers chose to publicly humiliate you during a company-sponsored Christmas dinner. :eek:
Using Occams razor, it’s just easier to believe that this was all a mistake somehow compounded by the fact that you missed Secret Santa planning day. Hell, same thing happened to me: I’m in the family-owned business but I was somehow left out of last March’s birthday list. It wasn’t intentional, it was partly caused by the fact that I never filled out some electronic form or other, but I sure didn’t get upset about it. Things happen.
Its eight people. The logistics here aren’t difficult. Your choices come down to: The organizer was being petty or the organizer was incompetent. Organizing a Secret Santa gift exchange for eight people does not leave a lot of room for mistakes.
Yeah, maybe he was gone and they didn’t want to commit him to money - which is why you make sure to send out the Secret Santa note “hey, everyone who is interested should sign up - gifts will be exchanged at the party” a week before the drawing. Or, when you notice that someone is out of the office and they will be the ONLY PERSON without a gift, you delay before drawing names. Or ask everyone to bring a gift that can go to anyone - maybe a silly white elephant sort of thing. Or drop the tradition. Or you make sure you have an extra gift so the guy who wasn’t in the office doesn’t feel excluded. Perhaps, most importantly, if there is someone you don’t get along with in the office, you take EXTRA effort to make sure they don’t get left out of a team building event you are organizing.
I got news for you. If you run a secret santa gift thing then it’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone who ought to get involved gets the message.
You can’t possibly expect the missing person to assume there is something that NO fucking one is talking about is going on.
It was not the OP’s fault and the person who ran the SS is an assclamp.
It was clearly done on purpose to exclude the OP, the other (innocent) co-workers might have assumed that the OP’s name was in the hat, how would they know otherwise, it’s a fucking secret! The last name in the hat would have went to the OP when she came back…
Or, they might have assumed she opted out and didn’t want to talk about it around her since they felt she didn’t want to play.
And FTR, I like Secret Santas and even the Yankee Swap (which they call something else up here) in the right kind of environment. Around here, they do it with the staff of the entire upstate department - most of whom you don’t see for a year. So there’s no fostering resentment*, you just walk away.
But leaving you out when there was only 8 people? No way. And opening them in front of you? Tacky, tacky, rude!
If the other coworkers hadn’t known it was a secret, I have no idea how it could have gone completely without discussion.
Can you maybe talk to one of your other coworkers about it, maybe someone who IS a friend?
I agree that the party planner should have made sure that no one was excluded from the opportunity to participate in the SS exchange and it’s understandable that he was offended. Perhaps it WAS a simple oversight on her part, in which case, upon realizing her social gaffe, she should have apologized and offered him her place at the gift exchange. It’s a freaking $10 gift and it’s Christmas. Grow up, people.
And that includes the OP. I am absolutely sure that my feelings would have been hurt had this happened to me, even though I might have opted out anyway because I need another $10 ornament like I need another hole in my head. I’m equally sure that I wouldn’t have expected the entire group to forego their gift exchange because I wasn’t invited. Nor would I have wished everyone a miserable Xmas because they incorrectly assumed that everyone had been included.
The identities of “Secret Santa’s” are, of course, kept secret. The fact that there is a “Secret Santa” game is not. The fact that there is a Christmas party was not a secret, nor was the organizers name a secret. If the OP cared enough to find out, there were plenty of ways to find out. (This is doubly true if the OP had been to Christmas parties with this company before, and knew that there was a traditional SS exchange).
Anyway, insisting on the “innocence” of the co-workers does not match what was said in the first post. New and Improved blames the co-workers as much as the organizer:
So, we’re led to believe that the entire office was in on the dis (which is not “passive-aggressive” behavior, in my opinion). Like I said… if true, what did the OP do to inspire such hatred?
That would definitely suck. We do it here every year, but it’s a bit different. We bugger off around noon for a Christmas luncheon (which is tomorrow for us) at a semi-swanky joint. After we’ve all ordered and are waiting for the chef to prepare some 20+ meals, the executive assistant gets us all to draw numbers. She then randomly picks people to pull a number out of a hat and read it out; whomever’s number is called gets one of the gifts. There are never enough gifts to go around – there are maybe enough for half of us – so there’s always an element of chance involved, and nobody feels left out. Disappointed at not having their number called maybe, but never left out. at least.
That’s what I was thinking- Small offices like that are full of nasties. It would not surprise me in the LEAST that they would exclude the OP for whatever reason. Sucks. I worked in an enviornment like that and it was awful.
I think a much more reasonable interpretation is that the coworkers simply didn’t know until the last minute. Who counts slips in a hat? And the silence in the meantime may have just been that people don’t generally talk about such things during business hours. In our office, where around 15-20 participate, it’s almost never discussed. And during the lunch, it could be that no one felt it was their place to speak up about it. Let’s hope that at least a few of them felt bad for the OP.
I agree. We had 3 weeks in between the invitation and the actual party and we didn’t discuss the gift exchange at all, though we eat together practically every day. I’m with the OP being ticked off at the organizer; he loses my support on the “it’s a huge conspiracy and fuck them all.” attitude. I just can’t comprehend 7 adults being so overtly mean to another person.
Of course if that, indeed, is the case, then maybe superman needs to exam what the hell he’s doing to alienate everyone in his office.
I haven’t done secret santa things in years - hate that sort of thing. But the few I’ve been involved with don’t involve a lot of discussion. The identity of your secret santa is supposed to be secret - and if only one gift is exchanged at the end (instead of “oh, look, my secret santa left me a candy cane with pipecleaner antlers, googly eyes and a little red pom pom!!! I wonder what dollar store crap they will leave me tomorrow!!!”), there isn’t a lot to talk about. You can’t talk about whose name you drew. You can’t talk about what you bought them. So what is there to say “I’m so excited we are doing a Secret Santa this year?”
At my last, mostly unlamented job, we had the Yankee Swap. It got vicious. You see, there was this purse that was highly sought after. I could have cared less about the purse, but I wanted this light that looked like the Las Vegas sign. Since my friend and cubemate was one of the ones after the purse, I signaled her to steal the sign, I stole the purse, and we traded. And now we’re both working somewhere else. Lucky us.
-Lil
Something tells me that they don’t think about you very often, and will probably muster up the courage to enjoy some holiday cheer despite your curse.
Why there is no excuse for deliberately excluding you, if that is indeed what happened… do you not talk to a single fucking person in your office?! I’m going to hazard a guess that you someone how managed to be the odd person out long before secret santa time.
