Okay, assume you are a passive-aggressive person, and you dearly want to get back at some relatives. What presents can you give that will appear on first glance to be really, really nice…and end up leaving the recipient wishing that s/he’d never gotten it?
For example:
Give a portable satellite radio receiver. Nifty new e-toy, yes? Of course, they’ll have to pony up the subscription fee month after month or it’s worthless.
If they have an athletic child, give them the starting gear for a new sport or introductory lessons. A pair of hockey skates can lead to years of predawn ice rink visits.
A set of beautiful copper pans and a hanging rack leads to never-ending polishing or the stuff starts looking bad.
Other suggestions?
Nice clothing that absolutely must be dry-cleaned or it looks like crap.
Electronic stuff that takes special batteries that are ridiculously expensive to replace.
Tickets to a theatre that is just far enough away to border on inconvenient – they have to pay for travel and hotels.
Slightly different, but something that has its own special corner in hell: Aggravatingly noisy toys for their children. Or a singing bird clock. God, I hate the bird clock in the kitchen, but my mother loves it. She’s replaced it three times, she loves it so much.
A gift certificate to a expensive store not in their town. The gift certificate should be enough money to appear to be generous, but the store should be expensive enough that the gift certificate covers only about 30% or less of any item in the store.
One of my friends once gave another friend a live chicken in a box. The only problem was he lived in an apartment in urban Los Angeles.
The guy sat around for a couple days with a chicken in his apartment, trying to figure out what the hell to do with it. He eventually drove to a distant suburb in the dead of night and set it free.
For those of us looking to annoy on a budget, a nice shiny new razor will fit the bill. They sell the handle part for next to nothing (indeed, I got a Schick Intuition, in the mail, unsolicited and for free from my grocery store’s loyalty/discount program—it sucked), but replacement blade cartriges are breathtakingly expensive.
I recommend the Intuition for the ladies, which features a razorblade surrounded by this cake of of a soapy-type substance which rubs off on your skin as you shave (and once it’s gone, I guess you have to buy a new blade, eh?). For the gentleman, go with the Mach 87, or whatever they’re up to now. Not only are the replacements expensive, in three months or so, they’ll come out with the Mach 88, and the Mach 87 blades will no longer be available and he’ll have to buy a new razor.
I was just the recepient of a betta fish at my companies white elephant exchange. Everyone kept dropping him and since I am mondo responsible, here I am. So now I’ve ponied up for water conditioner, a fish net, more food and the list keep growing. Dammit.
If you are very wealthy, extravagant, and passive-aggressive, you can buy them a house in a neighborhood they can’t afford to live in. The property taxes and insurance will slowly bankrupt them. Unless they turn around and sell the house quickly and keep the money. But they won’t, because they’re greedy status-seekers.
