So I walked into the kitchen at work today, and taped to the fridge is a nicely-printed sign announcing the imminent arrival of Baby Spencer. Come and celebrate with Jennifer and Steve in the conference room on such-and-such a date. Yadda yadda. Baby Spencer has his own website! Go to where you will also find links to his gift registry.
One: I’ve been there for more than four years. I’ve never met anyone named Jennifer or Steve at the company. I don’t know which one of them works there.
Two: Is it customary to invite strangers to celebrate your fecundity by eating strawberries and melon chunks and grapes from Publix?
Three: You two are unknowns to me. Do you really think I care enough to go to a website where the object is to get me to put money in a registry for baby stuff, or better yet, just buy you something and show up at your party with it?
Am I being a tad harsh here, or is this the height of arrogance on the part of Steve and Jennifer, whoever they are?
If you don’t know either of the parents then I think it’s reasonable to ignore the whole thing. There has to be a limit somewhere. This morning I was asked to contribute to a farewell present for “Kim”. I didn’t know who Kim was - in fact I didn’t even know whether Kim was male or female. I declined to contribute.
No, you’re not being harsh. Fuck these people who expect you to buy them shit just because they happen to pop out a kid or get married or whatever. Asking for gifts—which is effectively what they’re doing—is the height selfishness.
Whenever i hear about shit like this, i really feel for people who work in offices where this sort of crap is common practice, and where there can even be negative consequences for refusing to participate.
Well poop, I thought I was going to get to give a congratulations. Instead, it seems I need to buy that book of etiquette for which Jennifer and Steve have registered and so desperately need.
The website for the baby is okay I guess, letting everybody who cares keep up to date, though I personally wouldn’t have printed up a flyer and scattered it around. The registry link is Tacky. Am I the only one who learned you ought not include registry information in the invitations? Perhaps I mis-read that section in Amy Vanderbilt’s Big Book o’ Etiquette.
Someone asking strangers to buy stuff for their baby is incredibly rude and selfish.
I think the only thing I ever saw that was worse was once, when I was still living with my parents, one of the neighbors up the street distributed flyers to every house, including ours, that said something like:
Dear neighbor, I really need a vacation but can’t afford it. I need $3000 so I can go to Florida. Any amount you can donate is appreciated, Thanks, ect.
We could.not.believe. she had the gall to do that. Especially to ask us. We had one, beat-up old used car; wore clothes from discount stores; and had never been on vacation anywhere. This idiot had 3 shiny new cars, always wore designer clothes and was always bragging about the exotic places she had been to.
A week later, she actually came around to ask people if they had thought about donating. My dad told her that hell would freeze over before he gave her a penny. The look on her face was priceless.
But yeah, people who do those sort of things need a slap, or even a punch.
Or Amy Vanderbilt’s Big Book o’ Etiquette. Has anyone ever done that? Bought an etiquette book for some poor slob who obviously needs one? Or do you think folks like this are so dense they wouldn’t pick up on the hint?
Yay! I get to tell my story about the mystery invitation to a bbq/baby shower. In June I received an invitation by mail to a combination bbq/baby shower. For real, it said on the invitation bbq/baby shower. An interesting concept, I thought but I had no idea who the happy couple was, nor did I know the name of the person who had mailed me the invitation. I kept looking at the invitation going but just could not come up with a reason why these people would know me. I thought maybe they were friends of ACBG (the current squeeze for those of you who have been remiss in keeping up with the minutiae of my life) and maybe he had given them my address so that I would get an invitation and go with him, but it wasn’t anybody he knew either. So, I finally decided they were sending out invitations to random addresses.
The invitation included a response card so, being the ever so polite person that I am, sent back the card stating I would not be attending. Ok, I really, really wanted to state I would not be attending because I have no idea who any of you people are but that would have been impolite, and well, see above. A few days later I got a phone call from a friend who was quite disappointed to hear I would not be attending the bbq/baby shower. AH! I think, the mystery shall be unraveled. Turns out it the mommy to be (now the mommy that is) is her husband’s daughter. See, my friend remarried a year ago, and while I am quite chummy with her and her new husband, I do not know his kids. I told her I wasn’t because I have no idea who these people are. After she reminded me, I realized I had indeed met the happy couple once, at my friend’s and husband’s wedding. My friend told me she had given them my address because she thought I’d have a good time hanging out at the bbq/baby shower because there’d be lots of food, beer and all that good stuff that makes a good time a good time. So, I guess her motive was good but an invitation from pretty much complete strangers was just so bizarre to me.
That being said, I love our policy at work on gift giving. Be it baby, birthday, or whatever, the employee will get a gift card for $20.00 from somewhere appropriate to whatever the occasion is. For my birthday I got a $20.00 gift card to my favorite Italian restaurant. A great gift and me and the squeeze had a nice dinner. If somebody just has an urge to give the person with the occasion something else then he or she is welcome to do so but there is no collection of money from the entire staff. Ever. Og bless that policy!
I’m glad it wasn’t just me who thought it was rude and slightly obnoxious for these two to ask strangers to buy them stuff for their baby.
I mean, if they were close personal friends of ours, sure, my wife would have got an invitation, and she would go to the shower and take a gift. But seeing as how I don’t even know who they are, I don’t see why they think they even merit a card (which they won’t get from me, either!)
I like the idea about giving them the Big Ol’ Book Of Etiquette! But I think the intent would go right over their heads.
Call me pessimistic, but I’m not big on buying baby stuff until the baby is actually BORN*.
But yes…tacky would be the word for that flyer.
*Og forbid that anything go wrong…but the last thing anyone needs when they’ve lost a baby is to have to write thank you letters for gifts or return presents they’ll no longer require. I learnt that from my mother, she told me that after my baby sister died, dealing with a house full of baby stuff was incredibly upsetting.
From what I recall, the first rule of etiquette for a shower (wedding or baby) is you don’t throw it for yourself. It’s supposed to be a friend or non-immediate family member.
My second day working at my last job (office data entry job, with cubicles and shit) I was cornered by the office social planner and asked to contribute five bucks (not “anything I can spare,” it had to be five bucks) for Alicia’s birthday fund. When I told her it was my second day, and that I didn’t know who Alicia even was, she said Alicia was a manager and pointed her out. Now, this was a low-paying job. I cleared just over six bucks an hour as a drone, meanwhile, the managers probably made three times that. The nerve of one manager asking me to pony up almost an hour’s pay for another manager made me want to throw up.
I don’t carry money around with me, so I couldn’t have given anything anyway, which I gave as my excuse for not giving (since I didn’t want to get started on the classism… I’d have been thrown right out if I would have started on that). Course, I’m sure she didn’t believe I didn’t have any money on me, since the look on my face told her I wouldn’t have contributed no matter what. On the plus side, she never asked me to contribute again.
I get quite a few e-mail invites for showers of one sort or another (though not the naked kind) here at work. Sometimes I know the person (in which case I usually attend), sometimes not. Sometimes a select group of people comprises the invite list (in which case a reply is usually requested); sometimes it’s sent to a whole damn department or staff. The one that killed me, though, was one for which the guest list consisted of a huge mailing list, and the invitation (which included registry information) said, “Feel free to bring your lunch!”
In other words, you ain’t even getting a melon ball, suckah.
Are you sure that Jennifer and Steve actually put up the sign? It could be that they have an incredibly rude friend/coworker. Which would be very awkward for them!
In my office, it’s usually not the expecting party who sends out the invitations. Instead, it’s another coworker or one of the admins who sends out the invites–and they always send it to some giant mailing list that covers people in other states! No. I’m not going to Colorado to celebrate the upcoming arrival of Baby Smith.
Yes, it was her. I asked around today who the heck Jennifer and/or Steve might be. As it turns out, she recently came to work there, and I have said “hello” to her in the hall exactly once. So she hasn’t worked there long enough to make any of the kind of friends you can ask to buy you baby stuff on five days’ notice. As a matter of fact, she is the reason why we lost a really, really good employee in that department. She was rude and nasty to this girl, often enough that it made her quit rather than try to stay and advance in the company.
It seems the poor taste angle is still valid. And a couple of other deficiencies that I could throw in as well.
Unbelievable. I thought for sure that this was somehow a misunderstanding, that another co-worker had set it up. I just cannot fathom doing such a thing.
I just have to say that the woman in this anecdote has to be the pushiest, tackiest person I have ever heard of. Un-freaking-believable. I have been watching “Kathy Griffin’s Life on the D List” and thought she was ballsy. She doesn’t even come close to your old neighbor.
I feel it is poor manners to register for ANYTHING. It irks the bejeezus out of me when people do bridal registries. Somehow society thinks it’s OK to beg for gifts and cash? It’s OK to assume people are going to give you stuff? It’s rude and it sucks. Shame on anyone who does this.
Setting up a website and inviting strangers to pony up is even worse.
but just could not come up with a reason why these people would know me. I thought maybe they were friends of ACBG (the current squeeze for those of you who have been remiss in keeping up with the minutiae of my life) and maybe he had given them my address so that I would get an invitation and go with him, but it wasn’t anybody he knew either. So, I finally decided they were sending out invitations to random addresses.