Just a small dilemma which I’d like a second opinion on. I’m in Office Secret Santa and have drawn a guy I like a lot. Not in that way, he’s just been very nice to me and to many other people as well. He really deserves a nice present but I’ve had a really hard time thinking of something good to give him. I finally came up with a good idea, but this would take me signicantly over the agreed budget for presents.
I do think that, in principle, these budgets should be stuck to in order to stop costs escalating and to make no one feel bad about not being able to afford to spend much in the already expensive Christmas season. Then again, it’s a really good present for a very deserving person. It’s also not at all ostentatiously expensive and, in fact, I don’t think many people here would actually realise I spent a bit more than I should have.
So. Do you think this is okay or should I get something cheaper but more lame?
I think that as long as it doesn’t look like you spent WAY more than the limit, it’s probably okay. If you’re in the general ballpark, no one will even notice.
It’s actually boring. I have a really nice bottle of wine and I know this guy would appreciate it. It’s a twelve euro bottle. The budget is ten euro but I might want to get a set of glasses that I could decorate to go with it to make it less boring which would be another four or so.
Only he, me and one or two others would care much about one wine or another. I think the rest of the office would assume it was 7 euro plonk. I think the recipient in question would certainly appreciate the wine was very good but he wouldn’t even necessarily know for sure it had to be pricey. You know how it is with wine, sometimes you can get lucky with very good wine on the cheap. It’s just that I did pay full whack in this case.
I don’t think going 20% over the suggested limit is a huge faux pas, especially if the extra expense is not obvious, and you know the recipient will really enjoy the gift. If you spent a lot extra, and let people know how much you’d spent, that would be wrong.
I think you can squeak by with that. It’s not like the price of the bottle is going to come up, and if anyone bothers to estimate the price, it’ll be within a euro or so. Nobody’s going to worry about it.
I routinely lie about what Secret Santa presents cost. “I got this at Price Club” or “I bought it used.” Probably neither dodge will work for a bottle of wine, but “How much did it cost?” is one of those questions that doesn’t necessarily deserve a straight answer.
Yes, I was thinking of something like that this morning. I do get some bottles from my father the odd occasion that he gets from a wine club and that would have about halved the costs. If anyone calls me on it (and theoretically no one knows it was me anyway) I will say mysteriously that I have my “connections” to get good wine for reasonable prices.
It’s wrapped and under the tree now plus a cheap green and red polka dotted opener that’s a tongue in cheek present to the guy in question who’s a bit macho but has a sense of humour.
Damn. I was hoping what it came up as last post on the main message board it would indeed be “How bad is it to blow the Secret Santa”.
Apparently it’s too long (your title not Santa…Santa I don’t know about).
Anyway, I definitly think you can get away with it for the noted reasons…wine is something people are very unsure about the price of. So splash out.
You should be fine. The only ones that really stuck out at one of my jobs (the limit was probably $10-15) was the $40+ gift basket our people-pleaser supervisor gave one of us, and on the end of the spectrum the donation our big boss wrapped up for me. By donation, I mean something donated to the agency we worked for, which had a rule that staff could not take anything out of the donations. So the big cheese was too cheap to buy something, and broke agency rules. Grrr.
We have a Yankee swap this year with a $5-10 range limit but I may go over on a nice ornament. Something where folks won’t know the difference.
