C’mon. Gift cards suck. Restaurant gift cards are worse. Nothing at Olive Garden costs $20 or $50. They’re a goddamn marketing gimmick, and they work. You either get stuck paying $10 or $15 over, leaving a crap tip, leaving a great tip (in the case of a $50) or getting stuck with four or five Olive Garden bucks. I can imagine using 5 target dollars or 5 mcdonald’s dollars, but $5 at the olive garden?
And it’s not that it’s expensive, it’s overpriced. $10 for spaghetti? An 8 year old could make spaghetti, if they could reach the stove.
If I give it to you, then it’s yours. If it’s yours, and you want to give it to someone, then it is a gift of something that is yours given to someone else, and now it’s theirs!
Some people seem to have a lot of trouble with this concept.
Okay Tris, I sure can’t argue with that logic, but let’s explore that a bit further if we can:
I like you enough that I want to give you a gift
I like you enough that I hope the gift will please you in that it relates to something you do which I admire. (In this case your penmanship/calligraphy)
I present you with said gift and you thank me for it and tell me you will enjoy using it.
A few weeks later I see said gift (okay, the fountain pen) in the hand of someone else who tells me it was given him by you.
Based on what you wrote and as I understand it, it should not bother me that the gift I gave you was re-gifted, because it was now yours to do with as you pleased.
If this is correct, then I have to tell you I admire your composure, because I could not (and didn’t) feel that way about it.
This isn’t meant to criticize your opinion on re-gifting, just stating my position, and as I said, I cannot argue with your logic.
Quasimodem, the story you gave us is an example of exactly how not to re-gift. The person you gave the fountain pen to did two major things wrong:
Gave the present to someone who you came into some form of contact with on a regular basis, thus making it possible that you might know the pen was re-gifted;
Gave a distinctive present–an atypical present, one that obviously had her in mind–as a re-gift to someone who might innocently use it or show it in your presence.
If the person you’d given the pen to had auctioned it off on eBay, or given it to a Goodwill in another state, or had re-gifted it to someone you didn’t know at all, you wouldn’t be so offended. You wouldn’t know the difference. She wouldn’t have been hurtful or rude at all in giving away your gift that way, precisely because you’d be hurt if you found out.
Think of things you’ve gotten from your Great Aunt Frootloop, or whoever, who really meant well but whose gift you were never going to use or appreciate. What do you do with something like that? Of course, you’re going to smile, say thank you, and then either stash it in the back of a closet forever or find some way to unload it. Of course, you don’t want Aunt Frootloop to know that you hid her present away or gave it to the Salvation Army. You don’t want to let on that you did anything but love her present to pieces. But it’s the letting on, or letting her find out, that would be rotten–not the re-gifting itself.
And, Quasimodem–Don’t think I’m not sympathetic to you, here. I can understand how you felt the way you did. I think it stinks that the woman you gave the pen to did something so thoughtless. I feel for you.
It’s just that I don’t think that experiences like yours mean that any re-gifting is wrong.