You really are all getting pissy over very little. Just say you’d rather not participate if you don’t want to. As for bitching about gifts, try living in a gift giving culture - talk about mountains of crap that I accumulated whilst in Japan, and the amount of gifts that I had to buy for my office and schools etc.
I collected around 40 hankerchiefs - I took them with me to Vietnam and gave them away there, I had around 20 soft toys - I gave them to kids that visited my house, I had masses of other stuff that I gave away to whomever wanted it.
If gift receiving and buying are your biggest source of bad mood inducing occurances, I would guess that you don’t cope with people too well.
It’s not necessarily all about you!
I put thought into the gift I gave…but I knew the girl, and could make a decent guess at what she might like. The girl with my name I didn’t know from Kate, Katy or Katherine, and likely she as much of an idea what I might like as I would have for her–that is, absolutely none. So it was really just an affirmation that this girl knew nothing about me.
Go watch your movie. Christmas spirit is great. I just don’t think that being forced to buy a gift for someone I barely know, or receiving said gift, is very Christmas-y
Here’s what we do in my department as an OPTIONAL activity:
Buy a gift worth about $10 and wrap it. Put it in Santa’s office (it was mine last year just because I’m at the end of the hall and usually the last to arrive, so people can sneak in if they want to sneak). When you drop off the gift, write your name on a slip of paper and drop it in the hat. (An actual elf’s hat from the dollar store. Shoot me – I like the dollar store).
On the day of the exchange, the people who WANT to participate gather. A couple of people may have brought in cookies. The boss picks names out of the hat one at a time. When your name is picked, you take one of the packages and open it. Everyone gets a gift, after which anyone who wants to trade, can.
Gifts that have been given: a bottle of wine; a sundae set (bowls and toppings); good coffee; good chocolate; a gift certificate for the CD of your choice; book; calendar; remote-control robot-dinosaur (I got this and loved it); down lap robe; Magic Eight-Ball; etc.
It’s fun, it’s nice – and it’s completely optional.
You’re right. It’s not.
I’ve been plagued enough by “secret whatever” gift exchanges to the point where I would just as soon not participate. I don’t socialize with co-workers enough for them to know what I’d like, and I feel like a moocher if I just ask for a gift card. I assume co-workers feel the same.
That said, I’ve tried to opt out of these exchanges. I get shamed into playing along because I’m a “Scrooge” or a “Grinch” if I don’t. Since I have no desire to argue and it’s not worth standing my ground over, I just do it to get it over with.
And I get along with people just fine.
Robin
MelCI: As for bitching about gifts, try living in a gift giving culture - talk about mountains of crap that I accumulated whilst in Japan, and the amount of gifts that I had to buy for my office and schools etc.
Sounds like a nuisance. That’s why, IMHO, most of us don’t want the US to become a “gift giving culture” where people who don’t know each other’s tastes and aren’t particularly close nonetheless are expected to give each other presents.
Which is exactly why people in this thread are objecting to mandatory or high-pressure “Secret Santa” programs that operate in that very way. No, it’s not a big deal compared to world hunger or AIDS, but then, what is?
It’s one thing to not want to join in the game in the first place. You shouldn’t be forced to buy things for coworkers if you don’t want to, period.
But if you’ve decided to play the game, then be an adult about it. One of the people I work with decided he didn’t want to be a part of the (optional) Secret Santa anymore once he picked out a name of a coworker he doesn’t like. Very mature. And some others, instead of answering the “what sort of things do you enjoy” question, which is supposed to let you know what they’re like to help choose a cute little personal gift, just listed stores they want gift certificates from. :rolleyes:
I can see why people hate these things. I thought it would be fun, but now I’m scared to see who bought shitty gifts on purpose because they don’t like the person they picked. It was optional! If they didn’t want to be a part of it, why add their names to it? There was no pressure at all to join in!
I hope the SD Secret Santa works better than the one at work.
I don’t recall where anyone in this thread said that the work SS events were the “biggest sources of bad mood inducing occurances”.
The point is, forcing or coercing people into exchanging gifts is nonsense that defeats the entire purpose of giving gifts. And, yes, when someone sees fit to a) make it a friggin policy or b) twist my arm into giving a complete stranger or mere acquaintence a gift, it certainly is about me. I’m very generous to my friends, loved ones and various charities - I am certainly not a “Scrooge” or “Grinch” in any shape of the word. If anything, I’m overly free with my pursestrings.
I have no problems getting along with people at all. In fact, I’d daresay I’m always rather well-liked in my work settings, but thanks for your concern.
Jesus, what a bunch of grinches.
Look, someone is taking the time out to organize a fun little thing that helps make the job site a little more fun for everyone. It also helps people get to know each other, helps to make everyone more friendly, which makes each day go a little better.
Get off your damned couch, go buy a little present for someone, have some fun, for God’s sake. You don’t need to stand on your ‘rights’, or get all pissy about political correctness.
My office has a person who organizes bowling nights, secret santa programs, barbecues, kid’s Christmas parties, and all kinds of stuff. We’re lucky to have her. You spend a good chunk of your life on the job, why not make it a little more pleasurable?
I feel like pitting this pitting.
SS: Look, someone is taking the time out to organize a fun little thing that helps make the job site a little more fun for everyone.
Except in many cases, it obviously doesn’t. Why not skip the mandatory “socializing” that so many people find so tedious, or simply make it truly voluntary, instead of pressuring everyone to participate?
SS: My office has a person who organizes bowling nights, secret santa programs, barbecues, kid’s Christmas parties, and all kinds of stuff. We’re lucky to have her. You spend a good chunk of your life on the job, why not make it a little more pleasurable?
IIRC, you’re the boss at your office, right? Bosses often seem to believe that everybody likes this sort of mandatory socializing with co-workers. I’ve never really understood why.
SS: Get off your damned couch, go buy a little present for someone, have some fun, for God’s sake.
Oh yeah, nothing adds holiday cheer like the boss snarling at folks to have some fun and show a smiling face. :rolleyes:
It would be impossible to have a Secret Santa thing at my workplace. I mean, with just two people, it’s not going to be very difficult to work out who drew your name, is it? 
Sam, bite my ass.
I go to work to work. I am not interested in bowling nights, secret Santa programs, BBQs, luncheons or parties. If I want to socialize with my co-workers (who, as you pointed out, I spend way too much time with), I will make my own plans. I will not be forced or shamed into going to events I don’t like with people I spend most of my time with as it is.
My time is too important to me not to spend it with people I like on things I like. Bowling nights with co-workers ain’t in that category.
:wally
Robin
See my post just before yours.
Then good for them. I have no problem with the SS exchange – I have a problem with being forced to participate. And, IME, it hasn’t done any of the things you say it does. If it does all of that at your workplace, great. At the ones I’ve been at, people drop the presents on each others desk and go back to their own. There’s no big group hug or anything.
No. You do that if you want. As for me, I’d like to go to work, be pleasant, get my work done, and go home. I do not wish to shop for an extra gift or engage in artificial holiday spirit. No problem with others doing it, I simply don’t wish to partake.
That’s wonderful, and I hope the people who choose to participate have a lovely time. I, however, don’t paticularly enjoy being around children, don’t like bowling, don’t eat meat, and don’t really like secret santa. For the ten billionith time, I don’t mind other people doing this and actually encourage them to do so if it makes their work life better. Just leave me out, thanks. I appreciate the invitation to join in, graciously accept my polite refusal. Why is that such a horrible fucking thing to ask?
Hey, knock yourself out and I’ll even wander over to toss in my own two cents.
Happy Holidays, by the way.
C’mon, they just didn’t want you to feel left out. Its nice that they included you, even though they could just as easily have forgotten you.
And you should have told them point-blank that you didn’t want to participate. Being resentful in private helps no one. They’ll just continue to include you every year, and you’ll just get pissed every year.
If you have had the courage to tell them, “Nope, I’m not interested. Don’t include me from now on”, it wouldn’t have been difficult for the person who drew your name (if that were the case), to replace his/her selection with another name.
It is nice to be asked, I completely agree. And it’s not as easy as saying “Please leave me out” usually. You’ll get guilt-tripped, nagged, accused of “grinchiness” [as we’ve seen in this thread], and more oft than not, you’re refusal to participate becomes water cooler/smoke break chatter. I’d have no problem at all if it were as easy as you make it.
Oh, and about this part:
SS: You spend a good chunk of your life on the job, why not make it a little more pleasurable?
It’s precisely because that people spend “a good chunk of their lives on the job” that they tend to resent being expected to devote even more of their lives to going bowling with their co-workers, to buying presents for their co-workers, to attending barbecues and children’s Christmas parties with their co-workers, etc. If people are doing a responsible, professional job and treating each other politely during their working hours, that’s as much as their employer has a right to expect. All this “Happy Soviet Workers’ Recreation Club” stuff should be strictly optional.
If your particular company’s socialization policy is genuinely optional, and everybody voluntarily participates because they really enjoy it, I’ve got nothing to say against that. But if bosses are prodding folks into pretending to have fun with their coworkers in their off-hours just because they want to “make everyone more friendly” and “make each day go a little better” (i.e., increase productivity and decrease workplace friction), they are being overbearing jerks and should stop.
I boycotted Secret Santa for several years after I got someone’s unwanted "free gift with your purchase of Clinique"makeup kit as a gift *** two years in a row*. ** And, no, I have not worn makeup for about a decade. And, no, the colors in the kit were not suitable for any human being that I have ever encountered. For Christ’s sake, people – Secret Santa is not an opportunity to unload whatever CRAP you have laying around the house.
I opted back in this year – and regret it already. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, the money goes to charity. People spend way too much money buying gift-y garbage that does nothing but enrich the Chinese economy.
Actually, that would be an idea. Make a donation to a charity, and then hand them a card saying “A donation was made in your name to Such-and-such Charity for the amount of $X. Merry Christmas!”
They had one where I used to work and it was loads of fun for all involved. I’m really glad that they had such a thing because people enjoyed it so much. While they were having all of their fun, I was usually at my desk doing end of the year file sorting.
The one they had was one where all participants brought a gift and put it on a table and then they somehow went around and chose gifts. They used playing cards or dice I think. Anyway, it wasn’t a big deal to opt out. People would ask me to participate and I would politely decline. I’d usually say that Christmas stuff makes me uncomfortable which is the truth. With every “c’mon, it’s lots of fun” I would get less and less polite until they finally left me alone.
Haj
That’s what my mother suggested when someone brought up the idea of doing a SS. She suggested instead they buy gifts for the local flood victims instead. (So many people around here lost everything they had back in September.)
Oh, and anyone who accuses you of being a “Grinch” should be reminded that the whole point of that story was that Christmas isn’t ABOUT presents, or fancy decorations, but about love and fellowship. Remember the Whos of Whoville standing around a barren tree singing?
Kimstu: Nope. Not the boss. Just another peon.
You’re all still a bunch of Grinches. So there. Grinch grinch grinchety grinch.