*Ex-monster in law used to give the shittiest, cheapest presents she could find. Highights:
I think it was… umm… the gift that never was. You know… Nothing.
“Well, you didn’t Ask for anything…”
Maybe it was for fog-lights on a Subaru… that I got talked out of after Xmas… and that I never got a gift in lieu of.
*Ex-monster in law used to give the shittiest, cheapest presents she could find. Highights:
-used junk from charity shops (dirty dishcloths, for example)
-a second-hand copy of a VHS Free Willy and other, assorted kiddie movies. I cannot stand schmaltzy kids’ movies, schmaltzy animal movies, and schmaltzy combinations of the two.
-boxes of charity shop junk she’d accumulated over the course of the year and kept in a dirty box in her loft; not only did the box and its contents reek of stale cigarette smoke, but upon opening it, all the roaches that had been living in it scuttled out – after that present, anything his mother sent us lived on our front porch for a while until we binned it
-fabric from her stash that stank like cigarette smoke no matter how much I tried to wash it
-‘anniversary’ gifts that were dollar bills equalling how long we’d been married. So $1 for the first year. $3 for the third.
-wedding present was an enormous cheesey embroidery about how the wife’s place was in the home making kids.
-pig themed presents. Jesus Christ, the amount of pig tat that woman foisted on us. All because my ex had bought for himself a cute cuddly-toy pig once everyone assumed that both of us wanted nothing but pig-related items.
-there’s more, but these are the highlights.
Keep in mind this woman was richer than Croesus, and while we were getting cheap Walmart handtowels cut in half (twice as many pressies!) his adult sister received small tokens such as two new pick up trucks (a second after she’d wrecked the first) and a 3 bedroom house with mama making the mortgage payments. Sis was also due to inherit 90% of mama’s estate, so fuck knows what sort of social dynamic was going on there.
(To be fair, on the other hand, ex MIL also gave me a fuckton of money out of the blue to kill off most of my grad school loan – I’d only had a total of $18K, but this slam dunk of a cash infusion killed that off way quicker than expected).
*Current in-laws usually give me a Boots giftcard for about £20 these days; festive while the rest of the family open their gifts. (Boots is like CVS). No idea what’s going on there - they used to give me nice, thoughtful little things. They have asked Mr Boods for ideas about what to give me, and he usually tells them he hasn’t a clue what I like.
I’m actually not into presents and would rather given them than receive them if one must, to be honest.
Scuba diving lessons, in spite of having years of access to free scuba lessons, which I never took advantage of due to my claustrophobia and poor swimming skills. I know I made no secret of my scubaphobia, but unfortunately my loved ones are oblivious to much of the world around them and the worst gifters ever.
Oh, and there was the time my boyfriend gave me my own bicycle. It was already my bicycle, I mean. He had painted it badly and also said I should not ride it just yet, as he’d had to put it back together in a hurry and it had no brakes.:smack::smack:
He has many other good qualities I remind myself after every holiday…
My Sister in California once sent me a photograph of the George Washington Bridge. I live 15 minutes from the GWB, and often walk across it.
Christmas in Vietnam. Mail could be iffy, so we all warned our people back home to make sure to send any packages via PAL, since they would be guaranteed prompt air shipment. Well, I get a letter in early December from my mother saying she took a Christmas package to the post office, and it was two inches larger than was allowed for PAL. Since she didn’t feel like taking it home and rewrapping it, she just sent it SAM (space available): “I hope that’s okay”.
When I opened the box in February, there was a mold-covered cake, a can of moldy cookies, and an extremely unpleasant looking package of what used to be reindeer sausage. And at the bottom, an LP of Bobby Gentry singing with Glenn Campbell (I was into Hendrix and the like). I threw the entire box in the garbage.
My delightfully quirky spouse told me that she once gave her sister an antique toilet, thinking she could use it as a flower planter. Her sister was less than gracious about it. 
How could I forget my sister, the dollar store shopper?!?
Despite what I thought was an agreement NOT to exchange gifts in our family, one sister insists on giving each of us something, always bought from a dollar store, and always crap. For example, she knows we don’t set up a tree - haven’t done it in 10 years and don’t intend to ever set one up again. Yet every year, we got a dollar store “ornament.” And every year, they end up in the trash, especially when she insists on personalizing them by writing our names on them in Sharpie. I can’t even donate them to a thrift store.
One year, she gave my husband a yellow scarf - my Harley-riding husband who favors mostly black, or at least dark colors, and who has never, in the 31 years we’ve been together, worn a scarf. Still can’t figure that one out…
The last place I worked before I retired, we had an arrangement where everyone picked a name out of a box and had to get a present for that person (Secret Santa?). So one year the boss got my name and he gave me – this is for real – a stuffed yellow duck that sang “I hate Christmas.” Now, Christmas happens to be exactly my very favorite holiday of all. I used to decorate my office with tinsel and other sparkly stuff for the season; no one else did. It was a complete WTF moment.
I may be the only person in this thread who has come here to say that I’ve never got a present that I would categorize as “bad” or “the worst”. Yes, some I’ve liked better than others, but my gifters have always been people who have made some effort to give something I could really use, or they knew I liked.
Not me, but the wonderful gal who does my hair shared this tale. We’ll call her Ruby.
Ruby’s Mother in Law had always given Ruby the very chilly vibe that she wasn’t pleased that her son had “married beneath him”. This particular Xmas (about their 5th together), the MIL made a point of announcing to Ruby, when she was about to open her gift, that she had “spent a lot of time and money on this, and I hope you really like it.” What was it? A framed oil portrait of…herself.
I was already shocked when I heard what the fabulous gift was, but Ruby told me that she was pretty much obligated to display this artistic wonder, and showed it to me. I am not lying when I tell you that the portrait resembles a very late-in-his-career Philip Seymour Hoffman in drag, in a sort of generic “Old Masters” style. The quality of the artwork is actually pretty good, but who in their right mind would want to display this???
A Far Side anthology. It would have been a good gift, except that I already owned all three Far Side collections anthologized therein.
My mom loves to garden, and has a big garden full little hidden statues and gargoyles. It’s really quite lovely. Her slightly dotty friend found a set of “see no evil, hear no evil” monkeys, and thought they’d make good garden statuary, and wrapped them up for Christmas. Setting aside how ugly they were, she decided to economize her gift buying by wrapping them separately, and giving one each to my mom, my dad, and myself. “Merry Christmas! I got you something for your mom!”
I consoled myself that at least it wasn’t another fucking subscription to Cat Fancy. I mean, lovely woman by all means, but terrible gifter.
This gift is not so much bad as plain weird.
OK, I live in Missoula, MT, and my dad lives in Alamogordo, NM. Alamogordo is near many things, including Holloman AFB (home of the Sounds Of Freedom, which are sonic booms from the F-22s they have there, and Luftwaffe trainees fresh from Germany), some of the best Mexican/Mexican-American food in the damned world, and White Sands desert/military reservation/tourist destination.
Guess which of those things you can reasonably put in a plastic tub which once held 2 lbs of Oikos yogurt.
No, not the Mexican food.
Yep.
He gave me a quantity of sand. White sand, and for absolutely no reason. He’s not a stupid man, and he’s very generous in his fashion, but I guess he just doesn’t think things through all the time.
I don’t garden, not that I’d imagine most gardeners would want sand especially. I don’t own a terrarium. I’m not Zen. (I was Taoist, kind of, for a while…) I don’t really want to make toothpaste or clean anything which has those really tough baked-on stains.
He wasn’t stingy, either. He gave one to both of my brothers and my youngest brother’s fiancée. They were all as unprepared for it as I am.
Thoughful hosts sometimes provide bathroom artwork that can help their more… shy… guests out by providing a… ‘natural laxative effect’.
I’m not saying that in the middle of some difficult internal body strain the sudden shock of seeing a Vermeer version of Philip Seymour Hoffman in drag staring at them over their shoulder will make them crap their pants. But it couldn’t hurt.
(Matches might be appreciated too.)
I got a 3 lb bag of walnuts, which is a lifetime supply of walnuts.
It’s not that its such a bad gift, but it represents a complete lack of thought into giving the gift. Its obviously whatever was within arms reach at the time they were ready to leave the store. Why even bother?
Well… one Christmas my in-laws must have got me confused with someone else, because I got a big pile of golf-related stuff- ball monogram-gizmo, embroidered golf towel, etc…
And I haven’t played golf in 20 years. All I can think of is that MIL got me confused with someone else, or took something I said out of context, and thought I’m seriously into golf.
Only if you never eat walnuts. We probably go through that much in less than a month, just putting them in salads and cereal. Nice present!
Along those lines, the last Christmas during which I was an hourly employee (vs. management,) we drew names among the hotel staff for a similar gift exchange. The wonderful young man who drew my name presented me with a lovely fragrance set - for a teenage boy with no sense of smell. However, the young man also suffered from some sort of mental retardation, and was a very nice kid, so I couldn’t complain too much. It was just kind of funny. (I eventually figured out a diplomatic way to gift it back to him, telling him how much my own son liked the aftershave and cologne, so I thought James might like one of his own, for his January birthday. My assumption is that he had purchased it because he himself liked it.)
By the following Christmas, I was a manager. I made the unilateral decision that I wouldn’t ask my employees to spend their paltry paychecks for useless crap for one another. Managers were allowed to choose whether or not to kick in a few bucks each, and I fed everyone a nice holiday meal and gave out small gift cards - choice of Walmart, Amazon, or Starbucks, usually. (And the overnight workers got a surprise pizza delivery during their shift. It always blew when everyone else got to enjoy a little party when the only way the night shift could enjoy the fun was if they interrupted their sleep schedule.)
One year, my MIL gave my husband a box of golf balls. My husband doesn’t play golf, has never played golf (other than putt-putt once or twice), and never in his life expressed an interest in learning to play golf. We were both confused by that one.
I’d have paid hard-cash if you’d looked up and without missing a beat said, “What..? No caddy…?”
I know but saying, “Look, I know I like to drive the balls we have deep, but dammit woman, I Haven’t Lost One Yet…!” might be taken the wrong way. 