For Christmas one year, my (now) ex gave me windshield wipers. No, he didn’t actually put them on my car…just wrapped them and sat them under the tree. Oh, and no, I didn’t need new ones, or mention anything about needing them…just there they were.
Eh, my sister…she’s good-hearted, and I’m sure she believes she’s an ace gift-giver, but she’s not had much money in the past few years and she clearly buys stuff that if she thought for a moment, would realize it’s not be useful or appropriate, but hey, it’s heavily discounted ('cause no one wants it), so…
So I end up with things like a plastic Cars (the movie) souvenir oil can, or a table lamp with a leopard-pattern, fringed shade (not really a guy thing, sorry) or, one year when she did splash out, a large, fully functional R2D2. OK, that last one was quite the little bit of technology, but the idea of a single guy in his mid-fifties sitting alone in his apartment palying with his robot seemed a bit sad to me, so I gave it to a friend, for her 9-year-old son.
The thing that kills me is that all she would have to do is ask me what I want. I’d be at the ready with a list of at least five very economical things, of which she could choose any one, to provide some mystery and suspense. I’ve tried making such suggestions and she completely ignores them.
Of course, I’ve screwed up a few times on gifts as well, but I’ll leave that for another time.
My mother once gave my wife as a birthday gift … a mop.
True, it was a very fancy mop.
As it turns out, my mom was just very excited about this type of mop, and wanted to share the joy … but my wife thought it was a commentary on my mom’s notions of my wife’s role in our house, and was not amused.
That wasn’t the most clueless and tone deaf of my mom’s presents to my wife, though.
That had to be when we had a baby. My mom found from somewhere a baby’s hat that had “CHICK MAGNET” written on it, and gave that to my wife for the baby to wear. My mom thought it meant that the baby would attract cute baby chickens.
I now look askance at the person I USED to be tight with who gave me this
http://www.thegreenhead.com/2008/12/pinocchio-toilet-brush.php
For my birthday, I received a card. No signature, no hand-written note, just a card. It had the postmark of one of my siblings cities so I deduced from that from who it came, but a more thorough examination would have required a fingerprint analysis.
They also…
… Gave my wife a movie theater gift card with the original inscription still on it. I.e., “To a wonderful boss, from your staff” was crossed out."
… Gave my wife a Walgreen’s gift card for her birthday. Nothing says “I picked this up while on my way here from the office” than a Walgreen’s gift card.
… We took their kids to a HS football game and bought one of them a seat cushion, as the child was complaining that the metal seat was cold. For my daughter’s birthday, one week later, her gift was… yup, the same seat cushion.
There was the Christmas that I discovered that a gift wrapped portable typewriter was the same size and approximate weight of a compact stereo system that I so desperately wanted.
It had a propeller on top. When the alarm sounded the propeller took off and orbited the room before eventually touching down in a location where it was most difficult to find.
To silence the alarm the procedure was to get out of bed, find the propeller and reattach it to the base unit. This often took quite a while. One morning I just couldn’t locate it, compelling me to remove the batteries from the base unit to stop the damn thing from ringing. I never replaced the batteries and chose an alternative method of waking up.
The propeller turned up a couple of weeks later on top of the wardrobe.
I may be able to one up this. For our anniversary a couple of years ago I gave my wife a toilet seat.
In my defense it wasn’t the only thing I gave her, and she like practical gifts and had been complaining about the seat in her bathroom, and so was actually excited to get it, but we both admit it sounds really bad.
When I graduated high school my aunt (God bless her, of course) gave me an afghan that she knitted herself. It was a nice gesture, sure, but 18 year old boys don’t really need afghans. Doubly so because I was just a couple months away from going into the Army. If Uncle Sam wanted me to have an afghan, he would have issued me one.
That’s my favorite joke around this time of year. “I’m a great husband. Last year I gave my wife a mop; and this year I’m getting her a handle to go with it.”
:eek:
You win.
I haven’t gotten anything so bad it would make a good story. I have this horrible suspicion I may be the terrible gift-giver other people gossip about.
(but I’ve never given anything with cockroaches in it)
I don’t do jewelry. On the exceedingly rare occasions where I don something resembling jewelry, it’s usually silver.
One year my parents gave me a gold watch :o
But just think how nice that will be on your millionth anniversary!
Back in the 90s, when I was still active duty, I was home for Christmas. The reason I was home is because my wife at the time and I had been geographically separated and were coming to see my folks and celebrate a with a late wedding reception.
Until I went to pick up my wife at the airport, where she informed me that we would be getting a divorce, and she wouldn’t be coming with me to my folks house.
Cut to Christmas morning, I’m hungover and opening presents and my Grandma hands me hers. I open it and and find a finger hut electric carving knife. I look at her, mumbling something that sounds like thank you.
She lights a cigarette, and says, “Yeah that was going to be your wedding present, but you fucked that one up, didn’t ya?”.
Sigh.
I posted about this in a thread from 2007, but I just though t I’d check in 7 years later and say that my oldest brother continues to give me (and only me) his corporate SWAG.
“Wow - a Duffle Bag! Which says ‘2013 American Airlines Corporate Partner Sponsor’s Retreat’! Why, there’s even company logos all over it! There’s Frito-Lay! And there’s ENSCO International! There’s Hoak Media Corporation! Thoughtful as ever, thanks!”
My sister once got me a set of four cheap ‘bodice ripper’ style novels from Costco (I’d seen them there a few weeks earlier). Maybe it was a joke gift and she forgot the real one 
either way it’s not a genre I would ever read, she knows I read non-fiction and sf/fantasy. They went straight into the recycling bin when we got home, still in their plastic wrapping.
This happened to a friends older brother: his parents asked him what he wanted for Xmas - money was tight for everyone so he just told them he wanted four or five pairs of black business socks to wear to work.
They have a big extended family and when the relatives asked what older brother wanted, the parents of course said ‘black business socks’ - the result was he got about 50 pairs of socks for Xmas 
I was an adult convert to Roman Catholicism.I grew up in a protestant church where they used to have pamphlets titled “What happens if your Child marries a Catholic!” My dear sweet family wasn’t thrilled with my switch, but they were gracious. That year for Xmas I got all these protestant statues of angels and things. It wasn’t so much that they were trying to reconvert me, as they simply had no idea what Catholicism was about. Catholicism = statues in their minds.
So, I got statues.
You know how bup said above ‘You win’?
I divorced the dude, which, trust me, was worth a $1M for the win 
Probably the worst gift I got was a Music for Plants record. It dated from the early 1970s, when some people actually believed (or at least pretended to, to sell records) that music could help your plants grow.
This wasn’t the actual album, but it’s in the same vein:
The real joke is that I have a brown thumb – I kill plants. So I don’t grow them. Maybe they thought this would help. But I suspect this was a case of Last Minute Gift Panic (“I don’t have anything for CalMeacham! What can I give him?”)
The worst gift I’ve ever gotten was dance lessons from my husband for my birthday. On the surface this doesn’t sound so awful, but…
He didn’t actually give me tickets or buy dance lessons. The gift was that he was willing to take dance lessons with me. You see, long, long ago we’d gone out dancing together. He started dancing with another woman (we were at a salsa club). I was a tad annoyed. Well, more like really, really pissed - so he decided then and there we’d never go dancing again since it was too likely to piss me off (not true - I’m not likely to get pissed off if you dance with me, your date, instead of the pretty salsa instructor for two or three dances while your friends look at me sympathetically).
Anyway, his gift to me was the promise of dance lessons. He’d buy them, he assured me, if I set up babysitting and selected the dance lessons I wanted - with the exception of salsa of course. So he was essentially buying me dance lessons, more work and limiting my choices. Needless to say, I did not take him up on the offer. I would’ve been better off that year without a gift.
And yes, we’re still married. And no, he never did that again.