PSA/vent - white elephant gift exchange

My department just did a white elephant gift exchange. Because I was in charge and a control freak, I made the rules. The theme was a funny gift. Not a shitty gift. the spend was not to exceed 20 bucks. Everyone with the exception of one followed the rules but he bought a bottle of liquor so the recipient was not mad.

My favorite nightmare Secret Santa story is when the person who had me forgot all about it. He shows up to my co-workers house for the party and I said "You can put your Secret Santa gift over on that table," and his face turned white and he grabbed the host and left the room.

He "shopped" for my gift in the host's garage and brought out a crappy old, dusty, ugly oil painting of some kind for me.  As I was leaving the host told me that he was going to want the painting back at some point.

It's funny now, but man. That sucked. Way to make me feel important, Chief.

Boys suck.

I hate GC exchanges! I mean, what’s the point?

We did a $10 GC exchange at work one time. There were 7 participants, and 6 of us put in Wawa GCs, and the other put in a Best Buy. I got stuck with Best Buy, a store I despise on its best day, and I think it is horribly overpriced on the small items you could get for A$10. I drew early, and NOBODY would steal it LOL. It was pretty ridiculous when most of our team ended up with the same card they brought.

I’ve known people who got stuck with a $25 card to Coach or some other designer store. What are you going to buy with that amount without forking over a lot of extra money?

I’d rather keep my cash and spend it where I want.

My friends and I did a Secret Santa gift exchange for the first time this year and it went well except for one friend who put zero effort into her gift. In the past we've done Christmas cookie exchanges but one person couldn't manage to ensure that each set of cookies was a full dozen and most of us don't even eat most or all of the cookies, so we stopped that. I'm thinking that next year I may propose a favorites gift exchange; hopefully that will produce gifts that make everyone happy.

The BEST White Elephant I've ever experienced was at a former office. The gifts were not to be purchased, but used/regifted items. People would wrap their items soooo beautifully that people couldn't resist picking them. The rule was that whatever item you received, you had to use/display it at work the remainder of the week (our party was on Tuesday). I took in a pair of moose slippers that were my brother's but he didn't use. Several people fought over those slippers and the recipient wore them for the rest of the week. I received a hand lotion/spray/shower gel set and put out the hand lotion for everyone to use and sprayed my office with the spray. Another person received a used wreath which she displayed on her office door for the week. We had SO much fun because nobody expected to receive anything of value and people truly had fun figuring out how to "use" their gift for the rest of the week.

Funny story from a Secret Santa gift exchange at work:

We had a $20 limit. We brought in our wrapped gifts the day before our luncheon. At the luncheon, we discover that the holiday planning team wrapped all the gifts in identical size boxes and identical wrapping paper, the sneaky buggers!

We drew numbers to determine picking order. My colleague Chris goes first. He opens up his box and it's a men's set of waffle-textured, age-yellowed thermal underwear (long-johns) in old, crinkly yellowed plastic. (Our office was 50% women so I don't know why the Santa would bring that in, not to mention the thermal underwear was probably 25 years old) No one steals the aged underwear from poor Chris.

The next day, I mention to our other colleague John that I felt bad for Chris. John starts laughing. Chris had picked his own gift. John said that the holiday planning committee had a $20 coffee gift card "on the ready" for the innocent person who would have picked Chris' gift...but since Chris picked his own yellowed thermal underwear, they decided not to give it to him for "just desserts."

That was the only "dud" gift in the Secret Santa exchange. I still rib Chris about that year.

I have no idea why it's called that! I've been to a few parties where it's been called this.

Every one picks a number and you pick a gift in order of number drawn. You unwrap it next person can either pick a unwrapped one from pile or steal one already unwrapped. Once a gift has been stolen 2x it's dead and can no longer be stolen. The person who drew number 1 can at the end steal a non dead gift if they don't like the one they end up with.

Me either - plus, I'm trying to downsize stuff in our place, so I don't need random shit I don't want. I never participate in gift exchanges (although they are rare in my life now anyway).

When I first started working there was a group of women that exchanged presents each year and I was included. But after a few years it seemed like a burden to people and I suggested we take the money we would've spent and go to a nice dinner and have a fun evening and/or go shopping for a charity. Much better than an assortment of candles and lotions I would never use.

candy bars - lol. I was wondering when somebody was going to bring up a cookie exchange because there's usually at least one thread around the holidays about these (either the people with insane rules or the person who brings Oreos).

You win.

I participated in a work exchange where the gifts were supposed to be decent things, with a dollar limit of $20.  I can't really remember anything too terrible, so it looked like everyone really tried this time.f  I also noticed several quite expensive things in there and as the game went on, there were obviously more gifts than participants. I ended up being the very last name chosen and instead of picking something that I had to take home, I chose the company traditional "cat lamp" that was always part of this exchange.  It was to be displayed in the winner's office and taken good care of.  It also came with a few "outfits" that had been added along the way to dress it up for certain holidays.  It was actually a prize of honor, and since I didn't want anything to take home, I went with that.

And in being the last person to choose, it became obvious that there were about 15 unwrapped packages still in the center of the room.  One of the VPs admitted to having brought about 20 gifts in the hopes that some would forget to bring something and he would cover them.  He admitted that his wife played bunco with a group of women every month.  Their entry fee was to bring a wrapped gift of $50 value.  And the wife had been playing for years, so their garage was piled with these gifts.  The husband decided to wrap some of them back up and bring them to our gift exchange.  He was quite upset that almost everyone remembered to bring their own gift and he was going to be stuck taking some of these things back home again.  

He begged everyone in the room to please help themselves to another gift if they were not happy with what they had won.  He didn't want their gift in exchange, he wanted his gifts gone from his garage.  It was so funny and he was so adamant about giving things way, it was actually quite a hit.  He ended up with just one very large window painted with a Christmas scene to take home. It was huge!  He was so happy to have gotten rid of so many things that he continued the practice for the rest of the time that I worked there.  The office workers were thrilled to receive these castoff gifts because the value was more than twice our limit. It was quite funny to me.

I feel your pain. Last year we did one with our neighborhood euchre club. We brought a good sized bottle of rum chata, we left with an edible paid of under wear. Actually we didn't leave with it, it stayed at the house.

I have always enjoyed the white elephants. They've always been at workplaces and no one ever takes them seriously at any place I've ever worked. Last place I worked for a long time, people got really into it over the years and would search out awesomely stupid gifts at garage sales and so on.

I loathe Secret Santa though. The first time I ever heard of it was in our college dorm. I was a VERY poor college student and the dorm director realllllllllllly pressured me to participate. I kept declining, citing the very real and serious lack of money in my life. She kept pressuring me, telling me I was the only one not participating and kept tempting me by telling me about the great gift I would get myself. I finally caved. Got the girl's name, tortured myself trying to figure out what to get her that she would like and how I could pay for it. In the end, she was MY Secret Santa and she got me nothing. When I said something to the dorm director about it, she called me selfish. Also found out that only 10% of the people in the dorm participated. Next year, same dorm director pressured me again and that was when I implemented the policy that "No" is all you need to say.

Fast forward a few decades and one of my girls gets roped into a SS at school. The person who was her SS was a Jehovah's Witness and the teacher apparently took her aside and asked her if she had okayed participating with her parents. Girl insisted she had. Day came. You guessed it. No gift for my dd. Girl admitted she signed up for it because she wanted a gift wrapped up in fancy paper and had no intention of giving anything. Teacher called the girl's mother. To her credit, the mother herself came to our house and gave dd a gift card to Claire's.

When I was going to a moms group, we had a really fun white elephant exchange that we did every year. The rules were very clear that you were not to buy anything for this exchange, but to give the craziest, tackiest gift you could find, or to use household items to make a funny gift.

It was things like a "junk drawer starter kit", (which was a box of random things like paper clips, rubber bands, one battery, half empty bottles of glue and things like that), a can of root beer and a can of baked beans with a note that says have a Rootin tootin Christmas, a spa day gift set with homemade maxi pad slippers and random half-used bottles of stinky lotion, toilet tattoos, things like that.

One year there was a thread here about tampon angels and I think it was maxi pad stars or something like that, I made and brought them, and they were a huge hit!

The expectations were set up very clearly that you were not to buy anything, but that it was supposed to be funny, random things you could find around your house. Everything was all wrapped fancy, and we had a great time picking out gifts and laughing about what the different things were.

Honestly? I'd like that. I don't host a large gathering but when my parents and sister come over for a holiday dinner, I end up using all of my plates (set of 8). Despite having a dishwasher now, I'd rather avoid it. I bought paper plates for Thanksgiving and will again for Christmas. I just haven't found one I like. Maybe it's the young age vs someone who's been around the block a few times. She'll get it someday.