O, Workplace Gifts

Ah, December. How I love thee.

The tryptophan- and diabetes-inducing food. The fun-but-sometimes-messy-and-rumour-mill-generating corporate party drink-fest extravaganzas.

The workplace gift exchanges.

This year, I decided to go for the gusto and take part in not one, but two Secret Santa gift exchanges.

If you've got the type of workplace I do, you know the drill. Find something, $10 or under and preferably unisex, to give to someone else, and hope when they rip off the pretty wrapping you've covered it in that they like it.

Some people get the zany, off-beat gifts. Others are the lazy, last-minute contributors, who may just settle for getting you merchandise from your institution of work (I've luckily not encountered anyone like this so far.)

Me, I'm kinda the practical-gift-type. Because I don't know about all of you, but it's nice when someone gets you something you can use, that you know won't end up all by its forlorn lonesome in the darkest back corner of a desk drawer or in a box at your house. And it's always cool when you get something in the allotted monetary range, and you see that person get your gift, and when they're checking out their loot they think, "This can't be the limit! But this is such a nice gift!"

I think everyone deserves nice gifts, even if the price tag's in single digits. I don't know if anyone I've given gifts to at work actually uses what I give them. Who knows, they might re-gift them, for all I know.

But I just get a kick out of seeing the look on the face of the person who gets my gift. Even if it's fake, it's just the act of putting thought into a present and giving it that matters to me.

P.S.: I have noticed one thing, though - I've now had the uncanny distinction of having the same person receive my gift two years running now. And it's not as if the gift pool is small, either. I'm hoping it's some sort of coincidence, but I find it weird.

Is that some sort of omen in Secret Santa tradition? Just wonderin'.