Why Christmas gift-giving should be banned from the workplace.
My flaky boss presented everyone in her department with unwrapped Christmas presents yesterday (Wed., 30 Nov.): thermal tumblers, all with their price tags still affixed ($12.99 from Kohl's, if it matters).
She gave me the sole brown tumbler with silhouettes of a moose and bear on them.
Less than an hour later she ganked it back.
Why?
She'd forgotten to buy one for a new-this-year transfer from another department, and, rather than promise to get him one the next day, she rattled off to him descriptions of the tumblers that she did buy, whereupon she discovered that he wanted the one that she'd given me because it was so -- manly. (He hunts moose and elk. Who knew? And here's me, thinking of the Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers song "Gotta Get Me Moose B'y" when my boss came up from behind and thunked the tumbler onto my desk between my gut and my keyboard.)
Supposedly she's getting me a tumbler today. Now, I don't really give a fart in a cold bath whether or not she gets me one, or any gift, to be honest. (The greatest gift she could possibly give me? Leave me the hell alone.)
But to give a present with the price tag still attached, and then to take it back less than an hour later is just so -- gauche.
Makes me wonder how much the so-called "War on Christmas" is really inspired by antipathy towards the holiday as opposed to a seething hatred for all the stupidity and social misdeeds perpetrated in the name of it.
She gave me the sole brown tumbler with silhouettes of a moose and bear on them.
Less than an hour later she ganked it back.
Why?
She'd forgotten to buy one for a new-this-year transfer from another department, and, rather than promise to get him one the next day, she rattled off to him descriptions of the tumblers that she did buy, whereupon she discovered that he wanted the one that she'd given me because it was so -- manly. (He hunts moose and elk. Who knew? And here's me, thinking of the Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellers song "Gotta Get Me Moose B'y" when my boss came up from behind and thunked the tumbler onto my desk between my gut and my keyboard.)
Supposedly she's getting me a tumbler today. Now, I don't really give a fart in a cold bath whether or not she gets me one, or any gift, to be honest. (The greatest gift she could possibly give me? Leave me the hell alone.)
But to give a present with the price tag still attached, and then to take it back less than an hour later is just so -- gauche.
Makes me wonder how much the so-called "War on Christmas" is really inspired by antipathy towards the holiday as opposed to a seething hatred for all the stupidity and social misdeeds perpetrated in the name of it.