Happy Corporate Holidays!
Would it be too Seinfeldian if I started a post by saying, “OK, see, this is what I don’t understand?” Too late, I guess. Anyway, you may have noticed that we are in the midst of the gift-giving season, aka, the holidays. Most of these holidays are Christian, but that’s a post for some other day. That day being later this week.
But what confuses me is the whole office gift-giving thing. It’s fraught, I tell you, fraught! I am in the middle of the totem in my department. There are a couple of people above me, a couple of people below me, a couple of people at my level. What exactly do you do for these people? I should also share that the adults in my life and myself have sort of stopped exchanging so these are actually the only gifts I will give that aren’t toys or American Girl gift cards.
It used to be that the head of the department gave gifts to the staff and that was it. That worked for me. I mean, you work hard all year, here’s your tangible thank you. But somehow it has evolved into everyone gives everyone and then you have to start thinking, “is this really a gift when the amount I spent is commensurate with your position in the company?” Or perhaps, “why am I spending all this money on your gift when you make four times my salary?”
But I would like to share how I solved this problem, dear readers. It was tough, but I arrived at a fair & tasty solution. Yes, I now just bake for everyone. I go to the Container Store or sometimes Target and buy fancy packaging (I should really just buy them all iPods with what that costs me, really) and make sure it all looks just spectacular. And I don’t just bake cookies, either. I make something really difficult like rugelach (my advice to bakers: don’t make rugelach) or something really pretty like mini-cakes. Here’s the important thing to remember. You can’t put a price on effort! Well, you can, and bakeries do it all the time. But no one I work with will ever be able to say, “man, she only spent $5 on ingredients and $7 on this tin and ribbons.” Because I spent my whole Sunday baking, people. And that’s just priceless. Of course, I make my boss’ cake the tastiest. Shhh. I like to think the extra ingredient is brown-nosing.
