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Sorta related. Mid 1980's. Short story, parents arranged for a pizza party at a mini-golf/bowling alley arcade. They set a low gift limit of $5 that wasn't' mandatory, only had 4 invites go out, parents footed transportation, food and games, but any arcade games was on each kid to bring extra money. Kid #4 was my uncles neighbors kid who I'd play with every time I'd stay at my uncles. He got given cash, and my uncle brought him along and took him to the toy store to get a gift for me. Well, he wasn't interested in the party, he brought himself the toy and was going to get a bus ride home with his change. My uncle was embarrassed and pissed, he basically lied to him saying the toy was for me. After that came out, he was dropped off home and he got in poo poo with his folks. He missed out on a great time, with the ticket prizes we cashed in we all wound up with with battery powered realistic uzi water guns we hosed around with for the rest of the summer. Looking back, there's usually issues with giving children full autonomy on buying other kids/siblings gifts for this exact reason. Anyways all of that drama over a dumb GI Joe SNAKE Battle suit, the kid didn't even own a GI Joe figure you could put into it. Yeesh. Big K of Justice fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 02:06
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 05:40 |
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Re: Secret Santas and White Elephant Secret Santas.. I found the safe bets for secret Santa gifts is booze/tools/cosmetics, especially in the industry I'm in.. animation/games [Staff lean male heavy and often too many toys get introduced into the gift pool.]. Even with the idea of getting rotten gifts, most of these have some sort of gift swap mechanic so watching people swap junk and try to hold onto a few bottles of whisky or something like a nice small letterman tool has some entertainment value for me at least. The craziest thing I saw was at a large video game company that shall remain nameless. Apparently we had a team budget of $5,000 or so a year used for team events.. like taking the team out for lunches, or to a sporting event, or do some sort of off campus team building exercise. Well this one project team didn't use their budget for the year and it was one of those "use it or lose it" type situations, so the producer figured it was ok to do a company sponsored secret Santa gift exchange. That is, they took the budget, gave everyone $250 and told everyone to go nuts on the company dime. Except no one checked further up the chain to accounting to see if this was ok or not. You can probably guess where this was going. Gift cards were given out and people had a huge secret Santa party on that team where Nintendo switches, tech gadgets and hoverboards and poo poo were given out everywhere... the problem came when word got around to other departments and accounting stating that.. well whoever ok'ed those expenditures was going to be on the hook for the expenses since they were not going to be reimbursed for the entertainment budget, plus there's apparently tax considerations if gifts are past a certain dollar limit (IRS considers it income)... Later that week, the guy behind that secret Santa was going around to his team sheepishly asking people to return the gifts and try their best to get refunded.
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Nov 29, 2021 23:52
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