Greetings!
Sometimes I wonder if it's only me who easily attaches unnecessary meanings when receiving a gift from a loved one, be it in a relationship or just a very good friend or family member. The unnecessary meanings here refer to the idea that when you receive something, you should be ready to give it back in multiple folds in other ways or that it's a practical means of tying someone down. Well, you can't blame me if I'm the only one stuck with such a mindset; I didn't grow up receiving many gifts like my peers, and the few ones I did receive came exactly with the same mindset/thought.
There was a time I worked in the church as an accountant officially, but I was essentially everything to my boss. Along the line, a superior boss in the city found my way of doing my job interesting, so he started to get me involved in doing work in his office too, especially going to banks to make transactions which usually took the whole day for me whenever I did such tasks. It happened in such a way that I was serving the two bosses at the same time, and I didn't mind because they were spiritual heads and I just had to be open-minded....I wasn't paid double and I was okay too
Along the way, the superior boss started to give me clothing as gifts.
This happened on days when I didn't do any work for him, and these weren't money; they were chinos trousers, t-shirts, ties, and other items. So it wasn't as if he was paying for the work I was doing for him. Well, it wasn't like that, but deep down in my heart, I saw it as a 'thank you,' for my work and I felt he was using that to keep me doing work for him, which I hated(I mean I hated the such an act). I don't like it when I'm doing something for someone wholeheartedly and the person uses such methods to show appreciation.
It became a big concern for me. How do I stop him? How do I tell him that I was doing the job out of love and respect and not expecting the gifts he was giving in return? There's one thing about such a person: even if you approach them to tell them to stop, they'll get angry because they think they're doing it out of love. Yeah, that's exactly how the superior boss is. In fact, he's a pastor, and pastors often give gifts out of love.
I pondered a lot on how to set boundaries and make him stop giving me gifts, but none of the ideas that came to mind were doable. The biggest idea was to stop doing work for him without giving an explicit reason, but that was totally insane because he's the superior to my direct boss, who would query him about why I stopped showing up or receiving his calls. In fact, it was totally impossible because he would drive down to our house to counsel me about why I stopped.
Well, the only thing left was to tell him because I didn't want to lie or start unnecessarily avoiding him and his calls.
I went to him, and we spoke at length as I explained to him how uncomfortable I was with receiving such gifts. And guess what? As usual, he sat me down for hours to lecture me on how he loves gifting and does it out of his free will, with no attachment to any dutiful act by the recipient.
In the end, I had no option but to live with it because he won the argument. Lol. 馃槄
Thanks for reading
This is my response to KISS prompt of the week
| All photos are mine |
