Sometimes we get gifts we don't like or want. Tell us about one such gift, what it was, who gave it to you and what you did with it. Your post must be at least 300 words in answer.
Christmas gift exchange. Secret Santa. I believe most of us are familiar with these terms. I personally dislike this type of gifting practice because we are somewhat "forced" to buy something for someone we might not really know, and hope he/she would like it. And to complicate matters, because some gift exchanges like Secret Santa can be anonymous, the gifts can be interesting (or rather weird). I remember one female colleague receiving some interesting body cream during one of the office Secret Santa gift exchange. Till this day, no one "owned up" as the Secret Santa.
Now that you see where I am coming from, here's my story. I was at this Christmas countdown party at a friend's place and I remembered there were about 8 of us. So as part of the gift exchange, we were each tasked to bring a gift of about USD 10 in value. To determine the order to pick the presents, we had to draw lots - obviously everyone wanted to be the first, if not, among the first few. But there was a CATCH. The ones that picked later had 1 chance to swap with those that picked earlier. So theoretically, the last person to pick the present would be the most ideal because he/she could swap the gift with anyone.
As I stood there trying to understand the rules and the sequence, I realised what was supposed to be festive celebration turned out to be a complicated and somewhat stressful and unhappy event. I saw friends who were momentarily happy after picking an awesome gift that they liked, became unhappy when someone in the later turns swapped away their gifts. At the end of the day, it's all in the name of fun, but I think some people were more competitive and took this exercise more seriously than others, resulting in some tension in the air.
For me, I think I was somewhere in the middle of 8 people, so when it was my turn, I picked a medium sized box and got a Bluetooth speaker when I unwrapped it. I am more of a earphones person so the Bluetooth speaker wasn't something that would be useful for me. As per the rules, I had 1 chance to swap my gift with those ahead of me, but looking at the current situation, I decided to accept my own gift instead of swapping and risk making someone unhappy.
Eventually, the Bluetooth speaker made its way to my dad a couple of years later when he needed one to replace his existing one that became spoilt. And I was like, oh I think I have one somewhere in my cabinet, and I dug it out and passed it to him. Haha!
So that's all for my sharing! Feel free to share with me your thoughts too! Thanks for reading and have a pleasant weekend ahead! Merry Christmas and happy holidays!