What do a pair of socks, a candle, a vacuum cleaner, and a box of chocolates have in common? All of them areChristmas presentsthat can be a success or a total flop. That’s because what is an excellent gift for one person might not be for another. But while these examples depend on the person on the receiving end, some items are terrible to give someone, and there’s simply no question about it.As you probably already gathered, today we’re focusing on gifts; and mostly, the bad ones. We found stories of some of the mostunforgivable, ridiculous, even somewhatinappropriate(especially when givenat work, which some of the gifts on the list were), and simply the worst gifts people have ever received on Secret Santa. If you thought the ugly sweater you got from Susan in accounting was bad, you might change your mind after reading through this list, so wait no longer and scroll down to findChristmasgift horror stories below.Below you will also findBored Panda’sinterview with professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College,David Ludden, who was kind enough to share his opinion on Secret Santa and its influence on the people involved.This post may includeaffiliate links.
What do a pair of socks, a candle, a vacuum cleaner, and a box of chocolates have in common? All of them areChristmas presentsthat can be a success or a total flop. That’s because what is an excellent gift for one person might not be for another. But while these examples depend on the person on the receiving end, some items are terrible to give someone, and there’s simply no question about it.
As you probably already gathered, today we’re focusing on gifts; and mostly, the bad ones. We found stories of some of the mostunforgivable, ridiculous, even somewhatinappropriate(especially when givenat work, which some of the gifts on the list were), and simply the worst gifts people have ever received on Secret Santa. If you thought the ugly sweater you got from Susan in accounting was bad, you might change your mind after reading through this list, so wait no longer and scroll down to findChristmasgift horror stories below.
Below you will also findBored Panda’sinterview with professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College,David Ludden, who was kind enough to share his opinion on Secret Santa and its influence on the people involved.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
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We have a family gathering in early December where we have to do Secret Santa for no more than a Fiver and must be bought from a Charity Shop. Hats off to the local British Heart Foundation shop who had an unopened Santa that blows bubbles out of it’s backside for £4.50. Absolute winner!
Way back I worked with a woman who had a major reputation for keeping her husband well under the thumb. This guy was not even allowed his own debit card from her without prior clearance.In an anonymous secret Santa I got her a dog collar with his name on the tag.She had a f**king meltdown.
Seeking to better understand just how fun or awful Secret Santa can get, especially in an environment such as a workplace, we got in touch with professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College, David Ludden, who admitted to not being a huge fan of said holiday activity.“It’s hard enough finding appropriate gifts for the people you know, let alone those you don’t. And when you’re under social pressure to give, what really is the point?” he wondered.
Seeking to better understand just how fun or awful Secret Santa can get, especially in an environment such as a workplace, we got in touch with professor of psychology at Georgia Gwinnett College, David Ludden, who admitted to not being a huge fan of said holiday activity.
“It’s hard enough finding appropriate gifts for the people you know, let alone those you don’t. And when you’re under social pressure to give, what really is the point?” he wondered.
Obligatory not me but….I worked with a girl who sometimes had slightly greasy hair, and an unfortunate monobrow.She opened in front of everyone a pair of tweezers, a makeup mirror and a bottle of dry shampoo.Safe to say she was fairly upset.
I got the guy who would lie constantly to get out of work, not good lies either, real s****y lies. So naturally I got him ‘The big book of excuses’.
Talking toBored Panda, the expert agreed that it’s very easy to offend people when you try to be creative with yourgifts. “So, the safe bet is to give generic gifts like gift cards for coffee shops or restaurants, but that just makes the whole Secret Santa enterprise boring.“From a social psychological perspective, the Secret Santa enterprise is interesting,” Prof. Ludden continued. “I suspect that most people don’t like Secret Santa, but a few people do. That small minority is quite vocal and manages to impose their will on the majority. Then the majority complies, even though they don’t want to. We often see a vocal minority imposing their will on a silent majority, and Secret Santa is no exception.”
Talking toBored Panda, the expert agreed that it’s very easy to offend people when you try to be creative with yourgifts. “So, the safe bet is to give generic gifts like gift cards for coffee shops or restaurants, but that just makes the whole Secret Santa enterprise boring.
“From a social psychological perspective, the Secret Santa enterprise is interesting,” Prof. Ludden continued. “I suspect that most people don’t like Secret Santa, but a few people do. That small minority is quite vocal and manages to impose their will on the majority. Then the majority complies, even though they don’t want to. We often see a vocal minority imposing their will on a silent majority, and Secret Santa is no exception.”
My worst was when the owner of the company announced that whoever’s name he drew would be getting a new MacBook pro, everything else was a £10 limit. On the day there was a MacBook Pro shaped box with my name on it. Everybody was excited and gathered round. I opened the wrapping and it was indeed a MacBook Pro box. I opened the box and inside was not a new laptop, but a cork screw. The owner of the company thought it was hilarious, everybody else just thought he was a d*ck.
Well I was the only one to not receive a gift in the secret santa. It was humiliating. Someone got my name and didn’t bother.
I once worked in a place where a guy with ginger hair received brown hair dye. He had never mentioned wanting to dye his hair at all and was a very unwelcome gift.The office junior had also had a spray tan a few weeks before, I’m going back around 15 years ago so they were relatively new at the time and the colouring was definitely more orange than they are now. She got a can of Fanta and some orange face paints. She was a 17 year old girl and had only been with the company for a few months and looked absolutely mortified.Both gifts were left in the conference room after the gifting and nobody ever took responsibility for them.I never go for humorous gifts unless I know the person really well. If not, I’d rather stick to something generic like biscuits or a mug or something inoffensive. Much rather be boring than be as big an arsehole as either of the aforementioned gift givers.
Does nothing count? I have done countless Secret Santas where I have been the one person to end up with nothing. The one thing I like about where I work now is that the person who runs it is like a wolverine when it comes to making sure everyone gets their present.
Broke up with my boyfriend and less than a month later got a ‘grow your own boyfriend’ from secret santa……….
Someone bought the office brown-nose a fresh, bloody cow’s tongue and gave it to him in a glass presentation case.
The aforementioned survey found that for quite a few respondents, the pressure of giving the right gift is something that sucks the joy out of the gift exchange and even makes them anxious. Unsurprisingly, roughly one-in-ten of surveyed individuals say they would like Secret Santa to be cancelled altogether.
A coworker got me makeup brushes, and said I’d be so much prettier with makeup, because I’m so plain.(I actually like makeup, I just don’t always feel like doing it. Apparently my coworker didn’t think it was a choice?)
I’m a woman who used to have long hair. Over lockdown I shaved all my hair off. At the next Secret Santa, someone got me a Britney Spears wig. Absolute comedy gold.
I was the cleaner and they gave me cleaning products for my home.
“In my opinion, secret Santa is not a good thing, in that it creates far more strife within an organization than the good it does. But then again, there are those who would say that I’m a Scrooge and just can’t get into the Christmas spirit. I don’t agree with that assessment. I just prefer to celebrate the holidays in a more subdued and sincere way,” Prof. Ludden shared.
When I was in sixth form I was overweight and not very popular/cool and the popular girls got me a thong. I was so obviously not the kind of person to wear one, I felt so humiliated.
A few years ago, I have gained some weight after having my daughter and was really struggling to loose it, which is the main contribution to my post-partum depression. I shared the situation with my colleagues and got a dumbbell as a secret santa gift with a note ‘maybe you need to lift harder, this may help.’ I was fuming at the spot but held myself together well (I think).Left the job for a promotion 3 months later and only used the dumbbell as a doorstop.
I had slept with someone at work, we hadn’t made it public but people had put two and two together, they got me a ‘screw’driver set (implying I screw in the office). Was so embarrassed opening it in front of everyone and people asking me why as a young 22yo female I’d have a masculine type tool box. He obviously got a normal secret Santa as why embarrass the male.
A sack of cement. Still no idea why to this day…..
I used to work with this very sexist chauvinistic guy who was really vocal about his views on why women aren’t suited in the workplace. So I got him a nice notepad (Paperchase might I add) that had “The future is female” on the front. I thought it would be funny and thought he would see the funny side too but he was furious! I later found it on someone else’s desk, turns out he gave it to another colleague.
A free gift from a magazine. Not even with the magazine, just the freebie, still in packaging branded with the magazine name.
Expensive nuts and wine, clearly a regift. We had to fill out a form with things we can’t have etc, I am allergic to nuts at the time I couldn’t drink, which I made clear on the form.
I once got a bottle of moisturiser that was 2/3’s full…
I had a boss who had an obvious favourite employee. For secret Santa one year she got a mug, mousepad and post-it notes with his face on them.
Got a picture frame. Inside the frame was a picture. This picture had been printed on normal paper, from a s**t printer, in black and white.The picture was of the gift-giver’s face.
Not me but a colleague. She had recently (about 5 months prior) gotten out of a long relationship and was in the middle of selling the house and got rid of the dog. She also used to put a crazy amount of effort into secret Santa making massive photo collages for people amongst other things but everything she did was handmade and a lot of time went into it.One of the other girls thought it would be a great idea to get a blow-up man (the kind hen parties use) and tape on a box of chocolates and a few tins of drink. It very much did not go down well, she was very upset and she had a bit of a meltdown in front of us all about the present. She also said she was not happy because that’s what she got when she goes to such an effort every year.
I once got an IKEA toilet brush. No idea why, nobody from work had ever been in my toilets to think I needed one.
Budget was a tenner.Boss gave the perma-intern a tenner and a pack of polo mints.Classy.
When I was at school I received a secret Santa, it was a smarties tube with two dead Duracell batteries in it….
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A member of staff who was on a fixed contract and was finishing at Christmas. He got a framed print out of a map from Google maps showing the directions from our office to the social security office.
A fl*shlight beer can thing… the recipient was not happy and caused a huge HR thing.During the same secret santander exchange, someone got 1/8 of weed and management called the police.It was a wild place to work that week.
I spent a few hours making a picture montage of the person’s sporting wins (after speaking in confidence to their partner and sister) and putting the resulting image in a tasteful frame. I gift wrapped the present and added a hand-written note.The donor (who was a bit of a flake, TBH) had forgotten it was secret Santa that day, and hastily wrapped an apple from her lunch in newspaper a few minutes before the presentation of gifts.Guess who got that. :(
At girl who worked at my job (way before I started but this story has apparently gone down in history) gave a male member of staff a box of brownies and a “bl*wjob voucher”.
A guy at work had epilepsy. His boss got him a strobe light.
Bath bombs that were bake off themed. I didn’t have a bath, and we worked with a client who’s entire brand was around baking and I’d been extremely verbal about how I wasn’t watching or interested in bake off.
Years ago I used to work on a site which had incredibly strict security - the sort where they X-ray all the things going into and out from the site. There was obvious restrictions on booze, weapons etc etc.Someone in my team bought someone else a big box, in it was a crate of 0% beer, a water pistol that looked just like the real thing but was bright pink, some candies that came in a plastic case shaped like a hand grenade and some like syrup drink mixers which were presented in syringes. He hadn’t broken any specific rules, but when the recipient had to get it all xrayed to get out the guard nearly had a fit.
I will stress that the person who received this gift thought it was hilarious as both he & the colleague who gifted the item share the same kind of humour.He was a 2nd Generation Nigerian immigrant, so his parents had come over, he often went back to Nigeria. For Secret Santa he got a ‘Nigerian survival kit’. A cardboard box which contained a bag of rice, a bottle of water & a banana.
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I was 18 and quite shy. A much older man who was also the boss of the team got me a really crude calendar and said “it’s always the quiet ones.” Hid it in my locker as couldn’t face taking it home to my kind parents!
A guy received a photoshopped picture of his sister in her underwear.
Someone I knew got a novelty pooing reindeer that pooed chocolate drops for his boss. Mildly amusing to everyone else but insanely offensive to his boss.
As a Project Manager I was given an alarm clock so that I would “ensure you are delivering on time” 🙄 who tf are these people
A lime green mankini and the recipient proceeded to model it over his clothes at the pub. Oh the horror.
Worked in a bank, and 1 woman got an edible g string! Nobody owned up and we were all just saying WTF!?
My aunt lost her hair very suddenly. She was always very proud of it, then it was all gone in under a year. Obviously it was massively upsetting for her and she was very self conscious, especially with people prying about it at work. She got given a headscarf for secret santa.
Inflatable photo frame. I “accidentally” left it in the restaurant, only for someone to bring it in to work the next day and return it to me
Not mine but the story spread around work very quickly.Trainee teacher at the secondary school I worked at. He had to buy for the head of department having known her for a few months. The gifts were obviously anonymous so he chose to buy her a double ended d*ldo. When I say buy, I mean he already owned it and just ‘gifted’ it to her.She opened it at their department meeting and was appalled. Trainee bragged about it to the other student teachers, word got back to head of dept that he bought it.Oddly enough, he dropped out not long after this.
Porcelain d**k from an apparently famous place in Portugal. Recycled many times over each time we had a new person on the office till when someone broke the tradition.
I got given a nail polish set. It was a very cheap brand and clearly an “I don’t know what to buy women” gift, since I never wore nail polish.
I did a secret santa once when I was at college with a few friends, we made lists for each other so we expected to just get something from there.I ended up getting some sort of engine filter for someone’s car as that’s what he asked for. When the day came the person who had me had forgotten to bring it in. He ended up telling me what it is and it was a minecraft lego set.That was about 4 years ago and I still haven’t gotten it, every now and then he’ll send a photo of it fully built just sitting on his shelf.So I suppose my worst gift was nothing, unless you count pictures of said item as a gift.
We had a guy with no teeth who was given a full dental hygiene kit. He took it as the joke it was intended to be though so all well.
Inexpensive marital aid for a lovely lady who was mortified in the group opening and then very cross.
One of the older ladies in HR bought one of the younger ladies in HR two pairs of edible knickers.Inappropriate for anyone in any work environment, but completely unacceptable from/to anyone in HR.
Years ago a male colleague of mine gave a very-single female colleague a set of AA batteries in a secret santa. She never forgave him.
A nurses outfit and leopard print pants…not even joking!
The person I bought for had just moved here from Australia so I got them Scottish stuff like shortbread and a miniature whisky etc… as much as I could get for the limit. The person who had me got me a miniature bottle of Marvel Avengers branded shampoo.
Canned peaches + can opener.
£10 budget. Someone bought me a pack of incense sticks.
My colleague received a box of beard baubles a couple of years ago. He didn’t have a beard. Still doesn’t.
My friends did a secret santa and the guy I got bought me a single beer wrapped up. That following weekend he brought the other 5 beers to a party I was hosting.
Got told we could only spend a fiver, it was my first year there so I took it literally. Everyone else spent £20+ and I got a co-worker post-it origami. I thought it was a cool little gift. Heard her saying a few months later, “I’m not doing it again. Last year I got post its and I know who it was” and everyone acted appalled.
I got given a lighbulb and a piece of wood once. Still not quite sure what it was meant to be.
I wouldn’t class it as inappropriate, but a colleague, who was not the brightest, was really struggling to get someone a gift. All he knew about her was that she enjoyed a cigarette break, so he bought her a packet of fags for Christmas.
A neon pink lacy thong, at a work secret santa. I was totally confused until the purchaser told me that my knickers were constantly on show above my trousers when bending over. Mortified.
In a place I worked, a colleague got offered deodorant because people thought he smelled bad. Another got “sl*tty” lingerie because they thought she was sleeping with the boss. Someone got a laundry bag because they wore same sweater days in a row. Is that kind of thing common?
I got someone who was notoriously tight a wallet. However it was called a tight a*sewallet and all the pockets were stitched shut. He was well pleased with his new wallet until he realised! He left it on the table!
A co-worker of mine once gifted a woman we work with a ball gag because she had a hard time being quiet. She took it very well.
My boss in my first proper job (office worker, I generally just wore polo shirts to work) got me a shirt and tie from Marks and Spencer.
I got a children’s creative kit to make a volcano. Although I didn’t have children then. It was a strange gift for me.
A while ago, I was once given a “size matters” mug that’s about 2 - 3 mugs worth. I can only assume it had something to do with my weight, however, jokes on them, I actually think it’s a pretty decent mug and ended up being a good way to store my cooking utensils, lol. Oh, for a few days after getting it, I proceeded to use it for coffee at work, much to the shock (abd probably disgust) of my co workers, lol.After that I was given my present: some kind of “cheap and nasty” pan flute (which didn’t even work as most of the “pipes” were blocked)… I can only assume it’s because I am originally from South Africa… I honestly don’t know if they were trying to be nice or nasty, but I ended up feeling rather sad and disappointed (probably in part to my gift getting rejected)… I did have someone I know come over and ask what I got and if I liked it (maybe it was the gift giver?), and I tried to pretend I liked it, but my heart just wasn’t in it…
A bottle of poppers called Phuck, wrapped in a used Milky Way wrapper with bits of chocolate still on it, with the tag from a teabag stuck on as a gift tag.Dude who gave it to me was on roughly £50k.
When in secondary school, my friend and I were the only two boys in a group of all girls. One Christmas they all gave us both a pair of their underwear.Now I wonder why I never held onto them, could have made a mint.
Finger lights. Yes lights for you fingers, led, red green and blue lights. F***n shte whilst everyone else got wine or smellies. We were all sat round as well about 15 of us. There were some shocked faces. Mine being the biggest.
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Ilona Baliūnaitė
Larysa Perih
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