I have made a decision that will earn me the title of being ungrateful in the eyes of my co workers. I don’t think gratitude has anything to do with my decision but if it does, then so be it.
Each year at Christmas time I am thrown into a dilemma at work. This dilemma has reached the point that as the holidays approach I find myself angry and depressed to the point of actually quitting my job.
Let me begin by stating that I love my employers and for the most part consider myself lucky to be working for two such caring and giving individuals. That being said, they are indirectly the cause of the ruination of what use to be my favorite holiday. Christmas.
Each year my employers throw an employee Christmas party. At the party they present each employee with a Christmas gift. A very expensive gift. It is this gift and the unspoken obligations that go with it that is the root of my depression and my dilemma.
For starters I am very uncomfortable receiving expensive gifts from anyone. Receiving an expensive gift from someone who does not know me well enough to actually choose my gift themselves increases that discomfort 100 fold.
While I know everyone has their own feelings about giving and receiving gifts, my personal feeling is that if you have to ask someone else or worse me what I would like for a gift you shouldn’t be giving me one in the first place.
It does not take that much time to listen to someone’s casual conversations to know what they are interested in and learn what kinds of things they like. If you don’t care enough about someone to have a few conversations with them through out the year, then why would you want to purchase a gift for them in the first place?
Second, a gift should be simply that, a gift. It should be given with absolutely no strings attached. To expect anything or to have others expect things on your behalf because you are giving a gift renders that gift absolutely meaningless. When those expectations result in causing the receiver of the gift to be uncomfortable and to go against their own personal set of values, then the gift becomes worse than meaningless it becomes a personal insult.
Such is my case.
While my employers have never demanded that I do this or that because they have given me the gift my co-workers, including some of my employers relatives, have made it clear that they feel there are obligations attached to the gift.
One such obligation is my attendance at the employee Christmas party. This angers and upsets me for several reasons. First, I am not a party person. While some parties make me uncomfortable, other parties actually create a phobia in me that makes me actually get ill. The employee Christmas party is one of those parties that makes me physically ill.
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