[Closed] Awful Secret Santa Gifts

That's awesome, send it to me 😉

I used to be a bit of a music snob, hence;
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😀

Keep it, if there is secret santa again next year, pass it on!

once worked somewhere where loads were being made redundant and some scores were being settled

One plump manager got a diet book one member of staff [ skiver to be fair]got a book on staying healthy and one young employee got a rather risqué [ knickerless] wipe clean santa helper outfit

It was like a slow motion car crash....awful at not at all amusing in any way

It's a magnetic sharks head bottle opener. It's awful.
1. I only buy bottled beer very occasionally.
2. My fridge is fitted so has a wooden door to match the kitchen.
3. Even if I had a metal doored fridge I would not want the front of it graced with that tat.

You sound like a scream.

I've bought a nerf gun for mine. Hopefully he'll go home pissed and shoot his wife in the face

I have "politely" declined to join in with Secret Santa. I don't want anyone buying me some dreadful tat and nor do I want to have to buy the same for some other poor soul.

Can't you just be civil, say thanks then tactically "re-gift" next year?
Or are you starting a crusade from your high horse or moral unicorn or WTF it's called?

Id rather go for a beer with the giver of that fantastic bottle opener than the Op to be honest.

No offence, I just recognise the wavelength of the giver rather better than the OP.

Open decent beer, or fret about your fitted niche woodwork singlespeed fridge-track-world.

OP you do realise that's a joke gift, don't you? He's not expecting you to actually mount it in your kitchen.

Can't you just be civil, say thanks then tactically "re-gift" next year?

But how would the OP be able to express his superiority to the person giving the gift if he did that?

That shark is ****ing awesome, you on the other hand sound like a miserable cretin.

Lulz at Northwind, that sounds like fun!

I thought the point of Secret Santa was to give people utterly shiiiiite presents? ....dawning realisation why no one talks to me at work.....

we had lucky dip secret santa this year so couldnt revel in getting something 'personalized'. gutted when i pulled out a cress growing kit. quite possibly the ****est present ever, so i'd have happily taken the shark thing anyday!

** cue will cress seeds last till xmas 2015 thread... 😉

I have that bottle opener, works a treat plus can also hold a filled suit bag. Good for bleary eyed morning trips away.

That shark would look awesome on the bonnet of my van, aesthetically pleasing AND functional. Win/win.

I've bought my secret Santa a bottle opener that launches the bottle cap. I don't particularly like the knobber its destined for. It's just a bit of fun for crying out loud. Northwind I would be well happy if I got that!!?

I know! I'm pretty awesome tbh

I've bought a nerf gun for mine.

Same here. Everyone should own at least one nerf gun. 🙂

I got this last year:

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Two possibilities:

1. Someone who knows me a little bit and thought because I go climbing I'd like it.
2. Someone who knows me well enought to know I hate the **** Grylls and who therefore bought it as a pisstake.

I like that shark thing would go nicely on the wall above my work bench and would facilitate evening opening of Adnams.

THAT;s tacky? I got a bottle opener that played the Coronation St theme when used. Couldn't even open it to take the battery out and shut it up
Still, great for annoying the OH though

Inflatable zimmer frame.

I'm 42.

gimp ball

THAT;s tacky? I got a bottle opener that played the Coronation St theme when used. Couldn't even open it to take the battery out and shut it up

of course you can:
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Maybe there should be a STW secret santa swap shop.

OP you could always donate it to your local charity shop. Or stick it to something in their workshop/garage and either use it or fire the air rifle at it!

I'm quite pleased.... I got a camembert AND a camembert baker (no, I had no idea what that was, either). Result!

I'm not sure the OP gets the idea of Secret Santa. Dave Vanderspek's idea is pure genius..!

You've been wronged. Summarise your grievances and email it round your office.

slowoldman - Member
I have "politely" declined to join in with Secret Santa. I don't want anyone buying me some dreadful tat and nor do I want to have to buy the same for some other poor soul.

I once got a cheap nasty perfume that smelled like air freshener. Straight in the bin!

Let's keep Richie's festive charity thread going, Op send me that awesome bottle opener, I'll mount it in pride of place on my fridge and bung a couple of quid in the air ambulance box! The last secret Santa I got was a Billy Connolly box set, funny but couldn't open a beer with it...

OP you do realise that's a joke gift, don't you? He's not expecting you to actually mount it in your kitchen.

Exactly. All year ,your colleagues have been rolling their eyes ,
as you have boasted about your lovely fitted kitchen and superior taste in decor. 😀

I've always thought Secret Santa was meant to be a giggle?

I once bought my bosses wife willy shaped sweets from Anne Summers... she liked them...

I got a bath plug once with a plastic Titanic on it....couldn't work out if there was a humorous meaning to it that I had missed.

Last year I got one of those hi-viz snap ankle bands to use on the bike and I use it all the time.
I also got a spoke clacker (posh version of playing card & elastic band), but am yet to try it out. Debated using it for the 24/12 but figured it might be a bit annoying while coming through the camping area at 2:30am with it clacking away.....

Best secret santa I have bought was one of those laser cut wooden models. I got a colleague a Spitfire one, and apparently he couldn't wait until Boxing day when he found some time to build it. Been sat on his window sill at work since.

I once bought my bosses wife willy shaped sweets from Anne Summers... she liked them...

I hate Secret Santa because it goes against the true spirit of Christmas.

Which is to spend money you can't afford on crap that people don't want. Secret Santa means spending money you [i]can[/i] afford on crap that people don't want.

I amuse myself by giving people DVDs that should never be watched

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That bottle opener is ace! I hadn't realised until reading this thread that there are some right pompous, joyless, snotty, miserable, sniffy, aloof bastards on here. Who else knew?

We're doing our secret santa today. I'll keep you posted. I expect that everyone has embraced the spirit of Colin

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Last year's "Secret Santagate' scandal got pretty serious. Someone put in a tin of Tesco Value Soup, and a scouring pad. The outraged recipient then galvanised her coven from customer services, and started a proper witch-hunt to find the sender. Much to the amusement of the rest of us. Still don't know who it was. It was funny though. Hats off. 😀

Someone put in a tin of Tesco Value Soup, and a scouring pad

I got Neil from Stores a razor last year as he always sports a really crap wispy bum-fluff beard. A fairly harmless bit of fun that didn't take much thought and wasn't even that funny. However when he opened it in front of the company he went bright red, started shaking and muttered gruffly "I didn't see that coming" in a very sarcastic tone and stormed out with everyone else p1ss1ng themselves laughing. Result!

lol @ niche kitchen... It's from Magnet!
Yes of course I realise that secret santa is a bit of a fun and I see now my op didn't come across as light hearted as I had intended but the point remains and I do prefer to receive useful gifts. My best secret santa gift one year was a vertabrae book for local mountain biking routes, brilliant present. Novelty gifts that aren't useful in the slightest are loathsome, such wasteful consumption where it won't serve any purpose but to landfill. It's disgusting that here in the west we have so much wealth that we buy each other presents that we don't even need..... when there are people in the world who haven't got enough to eat or without clean water.
Anyway, this thread was supposed to be light hearted tales of bad secret santa presents.

Would you rather have had the soup and the scouring pad? 😀

Have you not got a man cave the shark can go in? Thats the perfect adornment for the garage or shed. So you can crack open a cold beer on something tacky and tasteless, while mucking about with your bikes, scratching your arse and farting? These are the things that define us as men.

binners - Member

Have you not got a man cave the shark can go in? Thats the perfect adornment for the garage or shed. So you can crack open a cold beer on something tacky and tasteless, while mucking about with your bikes, scratching your arse and farting? These are the things that define us as men.

This was what I was thinking - first thought was that would go perfect on the wall of my garage....

If only there was a shark's head bottle opener that also played the theme from Coronation Street, my life would be complete.

I think that's a pretty good secret Santa gift.

Novelty gifts that aren't useful in the slightest are loathsome, such wasteful consumption where it won't serve any purpose but to landfill. It's disgusting that here in the west we have so much wealth that we buy each other presents that we don't even need..... when there are people in the world who haven't got enough to eat or without clean water.

Are you serious? FFS! 🙄

We used to do the funny/offensive gifts at my place but it started to get a bit close to the mark when the fat lass in customer services got 3 cans of slimfast. Now it isn't named, you bring in a present and put it in a basket, then each person selects a gift out of the basket and if you don't like it you can swap with somebody who already has a present.

It is just a bit of fun, I got a best of Cliff Richard CD this year 😐

We're all engineers, if we did secret santa it would all be whitworth spanners, IOU for a long stand - to be redeemed at the equipment store in January, and slide rules.

A sharks head bottle opener would be great.

One year a rumour went round our office that one of the women in support was into a spot of swinging so their secret santa present was a large Pampas Grass (which was a bugger to wrap) - I've never seen someone so grateful for a present and it was announced that they had the perfect spot for it in their front garden.

[i]Rusty Spanner - Member
I used to be a bit of a music snob, hence;[/i]

Good job it's secret, I'd kill if someone gave me that!

I got one of these about 3 years ago, it's rubbish, no doubt, but I've still got it on my desk
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I generally get some vaguely cycling related crap, nothing overly exciting but hell, it's all good.

This year I will be giving an entry to Parkrun and 3 litres of Lambrini (£5 in Tesco, bargain). Said recipient will love one and hate the other. This seems like a perfect outcome.

But Parkrun is free to enter?

I got one of these last year. A credit card survival tool. I thought it was pretty cool. Still got it in my wallet. Still never used it.

[img] ?v=2303[/img]

But Parkrun is free to enter?

Correct, but she would never enter herself, contrary to what she tells everyone, so I have entered for her. She'll be chuffed.

Yay!!! I got lego.

PrinceJohn - Member

I've always thought Secret Santa was meant to be a giggle?

Yeah, but it's sometimes quite a fine line between funny, mortally offensive, and sexual harassment.

i kind of agree with the OP. it bothers me that christmas is such a festival of cheap tat.

if i got that bottle opener it would go straight to the charity shop - i live in a small flat and don't really have space for crap that i neither want nor need! Much more into food as presents.

it's our secret santa today. got my colleague some posh chocolates. fingers crossed i don't get any tat...

I bought posh chocolate too. I'm quite hoping for tat though. A shark bottle opener would be awesome! 😀

I find a butt plug covers both genders and most eventualities - even better when recipient pretends to not know what it is 😆

The Secret Santa exchanges will be taking place shortly. I'm off out for lunch, I can't bear to watch.

There's a guy that works for me who is the annual recipient of some terrible efforts. It's a longstanding joke that whoever gets him must make it terrible.

Year 1 - The guy had been selling a rabbit hutch for £20 on our intranet. He'd advertised it for ages but it wasn't selling. Eventually a girl from another department called him and haggled him down to £10. He spent weeks moaning about the fact he hadn't sold it for £20. Unbeknown to him, it was his secret santa guy that had actually bought the hutch via the girl. We all go out for lunch to a restaurant where we're exchanging gifts. His eyes light up when he sees the MASSIVE wrapped up parcel and he exclaimed in a high pitched voice "Is that for me?". The look on his face when he unwrapped it and discovered the rabbit hutch was absolutely priceless.

Year 2 - I get him in the draw 😈 He likes vodka, so I bought him a bottle of Absolut. Except I'd decanted the vodka and replaced it with water. As it's got a cork stopper it was less obvious that it had been tampered with. I waited an entire year for him to come in and complain that the vodka was crap but it never happened...

Year 3 - I get him again. This time I give him the decanted vodka in the highland spring mineral water bottle that replaced it. He unwraps it and says "ha ha, a 3/4 full bottle of water". I explain what I'd done and the colour drains from his face. Turns out he'd given away the bottle of vodka as a present to someone else, and he can't remember who. He thinks it may have been the new boyfriend of a friend who they quickly had to find a present for as they were coming to the house 😆

Did you really save the decanted vodka for a whole year??

Did you really save the decanted vodka for a whole year??

Yip. that takes committment

Year 1 - The guy had been selling a rabbit hutch for £20 on our intranet. He'd advertised it for ages but it wasn't selling. Eventually a girl from another department called him and haggled him down to £10. He spent weeks moaning about the fact he hadn't sold it for £20. Unbeknown to him, it was his secret santa guy that had actually bought the hutch via the girl. We all go out for lunch to a restaurant where we're exchanging gifts. His eyes light up when he sees the MASSIVE wrapped up parcel and he exclaimed in a high pitched voice "Is that for me?". The look on his face when he unwrapped it and discovered the rabbit hutch was absolutely priceless.

absolute f*cking genius 😆 😆

absolute f*cking genius

The girl that bought it gave him a sob story that it was her niece that was buying it for her pet rabbit and she had a maximum of £10 to spend. He's tighter than a gnat's chuff and he was raging he had to drop the price to sell it.

I bought the hottest girl at work one of these once and wrapped it appropriately.

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he was raging he had to drop the price to sell it.

Surely then he could sell it again for a tenner and still get his original £20 asking price!

The Secret Santa exchanges will be taking place shortly. I'm off out for lunch, I can't bear to watch.

@slowoldman - two lunches eh? 😉

BoardinBob - Crying with laughter at the rabbit hutch

Once bought a notoriously volatile bloke in our office a 'gift from scotland' doll in a tube from a chairty shop. He spent the afternoon puce-facedly haranguing the organiser of the secret santa while we tittered behind the filing cabinets.

Erm..... Damned computers.
Anyway that's how I feel about Secret Santa.

You know, I keep drifting through life, never knowing what I want, what I don't want, where I want to go and what I want to do...

Now though, I know. I REALLY know, and it's all thanks to STW.

All I've ever wanted..... is a sharks head bottle opener. 😥

Steve, I am your magical christmas fairy.... pif paf poof !! and it shall be yours*, email in profile.

@slowoldman .... what did you get from secret santa? I'm tenterhooks here.

*£5 donation to Cancer Research required.

kewl bottle opener - but here, most beer comes in a bottle with a flip top

I once got a thing which fits to a beer/coke can to make drinking easier. 1. it was from US so won't fit EU metric cans, and 2. here, almost every drink comes in either PET bottle or glass bottle with a deposit. Cans are rare as hens teeth, unless it's German equivalent of special brew in a 1 litre can.

Got one of those credit card survival gadgets when I was in scouts in the 80's. Still got it. Did use the tin opener bit once, back before all tins had a ring pull.

Just what I wanted. Nowt.

Pfft! I got a tin of shortbread shaped like a kilt.

A shark bottle opener it most certainly isn't! 😥

I love secret santa!

This year I got a selfie stick and remote for my phone to take pics and gave a guy a ukulele and some elvis glasses. He loved it.

Such fun!

My flatmate when I lived in Bristol years ago used to work in a casino. At his Secret Santa the usual tat, choccies and wine did the rounds. When he opened his, it was a huge vibrating manhood extension, complete with an external battery pack, which, I kid you not, took 6 DD batteries (although to be frank, it was so big, it looked like it should be running on diesel).

To this day he has no clue who gave it to him.

Worryingly, another of our flatmates used to regularly fire this thing up (not erm...whilst connected to it, I hasten to add) and let it wander around the dinner table under it's own power...he took particular delight in doing this when the original recipient had his girlfriend visiting.

The thing was terrifying - like something out of a Cronenberg movie - thankfully it later got dismantled one drunken evening (to see how it worked, you understand) and the electric motor saw sterling service powering an improvised disco ball at the following year's New Year's party.

Surely then he could sell it again for a tenner and still get his original £20 asking price!

There was a charity shop next to the restaurant and he took it straight in there after lunch

Steve, I am your magical christmas fairy.... pif paf poof !! and it shall be yours*, email in profile.

God bless you sir! But I think it should stay a dream, something to strive for in the future. 😥 🙂

We used to do a buy something for £5 in a Charity shop - and I ended up with a cracking "Cooking with Beer" recipe book, which in my inebriated state I promptly lost!