Do you put in for coworker's presents?

xHannahx

In my office if it's your birthday you bring a cake in for your team. We work in teams of 12. It means nobody spends on other peoples birthdays as such and we all contribute once. We are a close knit team though.

womanly-panther

I work in a large office with about 200 people on site, and 60 on my floor, but I am in a team of 12.
We have a 'birthday club' where everyone puts £3 in for each birthday (or £5 if the birthday ends in a zero!), and the person whose birthday it was last takes the collection & buys the gift/card. That way everyone get something and everyone contributes to the same level. It does help that we all get on very well & are a close knit team.

gloriouslyhappy

lulu_92 wrote: »

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who realises it's a lot of money. I give what I can but I'd rather put the money towards my savings.

There's also nights out and meals and parties, probably 3 times a month and I don't really want to go them for financial and personal reasons, yet I feel like I have to give justification for not going.

I worked in a very large office where there were many social occasions which seemed to be an expected unpaid overtime work event. But as I didn't have much in common with my colleagues, not being a big drinker or partier nor having lots of spare money, I signed up for a course of evening lessons and let everyone know I was studying. The lessons didn't last long, it was just a short course, but I didn't tell them when they ended so anytime an work event came up, I had the perfect excuse which neither management nor colleagues could ignore and they gradually stopped asking me 'Oh, Gloria's got class tonight' and what bliss, not wasting time or money, and no social pressure.

I was brought up not to lie, but sometimes stretching the truth is the only thing to do!

Loz01

I work in a TINY team and couldn't be more glad, after reading this thread :rotfl: we put money in for a special occasion but theres no pressure to do it and we certainly don't have to write how much we put in!

scooby088

No chance of me putting any money for them, firstly i'm at work for purely selfish reasons to pay my mortgage, plus although i like most of my colleagues i dont like them enough to put my hard earned money into a present for them. I always no thanks when asked.

sm222

After 27 years contributing to wedding and retirement presents I was approaching early retirement age and looking forward to being on the receiving end for once. Then there were mass redundancies, disguised as early retirements, for which many of us applied as the terms were a slight improvement on ‘ordinary’ early retirement. I was out of the country when the results came out and returned to work to find most of my colleagues had already gone and ‘it had been a decided not to do retirement collections’.
So, no retirement present, - not even a goodbye.
On the plus side, I didn’t have to contribute to anyone else’s collection, but I felt very hard done to for a while.
And I never found out who had made the decision.

lulu_92

scooby088 wrote: »

No chance of me putting any money for them, firstly i'm at work for purely selfish reasons to pay my mortgage, plus although i like most of my colleagues i dont like them enough to put my hard earned money into a present for them. I always no thanks when asked.

This is exactly how I feel. :beer:

[Deleted User]

And then there are all the requests for sponsorship for charity fundraising which are not only put up on the wall but repeatedly emailed to everyone.

It does get expensive.

Brecon_Beacons

sm222 wrote: »

After 27 years contributing to wedding and retirement presents I was approaching early retirement age and looking forward to being on the receiving end for once. Then there were mass redundancies, disguised as early retirements, for which many of us applied as the terms were a slight improvement on ‘ordinary’ early retirement. I was out of the country when the results came out and returned to work to find most of my colleagues had already gone and ‘it had been a decided not to do retirement collections’.
So, no retirement present, - not even a goodbye.
On the plus side, I didn’t have to contribute to anyone else’s collection, but I felt very hard done to for a while.
And I never found out who had made the decision.

Something very similar happened to me. It has totally changed my feelings on these forced contributions to this-that-and-the-other - I used to be consistently generous, now I avoid having to make contributions whenever possible.

The problem is that, with all these schemes, they start out with good intentions and become biased, unfair and manipulative. I too worked at a large office where management had said 'bring cakes on your birthday' - surely the fairest, the only, way to do it.

Yet we still ended up with envelopes coming round - and yes, we had to initial we had contributed, and yes, the office fascists would stand over you waiting to see what you put in!

In the end I realised that it was the same self-promoting pushy beggars who would insist on these office whip-rounds - always when THEIR birthday was in the offing. It became a pecking order, a popularity contest. Some people were getting thoroughly spoiled - others like me who don't play the brown-nosing game well enough, could end up forgotten!

I wish I had back all the hundreds/thousands I have contributed, to people who NEVER returned the goodwill!

And yes OP, you are right, it's the same people who avoid contributing whilst angling for a big present themselves, that ARE always the ones to scoff all the cakes!

Human nature, I suppose!:cool: A pox on it all. Nowadays I make a decision about what I will do e.g. a small present at Christmas for everyone, whether I like 'em or not - in the full knowledge and expectation that nothing will come back. And guess what - I'm never disappointed!

markja55

our cleaner left, due to illness, 6 months ago, i bought the card and flowers for her. no one offered to pay anything, not even the company.

today i found out one of my colleagues was leaving as his wife is v. ill. nothing had been done by anyone. and i was off last week so knew nothing about it. i got a card, flowers (for wife) and small pack of chocolates. everyone said great idea & wanted to sign the card, but no one paid anything again.
seems like i work with a bunch of tight wads!

next time i'll go to the cake shop and get myself a cream bun. no card, no chocs & no flowers.

i bet when i leave i'll get sod all!