The Art of Regifting

Each Tuesday I will be posting a short story of an event that has occurred in the office the past week that may be memorable, embarrassing, or offensive in nature. If nothing too scandalous has occurred I will share a story from the recent past that may or may not still be relevant. This event took place on February 25th of this year but its ramifications have lasted until today, and beyond.

I arrived at work hungover from the two bottles of Rex Goliath Pinot Noir I drank last night while watching the Oscars, and was planning on having a relaxing day of cruisin' the Internet. Stan greets me before I even have a chance to grab that first cup of coffee and asks what I got Arnold for his ten year anniversary, which happens to be today. I didn't realize that A) Arnold was that old and B) anniversaries at companies actually mean something. Well it gets close to noon when I find out that not only has every single employee in my office gotten him either a gift or a card, but that there is a massive catered lunch for him in the kitchen. I don't want to go snag some free lunch and be the only guy not contributing to Arnold's decade of greatness with our company. So I gotta improvise.

I have approximately five minutes to get some sort of gift together, which is not enough time to go to the mall and get back before all the roast beef sandwiches are taken. The thing is, I don't even like the catered sandwiches we order for events, but somehow a crappy free lunch will always be better than an amazing $8.00 lunch. Anyway, I finally get a gift idea. I'll run down to my car and grab something random out of the cluttered mess that is my backseat and give it to Arnold as a present. I get to my car and begin rummaging for anything that resembles a ten year anniversary present. My options were as follows:

-3 wood (left handed)
-Two pairs of shoes. Used, of course.
-A screwdriver
-One glove (awesome, since I've been looking for it while the other glove sits alone in my room)
-An assortment of worn ties/shirts/jackets
-Brand new GPS system

Although I think Arnold's an okay guy, the GPS system might be too much. And then, jackpot! I see a Christmas gift bag I got from my grandfather with a giant picture of Santa Claus on it. I look inside and there is a tie he gave me with the tag still attached. Not a bad tie mind you, I just hadn't gotten around to wearing it/taking it out of my car. Now I'm all types of excited and I fly up the stairs of the garage to get back into the office for the party. Everyone's sitting down to eat as I put my bag with the other gifts. After a few minutes, Arnold starts opening presents, basically all Starbucks gift cards, when he finally gets to mine. Everyone laughs at my gift bag of choice to which I respond cunningly, "Sorry, my Mom didn't have time to wrap it so I had to do it myself." This joke received modest laughter.

Arnie reaches in and grabs the tie, which everyone seemed to think was a rather nice gift compared to the thoughtlessness of their own coffee cards. But then, John picks up something else out of the bag (which I had neglected to inspect beforehand), a white card. Immediately I knew what it was as he read it aloud..."Steve, Merry Christmas, I hope you like it. Love, Peepaw".

There was a nice three second silence where half the eyes in the room went to the floor while the other half looked in my direction. Then a coworker, George, (who incidentally bought Arnold, a recovering alcoholic, a wine bottle opener) yells out, "Steve, did you just regift a tie?!". I state that I reused the bag but the tie I bought this weekend, and I guess I didn't notice the card. I would probably say 20-30 percent of the people in the room believed me, and that's because those people are complete morons. So I quickly snagged another sandwich and exited the kitchen without making any eye contact. In the half hour immediately following the incident three separate people came by my desk to either a) laugh at me, b) quiz me on information such as where I bought the tie, or c) hysterically laugh at me.

Arnold kept the tie, but he generously gave me the bag back. I think there may be a lesson here somewhere, I just can't seem to pinpoint what it is. When all is said and done, it's still a better gift than the Sponge Bob Square Pants toilet seat cover I brought to the office for secret Santa. That one didn't go over too well.