Pendrive that put me on guilt.

This post is a part of the contest at BlogAdda.com in association with Badhai.in

“one gift shopping experience that drove you crazy?”

This is an incident which I wanted to write for very long time. But always forgot. Thanks to Blogadda for making me remember the crazy incident and making me document it in form of post, and record it in my space.

It was already 25^th of the month. Money had to be collected and gifts had to be bought. I was trying hard to concentrate on work. But somehow, the background thoughts were filled in party mood. This time, it was my boss birthday and best friends too. This excited me more. But I also had doubts in my mind, regarding my capability to host such a big party. We were expecting 40 people. The venue was fixed. The collections were in progress. Thank god, I didn’t take up the duty of going and collecting money from each staff. People dropped promptly by 25^th, and gave in the money.

It was 27^th, and I had not decided the menu. I was clueless on the amount to be spent on “snacks Vs gifts”.  I made my choice of making it 50-50 each. Which meant I had money only for cake and tea?  But I thought, I could save some money in gift and arrange at least some chips with it.

This meant I had to buy gift sooner. Going shopping in Bangalore traffic without a personal two wheeler was really tiresome. It was just not two gist I had to buy, but 5. 4+1(special gift). I was cursing the person who introduced this great idea of celebrating group b’day. i.e celebration of b’days of people of that month together on last working day of the month.  This month’s list included one young girl, one lady boss, one male manager, one helper. Though it was great idea, buying gift for all categories, according to their taste and more importantly within the budget was quite a task.

I was confident that the girl would like the handbags sold on commercial street platform, but didn’t know if the lady boss would like the funky stuff. Wanted to gift the managers a parker pen, but would the illiterate helper treasure it? So so many doubts. I literally took two days wandering on commercial street, garuda mall, chikpet ,central , Gandhi bazaar. But everything was in vain. The best thing is that, if I finalize on something, my friends wouldn’t agree on it.

It was already 30^th, but everything was pending just because I had not bought the gifts. Only after the gifts are bought, the rest of the money could be used to buying cake. Thanks to bakery’s which were ready to give me cake on 5 hours notice, but that would restrict my choice of flavors.

I was almost on tears. Just then somebody gave this idea of gift vouchers. But again, that means I was giving people a limited choice. I had no time, had only two choices. I had to buy gift voucher from garuda mall, which was near by office. Which means, I could get either Westside voucher /shopper stop /fab india.  But again, was worried if everybody would like it. There were online offers. But it means more shipping time. Buy one get one offers didn’t work as we were supposed to buy only 5 gifts.

So I ended up buying pen-drives for all. Rest of the money was used to get cake, chips, tea and samosa. I did cost cutting by ordering just one cake instead of 5.

The party started. To my horror, one of the b’day  guy( the manager) had the same pendrive hung around his neck.  The cake cutting and snacks distribution went on well. Then the gift disturbing started. I handed over the packet to the office head. He weight it and said,” it looks small for a gift”. I just controlled my anger inside. He started calling everybody’s names. I was again shocked to hear my name in the list. The HR mockingly said, we wanted you to know the “pain of receiving the gift”. (Though it was uttered jokingly, it hurt me a lot). It made sense, for me the pendrive was a waste as I already had 3 with me, one of the same brand and colour. The gift didn’t make sense to the helper too. The manager already possessed one, and for others, pendrives were banned in office.  I did a mistake of just buying a gift, which was decided on haste, lack of time and patience. It was a bigger mistake as it involved everybody’s’ money for which I am answerable.

That is when I realized the importance of gifting right thing, to right person and right time too.

So people don’t make mistake like me, but check on this.

So people put in your best efforts for the right gift. This time the recipients are going to like it. No more of gift wastage or recycling, but its just enjoying the gift.

Sign up using facebook and get a 20% gift back on your first Gift.

http://www.badhai.in/startgifting/gifts-for-all-offer

Badhai gift vouchers are a unique way of online gifting. Badhai gift vouchers are acceptable at leading brands like Lifestyle, Croma, Pantaloons, Flipkart,com, Titan, Yebhi.com and many more.
The best part is that the person who receives the gift voucher gets the choice to use his gift amount at the choice of his brand.

PS. I was given pendrive, as that was my last day in that office.  I left the company for good, and with a good lesson on gifting.

About these ads