Secret Santa-ing

The other day, I got to thinking about another common aspect of workplace celebration - the secret Santa gift exchange. If you've never done a secret Santa gift exchange before, it goes something like this – everyone draws a name out of a hat, and you purchase a gift for whomever you drew. Then, at the designated place and time (usually the company office party) you all exchange gifts and say Merry Christmas, drink some eggnog, and go your separate ways.

But all the rules of the game aside, what I started thinking about was - what happens if you get the name of some person you have never met? With more and more conglomerates eating up small business, not to mention outsourcing and globalization, it is entirely possible that you will draw the name of a person you've never met. So what do you do when you're expected to buy a gift for customer service agent Baasim “Timothy” Kumar? (Oh, and did I mention Baasim is in Mumbai? Well, he is. Good luck with that one.)

Well, as I said, I got to thinking about this little problem and developed a short list of possible gift ideas. You can find the list below. I'm sure there are other considerations to take into account. And you know your workplace better than I, so feel free to tweak these ideas to meet your needs.

• One of the most common secret Santa gifts is a basket of soaps, lotions, and oils. In my opinion, that is the polite way of saying, “You're stinking up the office. Please, bathe more.” So to be a bit more considerate of the feelings of those rank coworkers, I like to give them gift certificates to the local spa. With any luck, the well-trained health spa professionals will be able to scrub the stink off, so you can all work together without gagging.
  
  
• Or you can give out practical gifts. Who doesn't need beer, ketchup, and toilet paper?
  
  
• Of course, if you really have no clue about the person you are buying for, the best thing to do is to go to the store and purchase the most versatile thing you can find. Swiss Army knives (not the best example if you work in a high stress profession where people are at risk of going postal), festive holiday cards or signs that read “Happy Christma-hanu-kwanzaa-kah”, or even a couple rolls of Duct Tape should work out just fine.
  
  
• If you forgot to purchase your secret Santa gift, a quick trip to the office supply closet should do quite nicely. I think most coworkers would appreciate a handmade paperclip necklace, fleet of paper airplanes, or even a new fax machine.
  
  
• And since it is the season for giving, perhaps the best idea I can offer you is to convince your fellow coworkers to forgo this year's gift exchange and each donate something to a local charity or food bank.

And now that you have a few ideas what to purchase for that assigned person, get out there and do it. The secret Santa gift exchange is a fun way to get to know your fellow coworkers and share a couple of laughs.