My team is doing one. Some people seem really excited, and others seem to dread it. I wanted to see how the rest of you felt. If you chose one of the extremes, can you comment why it's so great/horrible to you?
Racist
The origins of the event name is a mystery, though one popular theory is that it came from a prince's habit of gifting albino elephants to fellow nobles that wronged him. The idea was that the animal was expensive and difficult to care for. Though, I feel bad for the elephants if that was a true story.
Lol. Not racism. You’re harvesting likes for that communist Chinese banner above your name. 😬
It just makes me wonder how all the gray elephants feel.
Does anyone need more proof that tech is anti diversity .... now Satya Nadella will organize a hiring camp for all black and grey elephants.
Satya busy defending the monopoly against police state.
I really enjoy the spirit, but hate the actual gifts... Most of the time they're useless
Yeah, I feel like it's only fun when the price limit is very low, and everyone basically goes in understanding that the gifts can be treated as disposable. But then I feel like I am wasting stuff.
I love them because I love the game, competition aspect of it. I also enjoy bringing and seeing funny gifts. I don't care about getting something useful out of it.
Yeah, they're fun when that's everyone's expectation. But once the price range gets even a little high (over $10 or so), people stop enjoying it, in my experience. Because then there is some expectation of "real" gifts.
Only works if it’s the manager that’s giving out the gifts.
Manager will now reduce staff bonus pool by the amount he wasted on the gifts. No free lunch
Ha... what an interesting parallel universe that would be
Its a lot of fun if everyone takes it in a good spirit and folks don’t sulk when their gifts are stolen, had it with my team in the past 5 yrs its soo much fun
Yep, definitely requires the right mindset to enjoy it.
It sounds racist. Some kind of shit only white people can do.
We had a $30 limit last year. I put in an Echo Dot. Ended up with toilet golf and a Liberty Guns Beer Trump T-shirt lol.
What is that? Explain
I just got invited to one and I don’t know.
Participants bring gifts (wrapped or not, depending on what rules they want to use) and put them in a common place. Then, they take turns picking a gift. They also have the opportunity to steal a gift from someone who already picked one, instead of picking one from the common pile. The nuances of the rules vary from one event to the next, but that's the gist of it. Edit: more details here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant_gift_exchange