Yankee Swap

I'm pleased with a gift idea for my company yankee swap. Yes. In December, around the holidays. Last year was the first one I'd been to, having only been with my company for five months at the time. I knew it was sort of an "anything goes" kind of swap. And being jokey mcjokerson, I didn't want to show up with a gift anyone would actually want. So, while at a car show last year I picked up a poster of a Nissan -- one of their sports car models. I got a cheap frame from Target and wrapped my present in copies of that week's Metro newspapers. I even included the pages with my 75% completed crosswords.

The person who selected my gift opened it with such gusto! I found out afterward that he was expecting it be a Farrah Fawcett poster or something more scintillating than the car. As with all yankee swaps, he had the option of switching with someone else but he didn't and so took home my brilliant gift. Perhaps he'd bring it next year to the swap! And maybe, this would be one of those amazingly awful gifts that makes its way to swaps year after year...

A week later, I asked him if he'd hung up the poster. Our conversation was in passing, as in, he never fully stopped walking in his path. Maybe he was in a hurry or just didn't think it was important enough to stand still for a moment. He told he me that the poster wound up in his garbage can... and continued to walk away.

I was crushed. To this day, I mentally give him hairy eyeballs. Well, I hope it's mental and doesn't outwardly show. His arrogance puts me off. And I've spent the last 9 months thinking on what I could bring to the next swap.

Yes. I really have been thinking about this for 9. whole. months.

I'd thought about super gluing $10 to a rock, making it unusable, to reflect how I felt my last $10 spent on the frame was treated. But then I'd have blown $20 on yankee swap gifts, further creating more waste.

Another idea was these mini orange traffic cones at my desk that have Volvo's logo on them. I typically give them to new hires who get a company car (yes, it is a Volvo). But since I'm the only one with the cones, it would remove all anonymity.

It came to me today.

I'm going to buy a bunch of non-perishable food items: pasta, soup, beans, tuna fish, etc. I'll get decent stuff, too, avoiding dented cans, etc. I'll include a note that says something like, "I was dismayed after hearing that the gift I thoughtfully brought last year was thrown away. Feel free to keep these items for your family, or donate them to a local food shelter, as there many in our communities that go without daily."

Boo-ya.