It can be low effort, passive-aggressive, insulting or derogatory towards your convictions.

  • Schlemmy@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Pizza baking sheets. They didn’t fit in my oven.

    A paella pan. I don’t like paella.

    A coffee grinder. It just doesn’t grind coffee beans to the right size.

    A random Italian cookbook. I have a chefs degree. I’m well down with basic Italian cooking.

    See, I cook every day. Twice. And on occasion I love to cook for friends but that also means I’m over poor quality cooking stuff. I’ll buy my own gear. Most people think they do me a favour but I just have useless stuff piling up over the years. I’m grateful to get gifts but last year I just told people right a way that if they want to give me cooking related gifts I would be equally happy with some special sort of salt of some fun ingredients to cook with. Those things don’t last as long but it would make for a much better gift for a food enthousiast.

  • Suck_on_my_Presence@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    19 hours ago

    I was deployed and got a box from my home unit that was basically just trash. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was just a lot of scrap paper thrown into a box. Nothing written on them that was for me. Nothing to signal anything. Just a big box of trash that could have been nothing more than the recycling bin upended into it.

    That was pretty heartbreaking.

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      15 hours ago

      Did you ever talk about it with them? Definitely sounds like an inconsiderate joke. Flabbergasting that they managed to follow through enough to get it posted to you.

  • EllE@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    48
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    23 hours ago

    I once got a picture of a really cool present from my dad, which he said was in the mail. Never got the present.

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      16 hours ago

      Maybe it got “porch pirated”. I thought I was immune from that until my things started disappearing.

  • Hellnikko@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    22 hours ago

    I was given 30 quarters that had letters and numbers on each one in a black velvet pouch. If you put them in a certain order, it had a message. The quarters went in year order. The message was a Bible passage according to Matthew. It was when Judas was given 30 silver for betraying Jesus.

    The context, I told one of our friends that the gifter was trying to get with his wife while he was deployed. He denied and then made me feel like shit to insinuate such a thing. Turns out, it was true.

    I still have the quarters so I could give them back some day.

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Wasn’t Judas the one who did the denying? So by referencing this isn’t the gifter calling himself Judas and not you?

  • SlippiHUD@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    20 minutes ago

    This isnt technically a present, but my girlfriend stored a christmas present in the loft of the garage over my car. She accidentally dropped it while getting it down to give it to me and put a ski through my windshield.

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    22 hours ago

    Not the gift itself, but the response.

    First of all, even before Christmas I said I’d prefer NO GIFTS at all. Regardless, my dad got me some inkjet HP printer. I thanked him for it, but asked him that we’d return it. I tried to be respectful, but regardless, he got mad at me and didn’t talk with me for like 2 days.

    Later he sent me the money for it and asked me to buy something for it and show him what it was. I do not know why I couldn’t just keep it as extra money, but oh well, it had to be spent on something.
    I got a refurbished ThinkPad for that. Pretty good device, by far beating value of HP inkjet. I even got it with a 2 year warranty (without extended) like with a new device, while only 1 year is required.

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      20 hours ago

      My mom knows I’m always buying tools for work (electrician) and computer-related parts/devices. She still has trouble wrapping around the idea that I don’t want (as much as I sincerely do appreciate the gesture) anything in those arenas due to specificity of requirement, that and most things of that nature tend to be expensive. She still buys little random things from Home Depot, like last year she bought this wrist cuff thing with magnets on it. Great idea on paper, but not in the field. At this point she’s getting older so I kinda just humor her.

  • WhoisJohnGalt@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    14 hours ago

    A tri-fold wallet. It was a good wallet, and I appreciated the gesture. It’s just that I HATE tri-fold wallets.

  • Sounds really fucked up of me, but I once had a girlfriend gift me a painting she made for me. I could tell she really tried, took her time, spent money on it, and she chose a subject matter I really liked, but it was absolutely terrible. One of the worst paintings I’ve ever seen.

    It put me in such a dilemma because she even framed it and was expecting me to hang it up at my place but I couldn’t bear to hang it and see it ‘decorating’ my place. I thanked her a lot when she gave it to me but I would’ve preferred she had gotten me nothing instead.