The gift needs to be able to come off as a genuine gift so there’s some plausible deniability…
Edit: Just so it’s clear, this is purely hypothetical. I just thought of the idea and thought it would be funny to see what a random person on Lemmy might think. This isn’t a serious request and none of the suggestions will ever actually be used.
The name Trojan refers to the fact that it’s intended for horses, with anything under 37cm being x-small.
Discreetly open it and replace the contents with x-large.
If they open it, it’ll make them feel even littler.
if they think they are funny then get them a rubber chicken. if they are stinky get them perfume.
Give them something you know that they hate
Bonus points if they’ve explicitly told you they don’t like the item before.
Find out something that they were passionate about in life, but left by the wayside because they were ultimately a failure in it. Then get them something related to that. But make sure the gift is flawed in some way to be totally unuseable.
I think something that goes against their personality. Someone who hates the spotlight give an improv class, someone who’s afraid of heights a rock climbing class, for picky eaters a food tasting, I hate listening to instructions so I hate yoga so if you got me a yoga class. Even better if you go with them so they can’t back out. It’s easy to say I wanted to get you out of your shell and thought you would like it if you tried it.
Save your money
That really depends on the person and what they perceive as an insult.
Get them soap and instructions about maintaining proper hygiene.
a stick of deodorant wrapped in a bow, would say it all silently
Decades ago, my mother worked with a small group of women. Every day they spent a few hours together in the office before going out. There was one lady with lacking personal hygiene, quite whiffy and rather oblivious about that. It was about that time the stick deodorants became available in our post soviet country, I believe the Speedstick was the first brand to take the market. So for Christmas for secret santa they got her the deodorant. It was a passive aggressive move, the things could have gone really wrong. She was happy with the gift but the things didn’t improve much. The following year they got her another stick deodorant, hoping to get the message through. She unwrapped the gift and excitedly thanked them, saying that the previous one was almost finished. Bless her, she only used it as a perfume on special occasions…
Premium expensive aftershave be sure to get it giftwrapped aswell. It can be a knockback whammy, you tell them they stink and you pay an arm and a leg to tell them.
At one workplace secret Santa (which I always declined to participate in), one recipient got an empty spherical clamshell with cardboard retainer on which was printed the word “Nothing”, visible through the clamshell. The joke being that it was supposed to be “I didn’t know what to get you, so I got you nothing.”
This was not intended as an insult by the secret Santa, but was taken as one by the recipient who must have spent significantly more on whatever their recipient got.
Only you can judge how your recipient would take such a gift, but if this seems like a good idea to you you can probably find them on sale somewhere. (NB: I accept no responsibility if you choose this course of action.)
If I remember correctly, one of the recipients of a better gift thought it was funny so swapped their gift with it to cheer up the unhappy recipient. I am not sure if the swapper was their secret Santa or not.
There had been much offence, pouting and sulking… from a grown man.
I did a thing once where everyone brought a gift and some game was played and if you won your round you got to pick the gift you got, or something like that.
The person who picked before me got 2 crisp $100 bills, the person after me got airpods. I got… A painted rock, I was so excited. It was the only gift that someone put actual effort into and wasn’t just a quick buy.
Not that I would’ve been upset with $200 but I still have that rock sitting in my garden
Dang that’s crazy, someone put a lot of effort into earning $200 and giving it away as well.
To take the higher ground with kindness and empathy
A gift card for a shop that sells cringe stuff only
A large bottle of cologne. Plausible gift that makes them think they smell bad.
Give them a gift card, but you’ve spent more than half of it.
Or give them a gift card to a store that either does not exist in their area or a store that they wouldn’t want to shop in.
Blockbuster gift card.
Any gift that suggests they need to improve something about themselves, especially if they’ve never shown any interest in that. Like a gift card for skincare treatments, or teeth whitening. Maybe a self-help book, or some exercise equipment. Cologne/perfume is good for deniability, but it might come off as more romantic than intended.
Also, giving any of these gifts to make someone feel bad about themselves makes you an enormous asshole. Use your words, be honest with people, and don’t go out of your way to humiliate or irritate people you don’t like. Life’s too short to spend it scheming.
Also, giving any of these gifts to make someone feel bad about themselves makes you an enormous asshole. Use your words, be honest with people, and don’t go out of your way to humiliate or irritate people you don’t like. Life’s too short to spend it scheming.
If you’d met the kind of people who do this - they just don’t know anything in life they could honestly do otherwise. Sometimes they pretend to do something so well, that a fraction of the effort could be spent actually doing that instead of pretense.
But they sincerely think their ability to scheme is unchangeably better than their ability to actually do interesting things. Or maybe they take pride in that.
The point is - they treat wonderful things like something out of reach, while it clearly isn’t.
Boss gifted me lotion once. Was kinda amusing in that it sorta was an insult, but like I sometimes bleed from how bad my skin sometimes gets so it’s not like it’s some secret. I think she also apologized in case it was weird.
Doesn’t sound like an insult at all to me. She paid attention, which is great, but was… yes, weird.
