The Most Insulting Holiday Gift You've Ever Given

Happy holidays and welcome to yet another Pissing Contest. Last year around this time, I asked loyal Jezebel readers to regale us with tales of the rudest holiday gift you’ve ever received. (I have been offered a Weight Watchers membership, for example.) This year, I want to know about your bad behavior. Have you ever given a super insulting gift? What was it? Do you regret it? Did your enemy acknowledge the malcontent behind the present? I need details. Winners will give us a story and paint us a picture in the comments below.

But first, let’s look at last week’s winners! Here are your greatest holiday party faux pas.

MamaBearsApron, you’re correct… holiday parties are definitely forced fun! Fuck them:

No one ever told me that the “Holiday Party” for work (held at a restaurant on a Wednesday night and entirely self-paid) was basically “required.” I chose not to go as I’d have to pay for a babysitter and expensive food and booze (because where I’m from, if you don’t drink alcohol, or at least pretend to, then everyone makes a big deal out of it). Also, I seriously value my down time with husband and children, and had no interest in spending 5-6 hours with the same people I see all day in the office. I’d also heard things about the Holiday Party along the lines of “everyone drinks too much and then uses “being drunk” as an excuse to be inappropriate and hit on people/grab-ass with no consequences”.

Next day at the office my boss accused me of not being a “team player” and pointed out that I was the only one who didn’t go, and that it just didn’t “look good”. It was at that moment that the office started turning against me, and vindictive coworkers made my life as miserable as possible. I left that job as soon as I could.

honkhonkhonk – check if it’s really me!, thank Karen for me:

This surely won’t be the worst, but last year I had a company Christmas lunch in which the secretary explained to the director (a qualified veterinarian) and me (biomed r&d at the time) how cancer was a fungus that could be cured with baking soda and clean eating. For 15 minutes. And how her doctors had been amazed. My boss has a fantastic fake-interested poker face, but I really really don’t. It was physically painful to hold in my cartoonish WTF expression. As an added bonus, her name was Karen.

The High Woman In The Castle, this sucks!:

1) I worked at a very wealthy trade association with big Fortune 500 members. This was my first job so the holiday party would also be a first.

My boss and I were working on something that ran late. When we got there, appetizers and passed wine were almost done. I figured I’d get a drink with dinner. We were soon ushered into the dining room, and I should have known something was up when the door immediately shut behind me. When I asked for wine with dinner, the waiter told me that wine and soda service had ended. Water only for the rest of the night. Uh our CEO made $450k, but okay then.

Dessert was served, and it was a very lonely scoop of melting vanilla ice cream. Just one scoop!

2) That beat the Christmas party where I got food poisoning that hit right when I was driving through a blizzard.

3) I worked at a government agency where for three years in a row there was no food left by the time I got there. I wasn’t even the last in line either. Finally, HR realized that forking over the extra cash for caterers to serve the buffet instead of the gluttonous free for all was worth it. WTF is it with people and free food?

I love this, AngryQueerLawyr:

Not Christmas, but definitely a holiday given the time period. I have never fucked up so badly in a language before or since.

It was summer in Bavaria. I was in the exchange program my mom ran, Germany was hosting the World Cup, and I got to stay with a host family and NOT mom, probably my most fun summer ever.

While we’re there, the guy who rented part of his house to my parents while Mom did her Fulbright year turns 60. It’s a milestone in Germany and also coincides with midsummer which is also a big bash. He invited everyone he ever knew, even my whole family when he knew damn well we lived in the US.

Mom decides to surprise him by actually showing up, and to bring 16 year old me. I didn’t mind too much, hey, free party, see the sights, and she is always a lot nicer to me in Germany because people can understand the crap she spews at me there, and she’s more relaxed. So we drive to Middle of Nowhere, Tiny Town, Germany, then out to the Back of Beyond in the Woods. It’s literally one lane dirt roads and a sea of trees.

Get there and this out-of-season ski chalet is bursting at the seams with people! I soon peel myself away from mom so I can eat without glares, and my German is good enough I don’t have problems. Everyone exudes Gemütlichkeit, and we are the sole overseas guests. In addition, every household invited has been asked to bring a dish to pass AND a homemade cake. BESIDES the catering.

Naturally I am surrounded by Omas continuously trying to give me food and praising my German. I ate so much I could barely move, and started frantically searching my language bank for a polite way to refuse. It’s also loud AF because live band.

Finally, frustrated, I yelled “I AM FULL AND DO NOT WANT TO EAT ANYTHING MORE! NO THANK YOU!” in German just as the band finishes a song, so that I am suddenly shouting in a much quieter room.

…But in my overstuffed and distracted state, what I had said was “ICH BIN VOLL UND WILL NICHTS MEHR ESSEN! NEIN DANKE!”

“Voll” sounds like “Full.” But that bastard is a FALSE cognate. “Full” in German is “satt.” “Voll” is, well…inebriated.

So what I had actually yelled was “I AM DRUNK AND DO NOT WANT TO EAT ANYTHING MORE! NO THANK YOU!”

MyBodyIsAWonderbread, lol:

A friend invited me to one of those gift exchange parties where you can open a new present or steal one from somebody else; I knew only a couple people. I made several puppets of Dawson’s Creek actors using photos cut from magazines and threw in a few James Van Der Beek pins. Unlike what my friend told me, turns out the gift standard was $20 and NOT funny: set of wine glasses, Starbucks gifts cards, twenty bucks of quarters in a ziplock bag, emergency car kit… The person who opened my functional homemade Pacey, Joey, and Dawson face puppets was visibly disappointed that he had to sit through the rest of the game.

Drop those rude gifts in the comments below. I promise the person who received it won’t see it. Probably because they’ve cut you out of their life? Who is to say?