Another year, another tenner to spend on someone that you resent and who won’t appreciate your effort. “I don’t think he really gets my present, the humour’s too highbrow for him,” you tell a colleague the day after the Christmas party.
That hangover is at least a week away though. In the last week, you will have received the missive with details of sorting out Secret Santa for the agency. Yay guys! Just click on the Elfster link below and spread some cheer!! Anyone for mistletoe? I can see four people who haven’t signed up yet, you know who you are! It’ll be lumps of coal if you don’t JOIN THE FORCED FUN!
With this in mind, here are some gifts you might want to avoid if you plan to keep your job in 2016:
Odd socks
For the ridiculously organised account manager in your office – and there will be one – a pair of odd socks will certainly twist their melon. That’s the colleague who does timesheets every day without fail, sometimes even updating them throughout the working day with a quiet, satisfied smile. They have lots of automated processes and programmes set up on their laptop which make admin a breeze and the drawers under their desk are alarmingly tidy inside. A pair of comedy socks is par for the course in agencies up and down the country. A pair of odd socks would ruin this colleague’s Christmas.
Retro telephone
A bright red telephone with the old-fashioned rotary dial, impossible to miss when it’s being used. Or not being used. This would be an excellent Christmas gift for the veteran account director who loves a natter with the client, but not for the junior account exec. For this millennial who grew up on texts and instant messaging, having to cold call journalists is torture. This staff member prefers to hide behind the safety of emails and claim that they have a sore throat the one day their phone phobia is queried. They are horrified by the account director’s stories of being shouted at by journalists on a daily basis. A conspicuous new phone could either push them into making a change, or push so far out of their comfort zone that they resign.
Client goodies
If you have to buy a present for a new joiner, there’s a chance you could get away with giving them swag from old clients – the carefully wrapped goodie bags destined for glossy mag editors, but that are somehow still hanging around in the stationery cupboard months later. If you try this tactic because you forgot to buy something, make sure to dispose of the evidence. Hide the rest of the old goodie bags under yet more boxes. And pray that they haven’t been digging around in the server, and won’t have spotted that they’re from a former client with a terrible product that proved impossible to promote. It’d be a kick in the teeth in their first few weeks of employment.
Something risqué
There’s always one. PR seems to attract the wrong ’uns, and every year somebody manages to offend half the office with something from Ann Summers that looks rather … vague. But if you just have to pick up furry handcuffs, then at least make sure you give them to the overly macho account executive. After office hysteria dies down, he’ll still be red-cheeked, avoiding eye contact, and probably deleting his phone browser search history.
Photos from the last Christmas party
Also known as the last time that clients were ever invited to any company party. Every agency has a litany of awful things that happened at the last Christmas party (at least it wasn’t as bad as the one in 2013 when … oh god never mind). Scroll back in your phone’s photos, keep going, back to this time last year, and, yes! The ones you promised you’d definitely delete. There’s a really incriminating one of you as well, partially wrapped around a client. Ugh. Why did everyone think they were attractive? Delete. Now the really bad ones of your Secret Santa colleague (with flecks of vomit on their outfit), oh dear. To keep any relationships intact, perhaps don’t get those photos printed. Or framed. Or wrapped and put in the Secret Santa sack.
So, Scrooge, if you’re still uninspired on the day of the Christmas party, pick up something from the bestsellers section at WH Smith, or a tin of Roses. Everyone would see the total lack of any effort, but at least you can bask in the safety of anonymity.
Let the festivities begin.
To get weekly news analysis, job alerts and event notifications direct to your inbox, sign up free for Media and Tech Network membership.
All Guardian Media and Tech Network content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled “Brought to you by” – find out more here.
Could you be one of our bloggers? Got an idea for an anonymous blog post about the realities of working in PR? Get in touch here.
