Dear Prudence,
With the holiday season upon us, I have a relatively low-stakes question for you. For context, I work in a department of a large hospital. Each year we do a Secret Santa gift exchange with a $20 limit. We turn in the gifts after they are purchased to our manager who holds onto them until we can come pick them up. The reason I say that is to clarify that there is not a public exchange where you may see what somebody else got, and we are also never told who our Secret Santa was. I think some people share who they had, but for context, I have been with the company for many years and never found out who had me.
The other day, several co-workers and I were talking about the exchange, and one of them mentioned that she never stays within the limit, and always buys more. A couple of other people echoed the same sentiment and said that they find it hard to stick to the limit so some years they’ve spent as much as $100-$120. I find this problematic because as a rule, I always try to stick to limits for these types of exchanges that way everything is fair and equal. I don’t think I’m the only one. It’s a small enough department though that a handful of people aren’t sticking to the limit, that’s a significant amount of the gifts that will be more expensive than others. I don’t want to spend $100 on a Secret Santa, but if the culture of the organization is that, I want to know I can decide if I want to go over the limit or if I should. I am guessing based on the gifts that I was given over the years that at least once or twice my gift was well above $20 worth of small items, but it is so hard to tell. I don’t want to give a bad gift or if somebody finds out their secret Santa is me, I don’t want to be seen as a Scrooge. I wish everybody would play the rules! What say you?
—Santa in Santa Fe